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The Story

So we know from the beginning that the brother and sister's mother died and the dad has basically lived at the bottom of a bottle while the older sister has taken care of everything. I kinda missed it, but there's a old legend about the guardians. I guess a woman guardian wanted to marry a human and have a child, and the other guardians didn't like that and banished her.

So moving forward, I'm on a quest to awaken the guardians and enlist their help. It seems the creature that kidnapped the brother was meant to be the child of the female guardian that wanted to marry a human. Her child is beastly, so they kidnap kids to try and force a transformation. Until Lars (the younger brother) it always failed, but he has some sort of magic that's allowing him to withstand the process.

As the beast-kid shrinks to child size, he and Lars are playing and starting to get to know each other. It's kinda cute...though horrifying because Lars's soul is being sucked from his body.

Along the way, I've met some characters: a couple of trolls, some frog-like dudes and their mother, the Yule Cat (whose legend is fucking terrifying), and some weird water thing with multiple hands that apparently likes to lure children into the water--for what purpose, I'm not sure, but if he's unsuccessful, he then is helpful.

It's pretty dark, which I guess most Norse legends are dark? But they've soften the legends a bit. Every creature has mostly been nice or helpful. There was a particular creature pulled me underwater, but it didn't seem to want to kill me. Just have some company while I starved to death...

Even the guardians that I've not started to awake are pretty aggressive. One was a bear, the other a wolf. They've both threatened to eat me. It's interesting. The story is walking a thin line between cynical and toxic positivity. It's like Nightmare Before Christmas, you're just never sure if it's appropriate for children or not.

What's interesting about the story is the bad-lady seems to have been unjustly cursed. She's not "evil" just doing evil things...Which means she's still kind of evil. But her opponents might not be any better than she, and are likely just as much to blame in some instances.

Gameplay

Ultimately I consider this a point-n-click game. But there's Zelda-64-esque qualities about it too. I wish it leaned more into the point-n-click, such as not making me move the character around manually. Just let me click for movement. Because there's lots of backtracking and it's just walking. You don't get dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge your way through the environment. (Though there is a fast-travel system with magic tree-portals, which is cool.) There's also two points (so far) where the game becomes a little more Zelda.

Typically point-n-click games have one solution per item you pick up. The game is figuring out why the game has allowed you to pick up an item and how to use it. It's a key that unlocks only 1 door. It's a funny thing about point-in-click games: you'll often solve puzzles for a random item that you don't know will be useful until an hour later. And we're fine with that.

But Roki has introduced two tools that keep getting reused: the dagger and trovel. I love how Zelda finds a million uses for tools and weapons. But for a point-n-click, it's a little weird. It's especially frustrating because you can't just equip these items to the c-buttons for impromptu use. You have to go into the menu and activate them.

This becomes especially frustrating when you have to rearrange mushrooms and change their sizes with a magic wand. Because the game is saying "one puzzles, one solution" experimenting with different possible uses of an item is frustrating. At one point in the game you have to escape a giant light sensitive spider by placing angled mirrors around the environment. There was a lot of backtracking and experimenting. And every time I placed or removed a mirror the spider had to say something. It wasn't...fun.

BUT still, the puzzles are good and I'm enjoying the game. Interestingly, the puzzles keys and solutions are spread out across the map. So you'll find a puzzle that can't be solved till much later. It also allows puzzles to be solved in almost any order. But i did run into an issue with a puzzle. Early in the game you get access to a "castle" with a graveyard out front. Right at the beginning I read some graves, but it was hours later before that became relevant. So by the time I needed to revisit that place, I had totally forgotten anything that would have informed that solution.

Oh, there's been some interesting surreal dream sequences. They really dig into the emotion and story of the main character, and how she's struggled with the loss of her mom. I'm guessing that she's been so busy taking care of her brother and dad, she hasn't had the space to deal with her own grief.