Mein's Quest, purely from a gameplay perspective, starts off as a fairly typical platformer. You have your collectibles as well as a handful of secrets to find, plus one that you can't get until a later point. But as you progress through the stages, you start to see greater variety of terrain and obstacles that keeps the gameplay fresh and engaging. I don't want to spoil the stages at all, but stages 1-2 and 2-1 really stand out in this regard.

And then there's Mein himself. Mein single-handedly elevates this game with the sheer level of expressiveness, personality, charm, and character he has. Mein has so many different facial expressions and forms of body language that you can always tell what he's feeling. It makes him feel alive in a way that almost no other game I've played managed to do. The animated cutscenes are also worthy of mentioning as well, but Mein manages to make you smile all throughout the game. The amount of love and thought that went into this character is what makes this game truly special. He is the kind of character that even my parents would love, and they don't even play video games.

As for the rest of the art, I've always liked the fact that the game's direction feels unique to the game itself. But what has stood out to me more over time is that the lack of hue shifting, lower level of contrast and somewhat drab color choices make some of the artwork feel flat. This is more apparent in the earlier parts of the game (which has older artwork), and while this has been addressed on the characters the rest of the game would really benefit.

One of the only negatives that stood out to me are the controls - this is something that I've had a chance to speak to the developer about, and from my experience playing on the keyboard the controls still feel rather awkward and uncomfortable. I found myself pressing the wrong key by accident many times, and some of this had to do with the way my hand had to contort to hit the right key. I think Mein Quest would really benefit from key bindings that would allow the player to get the best configuration possible. This game can also be played with a controller if you have one, and from what I understand the controls were designed more with controllers in mind.

The enemies and bosses all have the same kind of charm and personality that infuses every corner of this game. I would like to see some more varied enemy behaviors and upgrades/abilities for Mein, but I am confident that this will be naturally addressed over the course of development.

I personally didn't find the music anything to write home about. Considering how much this game has going for it in terms of its character and art direction, I *really* think that this is something that should be addressed in the future; the Kirby games are a huge influence on Mein's Quest and the music is such an important part of the appeal! But I'm a composer myself and tend to be pretty harsh on critiquing music, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

My final verdict is that while the game is still clearly in the early stages of development, it displays such an incredible amount of promise and potential. I have been following its development for a while now and continue to do so with great interest. There are some details to be worked out and refined, but none of these truly ruin the experience. The release of the second demo only reinforced my perception that Mein's Quest is a game worth playing and following.