This is a great game with a linear narrative. A female protagonist is a plus. The influence of Lovecraft and the movie The Wicker Man (original) is clearly visible in the game. The heroine gradually falls into madness throughout the game, which is shown by her facial expressions, lines and at the end, a change in the animation of her sprite, which explains her obsession and the ending of the game (which many unfairly criticize). In my opinion, the whole game leads us to this denouement of events, so I liked it. Unlike Kathy Rain, which is often compared to this game, mysticism is organically woven into the plot from the very beginning, so the events in the Hob's Barrow are not a surprise. I will wait for the DLC or a sequel, I hope that this game will be the beginning of a new series of games of this kind.
NB In the game we can pet chickens! 🐓❤️ Super cute.

I'd heard good things, but the actual experience was underwhelming.

The good:
- The voice acting is solid.
- There's a key to highlight everything on the screen you can interact with.
- You can fast travel to areas you've been before.
- You can skip the awkward fireside musical interlude.

The bad:
- Most of the genuinely creepy bits don't actually go anywhere. For example, the goblin's daughter exists to give you a fiddle for one of the final puzzles, I guess. There's really nothing more to that entire mystery.
- Until almost the end of the game, the puzzles are tedious fetch quests without any actual puzzle logic to work out.
- The closeups. They're (deliberately, I think) ugly, stay on screen for a predetermined amount of time vs allowing you to skip ahead, and don't really add anything to the game. It's not spooky or ominous, just kind of gross. Faces in general are awful here. That's not an issue with pixel art, since it can do detail without being ugly, but every relatively high-res face in here is HIDEOUS. Sure, the closeups of the town creeps' ugly, leering faces are as off-putting and unpleasant as their personalities, but what does that actually add? They're already creepy and unpleasant. I don't need an unskippable still to prove that.

The meh:
- The map is pretty large, but that means the obligatory backtracking and searching get tedious fast, even with the fast travel and highlight systems.
- You know how disappointing escape rooms that rely on a clue book are? The journal is that clue book.
- Most of the game isn't particularly creepy or ominous, just kind of boring. You wander around town exhausting all dialogue options so time can advance, then fetch something. Yay?
- The final reveal is just disappointing. There's some neat folklore buildup, but it's tossed aside for the big reveal that it's just a demon. Meh.

The quality of this game totally caught me off guard. First, I wasn’t expecting the pixelated artwork to be beautiful, as it frequently was. I also didn’t expect the voice acting to be so evocative. And the narrative? LAYERS. Such an amazing discovery.