'I do think Blow misunderstood what the game is about': Derelict Star made Jonathan Blow rage quit, but it's the most fascinating indie platformer I've played for years

A couple of weeks ago on X, someone reposted Braid and The Witness creator Jonathan Blow into my feed. He was sounding off about a new indie action-platformer called Derelict Star that I hadn't heard of, but which has quietly gained an audience among movement platformer enthusiasts since its release in early April.

Blow was not impressed.

"The intro level made me rage quit, unfortunately," he wrote, before veering into sarcasm. "'Haha here are a bunch of jumps that are hard in an uninteresting way like every other game, but we are going to give you controls that are clunkier than any other game, and we won't polish them…'"

"No time for that," he added. "If there is something more interesting about the game it should not be gated behind stuff like this."

My interest was piqued, mostly because I know Jonathan Blow likes platformers. He's made one after all. I once watched him play and commentate on the design of 1001 Spikes. What kind of platformer could get his...