MO:Astray

I picked up MO:Astray because of its positive reviews, because it seemed there had been a lot of effort put into crafting the levels, with the pixel art being both beautiful and quite varied, and the environments looking like they were telling some interesting story. Also because I recognized the publisher as having published some of my favorite mobile games. Even though those were rhythm games, and I don't play many mobile games in general. While those assumptions were correct, there were some caveats. But first, let me explain the game.

MO:Astray is an action and puzzle platformer, with a strong emphasis on the story. You play as a little blob who can jump in any direction, stick onto any surface, and latch onto the heads of enemies to control them and read their thoughts. The thought reading is just for the purpose of storytelling, and is the main method of explaining the lore, allowing you to skip it if you so desire. You will also get some other abilities later on, such as briefly stopping in mid-air and doing another omnidirectional jump from there. I would say that there is a lot of inspiration taken from Ori, both in terms of how some of the story is told, as well as much of the platforming. The biggest difference would be that this is not a metroidvania, and there's no real combat to speak of. Personally, I actually prefer this pure focus on platforming and puzzles, and I would say MO:Astray can definitely stand up to Ori, even if they feel very similar.

I'm a big fan of storytelling in games that is not in your face and not forcing you to pay attention to it. I think the story, or perhaps rather the lore, of MO:Astray can be quite interesting to follow along and discover, but wasn't quite enough to grip me. For people who care more about storytelling though, it's probably worth experiencing. Similarly, the art and many of the backgrounds are very beautifully drawn, even if I feel the animations could be a bit better.
Finally, the platforming, my only complaint is the focus on mobile screens and controllers. I think it would have taken but an hour or two of development time to add a better control scheme for the mouse, but as it stands, you're forced to drag your mouse every time you wish to make a jump, whereas a single click while showing the cursor would have been much more natural. Other than that, the platforming was quite fluid and had a reasonable amount of skill expression without being frustrating for someone like me, who's only average at this.

Ultimately, would I recommend MO:Astray? Kind of. If you are a fan of either Ori game, or enjoy other non-combat-focused platformers, then MO:Astray is definitely one of the better ones. The problem for me is that I've never enjoyed those kinds of games, and I know that's just a personal problem. So therefore, I would have to give this a partial recommendation, because while I can appreciate and recognize this as being a good game, I still didn't quite like it myself.