Hob

This game is so much fun that complaints seem like quibbles.

It's very much in the metroidvania genre: an open-ish world for you explore, with places you can and must return to only after you achieve certain abilities. These kinds of games instill a growing familiarity with the game world and reward you as new areas and treasures open up to you.

Of course, the quality of such games depends on how exciting the game world is and how fun it is to traverse. Hob succeeds in both respects.

The world is evocative despite giving very few, silent cues as to the backstory. It has a solid internal logic that follows through with all the environmental puzzles. It rewards clever exploration with abilities, collectibles, and beautiful views. Some of the events are truly breathtaking, as the world convulses and expands when you achieve a goal.

As for traversal, you should really play the game with a controller: your character's movements and world interaction are for the most part buttery smooth. It's a pleasure to just glide through the environment, discovering new things about places you've been to before. Combat is not very challenging and serves mostly as an added experience to traversal. Everything about how you move and fight is pleasantly melded together.

Here and there you may encounter some lack of polish or even an annoying bug, but nothing interfered with my pleasure.

All I could think of when I finished Hob was: I want more, more, more! And yet I still feel the game provided me with quite a lot.

Highly recommended to fans of exploration and casual environmental-puzzle solving.