Tall Trails
Itch.io but purchasable on Steam
Tall Trails describes itself a cozy exploration game. In it you're a golem who has no purpose, so you explore a series of islands looking for clay so you can unlock areas to eventually find said purpose. Along the way you'll meet other golems, have conversations, and find them presents. There is no combat or even player death, so exploration is the primary gameplay focus.
And the exploration is just about perfect. Your character has a boot on their back that they can stuff with 3 items, which can then be fired out to shoot you up in the air. On the first island you have access to rocks and shells, things that can boost you up a bit, but ultimately can't explore much. However, on each subsequent island there are special passive objects that give you special abilities. There are frogs which help you jump higher, hot peppers which make you boot act as a jet pack, and maple keys that make you float slowly to the ground.
Each of these only appear on their particular island, and you can't bring them to other islands, which means each land is specially designed for the unique tool. The level with the peppers has a lot of verticality, so they help you get up slopes faster, and the level with the maple keys has large gaps you can now float over. It's really excellent design and after each island I was excited to get to the next to see what new ability I'd have access to.
There's also a Breath of the Wild-style stamina wheel that limits how far you can climb and run, but upgradable badges help you manage that stamina. There is some excellent verticality in the levels, and nothing is too difficult. Each island has clay to find, a flag to raise, other golems to talk to, and pinwheels to spin. The nice thing is that each one takes around 10 minutes to 100%, which means this games works great for short play bursts.
Overall the game took about 4 hours for me to complete, but the New Game+ mode creates random islands for you to explore, effectively making the game endless. And players are already finding fun ways to "break" the game (YT Shorts).
Overall I had a lot of fun with this game. I played it primarily on the Steam Deck, which is the perfect system imo because the game isn't a resource hog and is suited for quick bursts of play. I highly recommend it!