Graphically speaking, Kinoko is a low-poly, third-person 3D game. The environment is rich and sunny and with few but very repeated elements, it becomes credible and realistic (within the chosen style, of course).

The explorable areas aren’t too wide but within that space you can roam freely. The border between the walkable terrain and the zones you aren’t allowed to go to is made by natural barriers like water, cliffs, so you follow the terrain naturally and without effort.

In the past I played a few small games with “invisible walls” to set the limit between where you could and couldn’t go and stumbling into them when you just thought “oh! Nice spot there, let’s go and see..~bonk~” was a little frustrating to say the least.

The transition between the “winter time” and the “spring time” is very smooth. Every time you complete a quest, a little white disappears and a little green pops up instead. Often you don’t even notice the little changes and you just see that everything was white and snowy in the beginning while it’s all green with flowers and high grass at the end.

There are also a number of different creatures around, from other little spirits like those with the quests that you are able to pat-pat on the head (and see a little heart on their head when you do it!) and some animals like moles and foxes, but you can’t interact with them.

Honestly I don’t know the reason for the difference.

Anyway, it’s not the point of the game, you don’t need to interact with the creatures (except for the ones you go to for the quests) so it’s not a big deal.

It would have been just a nice addition though!

Despite being so simple, I must admit I find Kinoko's design adorable. The basic head, the big eyes, the absence of mouth and nose increase their "non-human" nature and the way they touch their hat during the idle moments give them so much personality! They prove that even the smallest detail bring so much into worldbuilding!

About the mechanics I can say that on one hand they are pretty simple, as you can expect from a student project offered for free, but on the other one they can sometimes appear a little confusing.

But I’ll explain better later.

First things first: the game is divided in several different areas. To go from the previous to the following one you have to complete some simple quest: clear the snow from the trees by hitting them, melt snow piles and make flowers blooming.
The quests are the same in each area but the number of things you must find for each increases as you progress.
In the first starting area you get to know that you must lower a pillar to get forward, but it’s unclear how you’re supposed to do that.
You discover how when you complete all the quests for that area, because the pillar becomes active and you can trigger it.

The game has no dialogues, so the instructions are provided by some little and very cute critters explaining what you’re supposed to do by showing some illustrated bubbles with a simple animation.

That’s pretty much it!

Note: initially I found it very hard to discover how the trees, the piles and the flowers were. Obviously in the first area they were easy to find, but then it was a little confusing.

However, while I was checking the controller buttons in the options, I realized there was a “map” one and then, when I clicked on it…a map with the position of the objects you must interact with and the progress of your quest appeared.

(╮°-°)╮┳━━┳

( ╯°□°)╯ ┻━━┻

MY VERY BIG FAULT.

With this new and empowering arcane knowledge in my hands..I can say that doing the quests is very easy, intuitive and enjoyable.

Note 2: the game has no saving system, so keep that in mind when you start playing. If you want to see the end, don't quit it!

The only little stain to this were some bugs, glitches and lag. But I’ll talk about them in the “Performance” section.

The game is pretty short, between 15 and 30 minutes depending on how fast/straightforward you play.
Besides losing some time wandering to appreciate assets and landscapes, there is nothing useful to extend its duration.

The story, since the game is pretty casual and short, is very simple and there isn’t this much to say: you play as Kinoko, a forest spirit entrusted with making winter end and bringing the spring all over the world again.

Kinoko doesn’t have a real “soundtrack” in the strictest sense of the word. The game is very short and has no need of a full soundtrack, so a single track is more than enough.
This “single-track soundtrack” is very fresh, joyful and it fits perfectly the simple story of the game. It’s easy to feel the transition between the “silent and cold winter” to the cheerful and full of life spring.

It’s a very pleasant company while you guide Kinoko around to do the quests and this makes Kinoko a cozy game to spend 30 minutes relaxing.
I find the music so nice to be even a good background music while doing other tasks.

None - Black Screen
None - Crashes
None - Frame
None - Freezes
So-So - Glitches
So-So - Lag
None - Loading Problems

As I explained in the video, the first time I ran the game it wasn't all "rose and flowers" (like "a bed of roses"), as we say in Italian.

The game was slow and laggy, but initially I thought it was due to something regarding the optimization or maybe some temporary quirkiness of my pc.

So I didn’t bother to investigate the problem, waiting to see if it would resolve by itself.

However, I realized quickly that there was also some bugs and glitches: from being unable to interact correctly with some of the little critters, to have no answer from pushing some of the buttons on my controller, from having big lag spikes that put music in distorted loopso to -at some point- having one of the hint bubbles stuck on my screen and busy following the character everywhere.

So I decided to give it another chance and restart it.
Since the game is a short, student project, the game has no save system and I’d have to restart the gameplay as well.

Restarting it has solved all the problems and the game went perfectly smoothly.
If you stumble into problems like this, try to restart it one or more times.

If those problems hadn’t gone away and stayed no matter what I tried, then I’d have put a red couch because it wouldn’t have been possible to play it.

That’s why I put a yellow one instead, also considering that it’s a free game and, as I pointed out above, a student project.

Note: scrolling the reviews on Steam, I’ve found that some people gave a thumbs down because they were unable to play it with a keyboard or to start it due to black screen or other loading problems.
I played it only with a controller and I didn't experienced any loading issue, so I can't give any real opinion about those.

Anyway, with the issues I've personally had, after restarting everything was ok and went smoothly.
So, if you’re among those who experienced my same issues or even more than I had, please try to restart it a couple of times before going on a rage and leaving a bad review!
It's a free game and a school project, be understanding. Behind every game there are one or more dedicated people who gabe their time to create it while learning. No need to blast it.