nearly 11 hours of playtime, and more besides spent Considering. Lady Gray "the Destroyer" Voidstranger is a BADASS and a PROFESSIONAL and fucking with her is a one way ticket aboard the Pain Train she's great

this game is so so fucking good so far, y'all. if you're willing to play by its expectations - if you're willing to experiment, and make silly or unwise choices, and accept the consequences, and take some notes, and play trial and error and eat shit a good few times and sometimes just throw yourself back to the start of the game and go back through puzzles you've seen before with newly-gained knowledge - you'll find a game so absolutely dense with Stuff to do and learn. and it gets both easier and more interesting as you go out and experiment and discover its hidden mechanics and little tricks for yourself

you'll almost definitely have to replay puzzles you've played before in the course of your adventuring a decent few times, but a lot of the time you'll have some new know-how to wield to your advantage in finding secrets and shortcuts that make future trips a ton shorter, or at least you'll simply be good enough at getting to the stairs and maybe grabbing a tasty tasty snack along the way that it'll be over fast enough to not be much of a bother for you.

if all this sounds like it might be your thing? as far in as i am at least, i am absolutely loving void stranger and would recommend it to you. it can be for specific tastes, but those very well may be yours. (doubly recommended if you played and loved ZeroRanger and didn't mind that game's risk of material-progress-loss. if you've got that taste of blood in your mouth... well, VS is not a shmup i think? i am personally suspecting this game may in fact be everything. i wouldn't be surprised. none the less i feel like it has that same throw-yourself-at-the-wall-and-get-up-stronger about it.)