Recent reviews by IATGOF

Good game. It's a bit on the slow side for me, barely pushing 1 sector per day, which doesn't make much of a difference in gameplay (I'm at S49 as I write this). It reminds me a bit of Realm Grinder in that regard, but USI at least doesn't require a guide to progress. I appreciate the amount of systems available and the automation tools that you get along the way. The UI is nothing special but does its job, and the animation on the left gives the game some charm.
It's free and worth your time

This game could have been good, but once again Ubisoft have released their game without testing any feature whatsoever.
- the Ubisoft overlay gets stuck every single time
- the Ubisoft notifications stay forever
- the anticheat falsely detects apps as cheats and force you to restart the game
- remapped buttons conflicts with UI controls all the time
- you can't unbind keys, only swap 2 buttons
- the game takes 30 seconds to load before loading your audio settings to it's at full volume the whole time
- the vehicle camera settings are not saved, you have to redo them every time
- the animation when you start a playlist and get your reward at the end are both copy/pasted for all events and unskippable
- Dialogue are so unbearably bad I've set the voice volume to 0 during my first session
and many, many more issues and obvious lack of QoL

Fantastic game, with an unexpected story/progression. Play it blind

Gorgeous game that is a joy to explore. The survival part adds to the experience and scary nature, but where the game really shines is when you start to discover the mysteries of the planet and try to piece everything together. It's sometimes unclear what to do or where to go next, but thankfully the map is dense will stuff to see and discover, so you never feel like you wasted your time going in a random direction.

Better than the first game in every way. It's gorgeous, easy to play, and very satisfying. Despite being in early access, it's well polished and totally playable right now.

The game couldn't grab me. It's very repetitive, with many islands being trivial or something you've already solved several times before. I thought the open world design would be cool, but it's frustrating to navigate once you start wondering if an island you see is even reachable from where you are, or if it's impossible and you're expected to go somewhere else. There's no obvious path to follow or anything to tie the experience together, you just randomly explore but aren't rewarded with anything special (the first few exhibitions are fun but it's the same joke every time).
Play Cosmic Express (from the same dev) instead.

Cute and chill game. It's quite short (about 5 hours to beat), and I wished there was a bit more content. Worth picking up on sale.
Works fine on Steam Deck

The gameplay is extremely simple, you just draw a single rail. However, the game is surprisingly challenging. I've had many moments when I thought "this level is impossible, I've tried everything", only for it to finally click.
At some point, levels becomes to complex to figure the whole solution in your head and you have to try something, fail, and try again. At the very end (Nova 7's), it becomes more frustrating than fun in my opinion, but Cosmic Express is still very much worth it if you're into hard puzzle games.

I just wished the game was more optimized for controllers & Steam Deck. It's playable, but a few tweaks could have gone a long way.

Animal well is an amazing experience.
It took me about an hour before I really got into it, and then I got obsessed with the game up until about 90% of the eggs. It felt great to finally figure out a puzzle, unlock a new area of the map, or figure out the use of one of the tools you get.
After a while though, it becomes a game of combing the map for every little detail that you might have missed, pixels that can be interacted with if you have the right tool, and areas that require that you've discovered an unintuitive mechanic of the game.
Then there's the next level of secrets to discover, which are obscure and more meant to be solved as a community. Sometimes it's hard near the "end" of the game to know if a puzzle hides an egg or is literally unsolvable by yourself. But that's alright, you can just stop playing whenever it stops being fun, and for me it was after getting all the eggs.

Animal Well is one of those games that I know I'll still think about several years from now, and is definitely something worth your time.

Similar to the first Hades, with enough changes to make you want to do it all over again. While it's clear that the game isn't finished and it can feel like it's missing polish and balance, it's very fun to play and explore right now.
I wanted more of Hades and that's what I got. Looking forward to seeing the game evolved during EA.