Metamorphosis by Ovid Works.
If you ask the average person about Franz Kafka, they might mention something about a man who turns into a bug, if they know the name at all. So it's no surprise that whenever something draws inspiration from him, it's normally a reference to the plot of the Metamorphosis, the story about Gregor Samsa, who wakes up as a man-sized bug for no apparent reason. However, this game uses that as a jumping off point to incorporate Kafka's other notable works, such as The Trial and The Castle.
The game begins with a surreal nightmarish sequence where Gregor, the PC, wakes up in an unfamiliar room and trying to leave for work, finds himself traversing a series of increasingly bizarre rooms and hallways, unaware he's slowly getting smaller and turning into a bug. A series of cryptic notes points him towards THE TOWER, where he can possibly become human again, and the rest of the game involves a journey across an increasingly weird and unhinged series of environments in the apartment building but also a fantastical bug society hidden in the walls and floors. In the meantime, Gregors journey as a bug has him bear witness to a parallel story of Joseph K, Gregors friend, who is under arrest for an unspecified and unknown crime, which is pulled straight from The Trial. Gregor can't directly interact with this due to the scale(though there are some things he can influence), and Joseph never notices the now insectoid Gregor. What it does play out as is Gregor traverse a room where everything(including the humans) are enormous in comparison and that plot is unfolding as a form of background narration to accompany the platforming and traversal.
Gameplay is pretty basic. As a bug you can climb, jump and move and occasionally make other things move by standing on them. There are sticky substances you can walk through and gain a limited supply of....stickiness that can be used to climb vertical surfaces, but the pools you walk through are infinite and it's easy enough to go to the nearest source if you run out. A vast majority of the challenge involves figuring out where to go and how to get there, but the game does have a built in "Map" that gives a birds eye view of the current area and gives you your current objective and where to go(you'll sometimes see glowing symbols to help as well). The game is actually fairly linear so it's hard to get lost for too long and you can generally only move forward, which avoids tedious long backtracking.
Ironically, the general plot of Gregor's journey to the tower involves him getting shuffled through a bunch of goals(short term goals) given to him by other bugs(who are implied to have also been human as well), of "Chain of deals" kind, where Bug A want you to do Action B for him you need something from Location C first. It's annoying but at the same time the linearity of the game makes it a lot less annoying then it could be, because you'll always end up where you need to go next by following the path. The obnoxious bureaucracy does feel fitting thematic because Kafka's works often entail meaningless red tape that serves no real purpose but you have to do it because that's all part of a vast machine that runs of its own accord(fittingly you'll have to weave your way through laybtihs of pipes and valves and wires and such along the way). You can easily die, but sometimes deaths are basically "You fell into an area you wouldn't be able to get out of" and then you're instantly taken back to the last checkpoint(and these are fairly reasonably spaced and autosaved).
The atmosphere is appropriately surreal, much like the mans writing, though the bugs you meet only kind of work in this regard. As mentioned before, it's implied they were all human like yourself once and everyone knows of the tower but everyone else has either given up trying to get there or has become stuck along their journey, so you have pockets of a bug society, such a town built around a film projector out of discarding cans and buildings made of pieces of scrap wood with creepy soviet-eqse propaganda films shown on a regular basis, posters with art deco bug people imploring "DUTY" and a 1930's style nightclub built into a gramophone(An old-timey record player). However, beyond that, nobody really seems to care much about their seemingly permanent transformation, so then you have the weirdness of being solicited by bug prostitutes(wierd and disturbing, because they're trying to use the sexy body language on you, despite the whole insect thing) and a mad preacher who has a region for every type of insect(though all the ones in the game look pretty similar). I also appreciated how Gregors voice starts as normal human, gets more and more creepy as he becomes a bug and eventually turns into a gutteral incomprehensible alien bug talk the rest speak.
In the end, the whole thing kind of does come together in a way that feels appropriate if not particularly happy. The devs appreciation of the subject matter is on display here(though it feels like knowledge of The Trial helps a bit understanding what's going on), with some nods to the banality of evil and dehumanization in an industrialized society. It's also just about 3 hours long, so it doesn't overstay it's welcome. However, how much someone actually likes it will depend a lot on two things. Are you interested in playing a 3d surreal platformer where you're an insect and do you appreciate Kafka(or think you would)? Because if you do, this game would probably work for you. If only one or neither of these are true, you'll likely want to give it a pass.
