Metroidvania game with a botanical edge, along with a loopy, bewildering narrative, and a distinctive, neon maximalist look to it.
Combat's competent but fairly standard 2D slasher fare, with well-timed dodges seeing you shift through attacks and getting a chance to deliver a more powerful combo from behind your targets. On death they'll often leave behind body parts, and effective use of the full suite of attacks will often improve the quality of se spoils under the guise of perfect execution. Consuming these boost four separate stat bars that are then spent to unlock items from a skill tree.
The loop aspect is presented very early on and is most at odds with what you might be expecting; shortly after getting the double jump as your first power-up, you soon find yourself back at the start of the game, minus not only your newfound jump, but also any skills you've bought and even your weapon. If it sounds like we're straying into roguelike territory here then panic ye not; your weapon is easily enough re-acquired, and often so are your abilities. The skill tree is a little different though, as it introduces the tactical angle of collectables which can be used to lock in certain skills across loops.
These loops also allow for it toy with time as an added dimension, which is best demonstrated through this idea of botany as a mechanic. There are spots littered around where you can plant seeds, which in turn can grow large and dramatically change the layouts of the environment. Different seeds do this in different ways - some might have hostile fauna that needs dodging, whereas others might give you a platform to reach new heights - and what with the effects not being immediate, it does make the environment feel decently organic.
If the look wasn't disarming enough, trying to make sense of the story or even just reading item descriptions is plenty to convince you that abstract was definitely a goal here, with there being plenty of word soup on the menu.
Reckon I'm roughly halfway through this so far, and while I'm enjoying it and struggling less with the combat I am starting to find that some of the added repetition was perhaps not the best idea.
Oh - one thing I definitely do like is the soundtrack, which in certain places is doing a lot to evoke that excellent Disasterpeace soundtrack for Hyper Light Drifter.