Recent reviews by barf

I wishlisted this purely because I saw it recommended over and over again. I knew nothing about it. I must have grabbed it on sale. It was doomed to be another unplayed purchase in my Steam library until I started it up a few days ago on a whim. There are... very few pieces of media in my life that make me feel like IWATE does. I'm glad I had no idea what to expect. I'm really thankful I played it, and I have a feeling I'll probably play through it several more times, at least. I can't say much more than that.

Most fun I've had in a while. Great combination of fishing, upgrading, and unspeakable aquatic horrors.

Right out of the gate, controls are iffy in the character creator (specifically the color picker/confirmation and cancel buttons) and intro. Lots of glaring clipping issues with body parts, clothing, and animations. My two big issues were: the model's idle animation causes the skin to poke out through thin clothing, at least on one of the body types (it looks like nipples); and some of the jawline horns don't seem to be attached to the model, causing them to bob out of sync with the rest of the head.
Fast forwarding the intro cutscene if you click to advance the dialogue is jarring -- normally a game would have text being shown gradually/typed out to indicate that the cutscene and dialogue progression are linked, but instead it just jumps ahead in animation. My character ended up pointed the wrong direction during dialogue with other characters. When other characters enter your house, the door just clips through them as it shuts. My character tried to make a happy face but their eyeballs clipped completely through their eyelids. The startup screen did NOT respect my volume adjustment and blasted my ears. This is all small stuff, but that's kind of the point... a bunch of little issues less than an hour into the game make me wary about going any further.
I recognize that it's my personal preference but polish is important to me. I desperately hope these things get fixed. The character creator IS great and the artwork is excellent but at this moment it's not an enjoyable experience for me.

10/15 hotfix seems to have added weird neck seam model issues to most of the body types.

Micspam is such a warm, comfortable, nostalgic thing... and this dude seems like such a saint answering questions on the Steam forums and stuff. This is just great. I'm so pleased!

I CRIED
TWICE

Dream-like and charming, this is a really enjoyable little game. It's like the emotional opposite of LIMBO. Noteworthy is the lack of spoken dialogue, the insanely catchy soundtrack, and the sometimes-simple but enjoyable puzzle solving. Definitely casual, but if you're into that sort of thing, you'll probably love it.

A terrible vacuum from which I cannot escape. It grows more complex as each layer of gameplay is pulled away; you start off controlling a character, you begin to accessorize your home, and then suddenly you're experimenting with the nuances of construction and customization and discovering just how deep the rabbit hole goes.

I have not sampled the DLC and have no plans to. The game is vile enough as it is. I recommend it.

Pretty great for a casual game. Easy, addictive gameplay with an absolutely killer soundtrack.

An excellently alien-flavored classic Sega shoot 'em up with the heaviest soundtrack you'll ever hear in a 16-bit game. Awesome!

An acceptable way to spend your time if you're looking for an MMO that isn't WoW, but not worth playing if you're not planning on subscribing; the F2P model is atrocious, especially for returning players. Restricted content is tremendously overpriced -- it's cheaper to just buy a subscription. The poor handling of the F2P transition is really unfortunate, since the game has retained a lot of charm over the years, and still has some of the coolest player housing available. Consider this a trial version and not a true free to play game.