Lost Potential in a Frustrating Second Half
The first half of this game is a delight. It adapts a style-over-substance approach that fits very nicely. The puzzles were simple, but creative and fun, and created a nice aesthetic with giant spiders and terrifying spikes.
...Then comes the second half. In fact, I would say anything after the spider is a mess. They quickly abandon the strange forest style and just immediately shift to "real world things". You'll see conveyor belts, lasers, machinery, even other people. It just abandons the environment in the beginning that was so interesting for a much more traditional and bland "industrial" environment. Perhaps the worst offender of this is a gigantic neon "HOTEL" sign. Adding "modern" things like that feels like a confusing misstep.
And don't forget about the puzzles. The puzzles quickly take a turn for the worst as the style-over-substance approach gets traded in for gimmicks. Every puzzle is essentially just one trick, and once you figure out that trick you go on to the next one. You'll either figure out the trick immediately or you'll spend ten minutes banging your head against the wall until you find it, and by then it's not rewarding anymore.
And by the way, have fun controlling this kid. He's slow, can't jump high, and the controls feel unresponsive. Multiple times, he didn't jump the way I was pushing the left stick, or I would push the action button near an object and he wouldn't interact with it.
Ultimately, if this game had stuck to its roots that were so successful in the first hour, it would be a far better game. I'd have a much better time pushing blocks around in a forest and killing intimidating spiders than I ever would trying to time a jump right on an overly vague puzzle.