It would be easy to just read the tags and look at the screenshots, and use that to give Horace a positive review. It's a platformer, puzzler, pixel game with loads of humor, 12-16 hours of playtime, boss fights, and even has a bit of metroidvania (you get new abilities as the story goes on, allowing you to return to blocked off passages and areas). But Horace is MORE that that, I think.

At the start of the game, you have it fairly easy and it's just a simple platformer with some gimmicks (like walking on the ceiling). It was a lot of fun just running around, jumping and having a good old time. The plot moved along nicely, there were so, so many jokes and homages that I can't even list them. If you have a bit of familiarity with 80s/90s pop culture from the US and UK, you'll see them and get a good chuckle. Some are in your face, but most are just hanging out in the background or hiding in someone's name/dialogue. None of the plot rested on knowing these, but suddenly hearing the theme to Monty Python, or seeing a goofy caricature of the cast of Friends walking by in the background was a lot of fun, and brightened my mood every time.

The plot exists in a series of cutscenes, probably an hour or so all told, over the course of the entire game. Some are fun and joyous, as your main character learns about themselves and the world...but some are sad. The music grabbed my heartstrings, and some scenes made sure that all the dust in the room gathered in my eyes without fail. It amazes me how connected I felt after only a few hours to these characters, and each wears their pixellated hearts on their sleeves. Hatred, anger, love, forgiveness, and more...all represented beautifully despite the limitations of pixels. Despite being physically two-dimensional, each of them had many layers, and as I got to know them better I pushed to make it through each new challenge to see the next part of their story. People died, fought, sacrificed, argued, and acted...all for a purpose that felt real.

There are so many puzzles and challenges! Literally every room in the massive mansion, every new map or area, all have at least one puzzle to them with a reward or collectible of some kind in it...if you can survive and get there. I spent at least an hour total just running around old areas after new powers, to find new ways to get around or rewards. I even screwed up at one point and broke sequence a bit, but it just made the next part tougher [IMPORTANT: When you hit Chapter 11, don't go after the boss to the far left first]...but still entirely possible with a bit of trial & error. I never experienced anything that was impossible, and no matter how hard each part was, I kept playing because there was always a light at the end of each dangerous tunnel.

No challenge lacked a purpose, no boss lacked a reward, and no secret was pointless. Everything I did, no matter how silly it may have seemed, was without a reason. Money is plentiful, and even as someone who usually hates minigames I still played more than my fair share since they were short, mostly fun, and came with useful rewards. Collecting upgrades was similarly solid, because each of them had a point. The binoculars let me explore a room, extra lives gave me extra chances when I messed up, and every time I got a new power I'd rush to the shops to see how I could improve them.

There are some puzzles that maddened the heck out of me. Horace would introduce a new mechanic or ability, and then slowly ramp up the difficulty of puzzles and enemies that used it. This staved off a lot of the annoyance that comes with many of these games, but even then there were a handful that were just plain too tough for me (a certain minigame competition, and a the first of three low-gravity Trials near the end). Despite what my steam library may tell you, I'm actually not that good at most platformers and puzzle games. I've had to switch to Easy on some of them, cheat on others, and in extreme cases even just watch the cutscenes on Youtube and call it a day. But after all the time I had spent with the characters in this game, and because the game would reset to a pre-death checkpoint almost instantly, I kept going. The game's extra-lives, checkpoints, and other features kept frustration to a minimum...and if someone as terrible as I tend to be could beat the game, almost anyone could.

I bought this game to have fun, find a challenge, and see what this game had to offer me. I found a character who, like me, sought a purpose in his pixelated world. Despite all his challenges and confusion, by the end of the game I managed to get him what I think was a happy ending. I had a lot of fun, learned to care for the characters (good and bad), made it past the challenges despite some frustration, and spent 20 hours that were worth every moment.

I recommend Horace, thank the developers for all their work, and hope that you, too, enjoy it as much as I did.