Between Environmental Station Alpha and Cruelty Squad I've decided my new favourite micro-genre is "games that wait until you've reached the first ending to confirm you're sufficiently invested in them to start willingly engaging in some real cryptic puzzle-box bullshit"
I spent like five hours today in ESA staring at the map screen, translating messages, and pitching outlandish theories to two much more knowledgeable friends in the Discord call, who somehow managed to avoid letting it slip whenever I managed to board the correct train of thought. This is such a special experience.
And the thing is, if the game was just this, I probably would never have played it! The fact that you can just play it as a nice little metroidvania, with little hints of strangeness on the periphery, makes it so much more compelling when the strangeness takes over. You think that you have defeated the world when you can traverse it with ease, when its enemies present no threat—but the world isn't defeated until it has surrendered its secrets. And that's a much harder egg to crack.
