Variety and subtlety in all facets of its design. For a solo dev, it's an extraordinary achievement and comparable to the best in the genre. If you can forgive its faults, you'll be in seventh heaven.

FULL CONTACT - on the Amiga?

Honestly? I thought this was simply superb.

I'm so used to most all Playdead-esque sidescroller games showing their more budget nature at the seams that this solo developer title just left me impressed. Like Toby: The Secret Mine, Albert and Otto, Selma and the Wisp, etc, this ain't.

As I've already just flirted with, it would be easy to label this into submission. It's a cyberpunk Limbo/Inside. It's a linear sidescroller puzzler heavy on vistas and wordless background storytelling. You're either already very in or out.

BUT, it's simply the sheer variety - the spice of life - of the gameplay that keeps this engaging for nigh on all of its lengthy playtime. And it IS pleasantly long.

Starting as a literal Ryle's 'ghost in the machine' in the static of a TV, you're soon zooming down power lines with abandon as some abstracted spark of data consciousness; you're shoving paint cans onto an elevator as a remote control car from a child's bedroom; you're using other robots to test a vaporising force field as a magnet-o-sphere; you're pinpoint shooting other bots and shoving down walls as a heavy-duty attack droid; you're navigating a maze whilst being hunted as a hover drone; you're even one of the flesh bags we're all intimately familiar with, hiding in lockers and dodging spotlights. 7th Sector's greatest strength is in its steadfast refusal to retread any ground. Constantly swapping bodies, areas, and activities before you can catch your breath, it feels beyond an achievement over its lengthy duration. That said, then, if only being relegated to a spark on a wire constituted slightly less of the experience. Whilst there are really great puzzles contained in these sections, keyboard control feels overly fussy about input when travelling up and down wires and overall they felt like 7th Sector's more restricted, less exciting moments. This is mainly an issue with the intro, for which the game simply takes too long to show that it expands as much as it does.

This is why I don't use multiple monitors.

I definitely felt a certain affinity for the puzzles. Not only were they well-varied, but also possessed a welcome degree of challenge, inventiveness and subtlety. It doesn't lean too heavily on physics-based puzzling and nothing is overly telegraphed. It leaves you to figure out how to fly the drone efficiently. It has what can be initially intimidatingly realistic terminals full of red herrings to make sense of. It lets you infer your location inside a maze instead of pinpointing you. Even with the simplest tricks up its sleeve, its various minigame-like puzzles, it at least sidesteps what could have been standardised hacking game drudgery by showing a different hand every time. The one repeat puzzles for which this doesn't apply are the various permutations of maths challenges. Of which, I'm only critical because they lack the firmer world grounding and sheer inventiveness of the rest of the package. Yes, I know algebra.

A potential source of ranklement, are moments suffering from Limbo-syndrome and then dialled to eleven at that (the sadists!). Insta deaths often resulting from uncompromising timing windows are used not only to punish failure, but many times also to signal that there's a puzzle to solve or obstacle to avoid in the first place! The most explicit example of this is a 'sound trap' that kills you without warning and likely numerous times after as you feel out how exactly its bypassed. I'm neutral on the matter. To its credit, checkpoints are generous and loading times near non-existent, so it generates a Trials-like carelessness towards death that rubs away frustration. Like Limbo, it also helps cultivate a welcome danger to the world. You can tell from some of the more grisly details that it's something the dev truly delighted in!

What a serene child's sleeping environment... INDUSTRIAL WIRE.

Not enough can be said about the presentation. In bland terms, the fidelity and lighting outdo most triple A indie releases. I simply love the different flavours of environment - from the moody interiors and neon dripped urban rooftops at night, the train filled with human presence and the lifeless manufacturing underbelly below, and the sandy city outskirts in the day. Use of foreground and background objects is used to astonishing effect and gives the world a great sense of depth - to the point that you sometimes wonder why you can't just go around obstacles! The soundtrack is slightly less remarkable sci-fi fare, but is understated in a way that befits long puzzle sessions and sets the appropriate oppressive, funereal ambience for a futuristic authoritarian state.

The game is rarely visually static - stealing your eye's attention with many a background scene - be it the silhouette of a couple reassuring one another in an embrace, a protest being quashed or a robot inspecting its own arm introspectively. Given that the plot is communicated largely without any text or voice present at all, 7th Sector succeeds in making it both comprehensible and evocative. I particularly appreciate the subtle touch taken with the game's endings - where instead of presenting tired forks in the road for the player to take, the outcomes are determined by factors the player couldn't anticipate. If anything is emblematic of 7th Sector's entire interesting philosophy in game design, it's surely this.

Perhaps the biggest slight I can actually throw at the game is that the English translation isn't quite up to snuff. Not a damning criticism at all. Examples like 'for you go, get lost by any method' and 'how many spot are free' are clearly still intelligible. I understand translations can be a costly task, so I don't begrudge this not being a perfect job. The light touch in terms of text and voice throughout means this isn't often exposed regardless, so it shouldn't put anyone off!

Getting close to Sauron's tower.

7th Sector as a sidescroller is quite recognisable, but it's its employment of variety and subtlety in all facets of its design that make it a welcome surprise. Assuming this is (primarily) the work of a single developer it's simply an extraordinary achievement and easily comparable to the best in the genre. If you're willing to weather frustrations of precise timing windows and an imperfect English translation, you'll be in seventh heaven.