This is a charming and enjoyable little game (or “demo”, as it’s billed). Its concept is ingenious, and the presentation is endearing. You are the in-game tutorial for an adventurer character, telling them where to walk and what buttons to press to pass obstacles and overcome enemies.

It’s let down a little by being quite unintuitive—or at least, relying on the player being familiar with the sort of games (and controls) on which it’s based. This game about giving tutorials, itself needs a tutorial! I didn’t even get what the yellow “press button” icon was at first (I thought it was “stand here”, which is redundant with just clicking on a spot), and I didn’t understand its purpose until I encountered the purple “hold button” icon. (“Well of course you press the button. What else are you going to do?”)

There’s also quite a bit of reliance on backtracking to pick up and reuse your “resources”, the button icons. There’s only one or two points where the lack of resources is itself the puzzle, needing you to shuffle pieces between rooms in the right order, so for the most part it just adds time and tedium to the game. It also discourages trial-and-error as a means to overcome the lack of information.

But it’s still a laudable achievement, all the more so for being created in a month. I hope being billed as a “demo” means there’s a full version to come some time in the future!