naming my kid duckduckgo crosby

this game has been consuming my brain. i'm like halfway done now, and its been so satisfying to pick apart the trends and rulesets. it's been really rewarding just to think about the puzzles throughout my day because each time i come back, more and more makes sense

it's cool to play a new logic puzzle game! i eat it up when i get to start at ground zero and come up with my own rulebook. i've played way too much sokoban and picross (and variations), so it's nice to see something fairly new

like no one boss ever really felt too hard on a first run, but there were absolutely moves that i wasn’t prepared for on a first go. having non-hitless challenges actually allowed for me to play through the boss in its entirety for practice rather than me resetting each time i was hit

also, i’m pretty impressed with how bosses were handled here. with the mystery challenges, the player is expected to replay the level. these replays force the player to engage with boss in different ways, and eventually help with pattern recognition, reducing the perceived grind for hitless runs

i do think it lacks the versatility of dreamland 3 or crystal shards. in those games, players can cycle through ability combos on the fly. like maybe i missed a feature, but it was rough to see that i needed to go back to the town to change between the wild sword and meta knight’s sword

also the ability upgrades, with different attack speeds and powers, were a cool way to engage player expression. in longer kirby games, cycling through 6-7 copy abilities can get pretty stale, so it’s nice to see these incremental changes and player choices added in

i’m gonna write a little more because i was genuinely impressed with this game’s ambition and scale. i really enjoyed that they dispersed time trials between core levels to serve as copy ability tutorials (kind of). they served to tell players what to do, while also presenting a quick challenge pace