>>718463742
It is. The author is extremely talented and is obviously a huge fan of Riven, La-Mulana, Outer Wilds, Tunic... He's played them all and this hack is one big impressive, inspired synthesis. But that's why I would recommend it only to the autists who have played them all already because it's on the hard/schizo side of the genre and also has a lot of cool game design nods. If he made a commercial game and hired a good marketer, he could be getting the same attention as Animal Well or Blue Prince, but instead he releases his autism for free on Mario hacks so no one gives a shit.
It's a deep and tricky rabbit hole kind of game, it constantly recontextualizes itself and your understanding of it. By the end of it I had many pages of notes, theories, weird symbols and annotated maps, most of the puzzles hit that ideal difficulty and creative cleverness balance (some can get TOO clever and drove me nuts or hints are a bit questionable though, it's not perfect). When OP says it's a holy grail of game design, that's also how I feel, I don't only value the challenge of a puzzle but also the cohesiveness, cleverness, elegance, and that game is full of the good stuff. The map design is incredibly thoughtful, I'll just say it's that kind of very rare game where the map is a puzzle.
I wish I could say more about it. Just one small spoiler-free example but he managed to go the extra mile so some puzzle elements would be randomized and unique to your playthrough so you can't copy solutions online but have to understand the underlying systems, managed to code that in a Mario hack, think about that, when most commercial examples don't even bother with that level of effort. There's so much I could say to shill it about the kind of things it does that are just pure crack for my brain as an obsessed fan of the genre, but I want like-minded anons to go in as blind as possible, reach the true end with as a little spoiler as possible, it's such a satisfying unique experience.
