Recent reviews by Waxis

If I had a Nickel for every 10/10 masterpiece puzzle game you could play ilomilo shuffle in as a minigame, I'd have two nickels

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is half Resident-Evil style fixed-camera puzzle horror, and half brilliantly funny and intricate mystery. This is the most I've ever had to take notes to complete a videogame. Despite this fact, Lorelei is digestible, fun to think about, tightly designed, and ridiculously clever.

Those familiar with other Knowledge games like Fez, Outer Wilds, or TUNIC will find another island here - yet another game you can only play for the first time once.

Void Stranger is, FIRST AND FOREMOST, a hard puzzle game, as much about the mechanical process of solving its puzzles as it is about the memory of the secrets you find there.
However, you do not have to be "good" at puzzle games to reach the credits. Void Stranger is more a test of observation, memory, and willingness to experiment than a test of your ability to solve sokoban puzzles.

Completing it requires persistence, but in return Void Stranger will peel back its layers and reveal one of the best blends of breadcrumb narrative and metatextual play experience the genre of "puzzle game" has to offer.

A player that doesn't make any mistakes can reach the credits their first try in 6-ish hours. I have 70+ hours in Void Stranger, not just because I'm imperfect, but because diving back in and doing it better and better, discovering new things, until you can be better than perfect, is the whole appeal.
Some reviews mention that the game "resets you to the beginning upon losing all your lives" - this penalty is entirely optional. You can beat all of the puzzles in the main game without accepting this penalty even once.

Players who hate sokoban games, or find themselves giving up and looking up a guide for Zelda dungeons, probably won't like Void Stranger. Those with zero patience that want a puzzle game you can beat in 6 hours are better served elsewhere.

For everyone else, you'll get out of Void Stranger what you put into it, so invest your whole heart and you will be quite pleased.

If you do not find the appearance of Peter Shorts funnier than anything else you've seen in the past eight months, then skip this one.

The platforming is floaty, the level and game design is archaic and player-unfriendly, its gameplay leaves a bad first impression and it does not improve.

What clinched it for me into returning this game was a segment involving explosive, tiny rockets you're meant to use as platforms, that put the player into an air hitstun state when they explode. The final room is full of enemies, instant-death spikes, and then, you have to hoof it all the way back through the area to get back to the save point - and if you get hit by the missiles, you get knocked into the spikes, so you have to do it all over. All your collectibles, enemies, everything gets reset and you have to do it again.

We left this kind of primitive dinosaur type game design back in the 80's. After a few too many times being kicked in the nuts, I don't think it's funny any more.