ITTA

So I got it. And thus far I'm not at all disappointed. I usually don't go for boss rush type games, but the Hyper Light Drifter style pixel graphics and exploring I'm a complete sucker for. Plus, the world isn't empty with the exception of the bosses. You do meet interesting characters who'll add to story. A lot of care has seemed to go into all of it. But it has a bit of a dark side to it too. I don't want to spoil it for anyone though. I'm porbably about a third of the way through. The bullet hell bosses give a good challenge, but nothing so far that feels impossible or too much. So if you like boss rush, exploring/adventure, good narrative, HLD type graphics... Then you should pick this up! I got it on sale, but I would be down to buy it at full price.

I did not think that I would get as sucked into this as I did. Expecting to just pass some time with a janky indie shooter with a cat spirit and a little girl, I instead found myself more or less playing on until the end. It took me about 3 hours 20 minutes but did not feel too short. I got the same feeling finishing it that I get watching a very good movie. Some things were frustrating or a bit unpolished but none of them were game breaking. Examples: my controller refused to work with it, except for aiming and the pause button; entering some doors, the player character would spawn on the same door and instantly go back outside; once I got stuck in some textures and had to load the most recent autosave (it saves very often though). A few small annoyances like that. Difficult to describe the game more closely. Some kind of bizarre fever dream open world boss rush game, with floating cat spirits as loot. To heal, kill some little cute shadow trolls, watch tv with your cat or cuddle with sheep. I can see how I would not enjoy this if I had my defenses up. Starting out, I thought ey, this is stupid, when little Itta seemed barely upset about finding her dead family members. Shortly after, I got stuck in between some bushes and had to reload. Encountered a lot of weird NPCs and maybe if I had had a bad day I'd have said this game tries too hard to be weird. But continuing playing, I just found myself completely sucked in. Really recommend this game to anyone who just wants a fun, weird, challenging, mysterious, intense little game with great music.

If you're looking for a game that isn't too long or just long at all but also has some depth to the gameplay and story than I would highly recommend ITTA. The game is a bullet hell boss rush where you're trying to escape the garden and to do that you have to kill 10 bosses to open the voidmaker and escape, the bosses are fun with creative designs along with some references to other media and the patterns are fun to learn if you're facing a challenging foe but that won't always happen because some of the bosses can be easy and that is assisted by the upgrades which make the game a bit too easy at times but you always have to keep your guard up because it's still a bullet hell, that’s not to say that there’re not any challenging bosses though because there are some bosses that were a delight to fight. The story is told very effectively through traditional dialogue and world building which is the aspect that it prevails in with so many things that make you wonder what happened until you figure out what happened. And the story is told very nicely with dialogue that takes mind to the characters age so it is simple in that sense but it has an interesting start with mystery and intriguing characters that have their own burdens in the world that you help indirectly along with a solemn yet satisfying ending. Overall, this is a very good short and sweet game with fun gameplay and great writing, if you have 3 hours to spare and you want something in that time range with a great balance between the story and gameplay I highly recommend ITTA.