playing northern journey again and it's still so fucking good. giant lush landscapes to climb and explore, 3 dozen kinds of weird wiggly bugs to pelt with a sling and the most recent thing I learned that the game doesn't even have a fucking lighting engine. it's set to fullbright and all the shadows and dark areas you encounter are just painted dark textures. you get a lightsource for Dark areas and even then it's used very sparingly.
the dev sat down with incredibly powerful modern gamemaking tools with no prior experience nodded and said "okay I'll do it like This" and proceed to make what was the equivalent of taking an IKEA flatpack bookcase and hammer it into a full dining room table and chairs. Northern Journey is so fucking big for a game where you move at Quake running speeds and somehow it despite it's length and simple combat loop where 90% of the time you are kiting a bug while slinging rocks and arrows it just continues to be so engaging.