Sometimes a puzzler's really unique. Sometimes it's got a unique weapon, like a portal gun, or a mechanic that's never been used before, something going for it that is truly novel. But a puzzle game doesn't need any of that to be great. It can do the same old "put block on switch" and "redirect laser beam" kinda puzzles that have been done by countless other puzzle games. All it takes for a puzzle game to be good is interesting, elegantly designed puzzles.

If the puzzles are good, then the puzzle game is good. And tetrobot has more than its fair share of excellent puzzles.

You play as psychobot, a microscopic robot sent into the innards of larger robots in order to repair their systems. You do this by picking up blocks and shooting out blocks, along with a few other basic mechanics that can be put together in surprisingly complex ways. Each level has 3 puzzle pieces that you can collect, resulting in some interconnectedness between the puzzles in a level. For example, you might figure out how to collect one of the puzzle pieces, but if you had to destroy or leave behind all of your blocks to do it, then you may not have what you need to collect one of the other pieces. Thus, in order to collect them all, you will need to go back and find a more optimal solution to the first puzzle, one that will allow you to bring the necessary blocks on to the next puzzle and obtain its puzzle piece.

The game is fantastic -- or it would be, if only it weren't for the bugs. None of them are fatal or completely prevent progress, but they come up often enough to be irritating. The most frequent one is a bug with the undo feature. If you toss a block in a way that causes it to be destroyed, then hit undo, often the game won't seem to be in a consistent state regarding whether or not the block actually exists. If you try to shoot the block out again after that, psychobot will do the block shooting animation, but nothing will come out. If you try to move after that, psychobot will just stop as if it's crashed into something.

I've had other occasional bugs with the physics, at least a couple of which outright broke puzzles and forced me to redo the level. Sometimes there are undo bugs that let you unintentionally cheat a puzzle, as well.

I don't know if it's just an issue with the GOG version, though I doubt it. Judging from the complaints about bugs on GOG reviews, at least I know that it's not just me.

It's a shame. I'd like to be able to recommend it, but I just can't.