From the moment you get warped into Nomori, and the topsy-turvy portals have you looking into an infinite mirror of yourself, I knew this would be a unique puzzle game. The vibes and environment are delightfully cute - liittle bunny rabbits that disappear if you hop on them, little fairy-looking houses, and ginormous autumn trees.

I had played the demo a year ago, and this final release is a huge leg up in visuals and story. I'm partway through now, but very eager to meet more of the characters and visit the other "seasons" in the game.

Also shoutout to the voice-acting (googly sounds and reactive emotes, rather than VO). It fits well, and communicates more imaginatively than actual words.

Some of the puzzles are pretty hard by late in the game, but the ramp up I found to be approachable. I like the mind-bending you have to do to connect things. If you were put off by puzzle difficulty in the earlier version, this final release adds a lot of QoL things, like being able to 'see' through walls to where key portals or features are. You also get a little marker that you can place, which you can also see through walls. That helps you orient to which way is "up".

Big thumbs up, I'll be poking around this for a while to find all the extra hidden spots.

i love this game so much!! The whole map is huge, even the mini ones to complete. It's such a challenging game in the best way <3

Kiko is staying at her grandma’s for the summer holidays, but after being told to go into the forest, she somehow ends up in another world called Nomori. This strange world is made up of numerous floating islands, and Kiko now has to navigate them to find her way back home. Each stage is a separate puzzle that combines light platforming with puzzle solving, with the goal being to reach a gate that unlocks the next island.

Although Kiko has a basic jump, it is not enough to cross the gaps between the islands, so you have to make use of Nomori’s various mechanics. The first few islands gradually introduce you to everything you need to know. One of the first mechanics you encounter is portals, which allow you to travel between two connected points while also changing your orientation.

Walking into a portal might see you emerge on a ceiling or a wall. Gravity changes with you, so you do not simply fall away from the surface. This creates some very interesting stage designs, with paths, staircases, structures, and other objects appearing in different orientations throughout the world.

Next are bouncy surfaces, whose bounce height depends on how far you fall before landing on them. This goo covers the exit, and the only way to remove it is by placing a special cube on top of it, so finding one and bringing it to the exit is your primary objective. Cubes spawn at specific points, but the interesting part is that you can pick them up and move them around.

Cubes levitate, meaning they have no weight, so you can jump around while carrying one and then drop it wherever you need it. Besides removing goo, a cube can also act as a portable platform. You can place it on the ground and jump on top of it to reach higher areas. Cubes also work with portals, which is where some of the most interesting and tricky solutions come into play. Unlike Kiko, cubes retain their original orientation and gravity when passing through a portal.

For example, if a cube starts with normal gravity and you take it through a portal onto a wall, dropping it will still make it fall in the direction of its original ground and gravity. This is often necessary for creating temporary platforms that allow Kiko to reach otherwise inaccessible areas. When released, a cube also gains momentum in that direction. This is needed to break through wooden barriers, but only when the cube is in its larger state, which can be achieved by placing it on a red geyser. Steam, on the other hand, shrinks the cube back to its previous size.

Another important technique is releasing a cube so that it starts flying, quickly jumping onto it to reach the other side, and then grabbing it again once you are across. The grabbing range is quite generous, so you do not need to be directly next to the cube. You can even stand on a flying cube and let it carry you, leading to some particularly unusual solutions.

Mistakes are common, but you can never make a stage permanently unsolvable because cubes can always be spawned again. One of the best features is the save circles scattered throughout the stages. Passing through one saves not only your progress, but also the current placement of objects and whether you are holding a cube. If you lose a cube or make a mistake, you can simply press a key to respawn at the last save point. Using these saves is particularly useful when you have spent a lot of time arranging several objects and do not want to repeat the entire process after making a mistake.

After completing a few stages, you reach the crossroads, which serves as the main hub. From here, you can choose your next stage or replay previous ones. The stages are divided into four branches, with each branch representing one of the four seasons and containing around ten stages. Each season also introduces new mechanics, gradually expanding the number of possibilities available to you.

There is also a good reason to replay completed stages: Kodama, hidden mushroom characters scattered throughout the levels. Some are relatively easy to find, while others are hidden in strange orientations that make it difficult to figure out how to reach them. Orientation is important because you can only collect a Kodama when you and the character are facing the same orientation.

Unfortunately, there is no counter showing how many Kodama are hidden in each stage, which makes finding all of them more difficult than it needs to be. If you do collect them all, however, the stage receives a golden icon on the stage select screen, giving you a clear indication that you have completed its collection.

You also need to find a certain number of Kodama to unlock new seasons, giving you an additional reason to explore the stages thoroughly. If you miss a Kodama and return to replay the stage, you still have to complete the entire stage for the newly collected Kodama to count. Fortunately, the exit is already open when replaying a completed stage, so you do not have to repeat all the complicated steps required to remove the goo and unlock it again.

Even better news is that you gain new powers that make getting collectibles easier. I tried to find all before moving on to the next stage, and sometimes I felt like I was finding a path to them in a way that felt random, meaning I placed cubes in strange spots and used environment to climb somewhere. This was not necessary, because later you gain manual control over a cube's path and the ability to turn portals, which gives you control over orientation.