I was hesitant to buy this game at first, not really sure if it was going to be worth the 20 USD price tag. Man, I'm beating myself up over not buying it sooner. I absolutely love this game. A fun metroidvania with a tasteful color palette, unique enemies that move and attack in interesting ways, well-written dialogue, a rich backstory, incredible musical scores, and killer bosses. It’s just neat.

That said, I wouldn't expect everyone to love it. The gameplay is thoroughly focused on the main character’s elastic grappling hook, and you spend most of the game navigating some surprisingly tough platforming challenges. Once you start getting the hang of the hook it feels so good to fling yourself through mazes of spikes and platforms and poisonous goop. The central mechanic has so much depth, it’s not necessary to have a bunch of movement upgrades, so there aren’t many. Instead, you mostly collect equippable perks to customize your play style, a handful of guns, and the usual health and firepower upgrades.

Some sections include combat arenas that have the player confined in a room and taking on some enemies before being allowed to progress. It's not *normally* my cup of tea, but thanks to the grapple and the wide variety of enemy behaviors, they never get boring. Movement is way more vertical than most games in this genre, and most of your guns have limited range, so you have a lot of space to fling yourself to safety, but you still have to charge back in to return fire.

I found myself really looking forward to the boss fights. A lot of them are tense cat-and-mouse chases in huge, complex arenas, completely different from the usual metroidvania dodge-attack-dodge-attack dynamic.

Rusted Moss uses an old-fashioned checkpoint system and the map is absolutely massive, but there are so many save points and healing stations, it would be hard to lose more than about a minute of progress. You’re constantly opening up shortcuts and fast travel hubs. Combined with the sheer fun of moving around, it’s got some of the best backtracking and exploring I’ve experienced.

I'd rather not comment on the writing and story, since I feel it is best experienced through how the game presents it. I will say that I absolutely LOVED the story. I went into the game expecting to be mostly focused on the gameplay, which I was. However, the story was much more engaging than I had originally expected. You have to piece together the history behind what is happening, through dialogue, lore drops, and the environment itself. It’s both complicated and subtle.

The environments in this game also look amazing. It's not exactly anything new, but I just love the way that everything looks. The visuals are also tied brilliantly together by the music that plays in each area and boss fight.

Rusted Moss as of now has to be my absolute favorite game of the year so far. If you even think that you'd like it just a little bit, give it a shot.