The intro level sees you working your way through your burning village, and at the end you find your dying "loved one". She gives you a necklace and tells you to take it into the woods. There you meet Thor who tells you to climb a mountain. The story takes a bit of a twist at the end, so you think it's about to end but then there's another section.
The backgrounds can look very picturesque but the game can look a bit on the dark side which seems a typical feature of games developed with the Unreal Engine. The truly dark areas like caves often rely on silhouettes which seems influenced by Limbo. The light puzzles and platforming is probably also influenced by Limbo.
There's some box pushing to reach higher ledges, but sometimes surfaces are climbable. These surfaces aren't very distinct because some are rocky, some have vines, but then similar-looking walls might not even be climbable. In the icy region, you are climbing rocks that are covered in ice - which definitely don't look climbable.
Your character has slow, heavy movement, but there is a run button and your character can roll; so has some degree of agility. Most of the time you run to the right, but when you are supposed to backtrack it can be unclear and a bit confusing. There's a few areas where you are basically in a multi-floor cave and have to find 3-5 pillars to open a door. These are sometimes slightly hidden; for example - you can tell a floor will crumble so you quickly run over it, but you are actually supposed to fall down because there is a pillar there. It's not the only occurrence of that either.
Enemies are sometimes initially positioned in the background or foreground and move to engage if they spot you. Some sections can be bypassed with stealth. Some sections allow you to roll past enemies then run away, although this can count against you if it triggers a cutscene and the enemy catches you up; you will be frozen in place whilst the cutscene plays so will die from a few hits. I died this way more than a few times.
You can pick up weapons and shields that enemies drop although picking up items can be a pain when they are bunched together. I often swapped out my weapon when I actually wanted to take the shield. Shields quickly break so you will be constantly picking them up. You generally keep the same weapon, although you can use them as ranged weapons by throwing them. When you obtain a bow, this is also a very useful ranged weapon, and arrows can be retrieved from the floor or fallen enemies. The combat is pretty basic and it would have been nice to be able to counter instead of just blocking. You later get a few magic upgrades to infuse your weapons with fire or electricity.
Another magic ability is to boost your speed which is vital to make some leaps. Near the end of the game you get a stomp which I think is only used twice.
Most bosses seem to require taking down with the bow because the combination of your attack and recovery, and their attack and recovery means they will attack by the time you turn around after dodging; so struggle to get a clean hit with your melee weapon.
Many reviews I see make a big fuss about the fact it was made by one developer, but I think it really shows with the lack of polish across the game. The UI looks very basic like the kind you put together after following a programming tutorial, so the checkpoints are just a simple particle system, and the health bars are just basic thin rectangles. I came across a bug where a door wouldn't open and had to reload. There were a few times where if you backtrack after dying, you will see enemies you have killed but sometimes they will be inactive. When I moved further back it tried to trigger a cutscene but I had killed the enemy it was supposed to move so it was basically "soft locked". I saw plenty of instances of enemies that were stuck, and I encountered temporarily unresponsive controls which is infuriating in combat or platforming.
It took me just under 3 hours but it can be completed quicker depending on how often you encounter bugs that lead to cheap deaths or cause you to get stuck.