So far I've spent the most time with (descending order):
- Barbuta
- Mortol
- Bug Hunter
Yes I'm a big idiot playing the games in chronological order.
I was surprised how much time and effort I sunk into Barbuta, my cryptic first impression of the whole collection. It's really clunky, but after muddling through it for a while I didn't really find it an issue anymore. I was too impatient to not look up help when I was getting really stuck, and unfortunately it's lost some of the appeal in my doing so, but there's 50 of these things, so I just abandoned that melancholy to play another one. Still had a great time with it and I'm glad I didn't toss it aside immediately.
Mortol is really interesting. I've never played Lemmings, but I think this probably has a lot in common? You send a bunch of guys to their doom by turning them into rocks, arrows, or just blowing them up, and each transformation is useful in ways that don't silo their mechanics off from one another. There's a decent chunk of AH-HA moments even in the first couple levels (which I haven't moved past because I got caught up in optimizing the number of guys I could keep between levels). I appreciate that you don't have to do this in order, if you even choose to do that early on. I feel like this one is going to be an early favorite for me.
Magic Garden feels like some sicko shit (complimentary). Cool fusion of Snake and Pacman and uh...delivery mechanisms(?) with a tiny board and quickly ballooning problems. Not big into arcade games, but the fairly simple mechanics charmed me and kept me playing longer than I thought I would.
I'm tired, so no more for now, but game good