Relicta
Main game
2.40 average rating based on 20 ratings
- Developers
- Mighty Polygon
- Publishers
- Koch Media, Ravenscourt
- Platforms
- Google Stadia, Nintendo Switch, PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S
- Genres
- Adventure, Indie, Puzzle
- Themes
- Action
- Steam
- View on Steam
Release Dates
User Stats
How Long Is Relicta?
It really wants to be Portal, and it falls well short..
Unfortunately, it doesn’t even manage to stand out particularly as its own thing. Despite its high graphical fidelity and production quality, it starts out promising but ends up falling apart about halfway through, both in terms of gameplay and story.
The game is entirely centered around grabbing blocks and putting them on buttons to get rid of various force fields blocking your way, and sometimes toggling the odd switch. There are some platforms that you can move, along with some drones that remove all special effects on all nearby blocks and charge pads, and which can carry blocks. That’s all the mechanics there is.
The story is also the problem. It starts out promisingly enough – there’s some sort of inciting incident with a weird purple crystal, you have a set of coworkers around and a daughter who is coming to the space station, etc. The problem is, this all ends up falling apart about halfway through the game. The central plot twist of the game isn’t very good and results in almost all of the characters you spent the first half of the game talking with never talking to you again throughout the rest of the game.
Overall, then, …
Unfortunately, it doesn’t even manage to stand out particularly as its own thing. Despite its high graphical fidelity and production quality, it starts out promising but ends up falling apart about halfway through, both in terms of gameplay and story.
The game is entirely centered around grabbing blocks and putting them on buttons to get rid of various force fields blocking your way, and sometimes toggling the odd switch. There are some platforms that you can move, along with some drones that remove all special effects on all nearby blocks and charge pads, and which can carry blocks. That’s all the mechanics there is.
The story is also the problem. It starts out promisingly enough – there’s some sort of inciting incident with a weird purple crystal, you have a set of coworkers around and a daughter who is coming to the space station, etc. The problem is, this all ends up falling apart about halfway through the game. The central plot twist of the game isn’t very good and results in almost all of the characters you spent the first half of the game talking with never talking to you again throughout the rest of the game.
Overall, then, the game fails to deliver in terms of story, character, or gameplay. The story doesn’t even make a ton of sense in terms of characterization, and the gameplay is too simple for a game as long as this is. Despite a potentially promising start, it just doesn’t hold up, and it never really does anything particularly good, let alone great.
Played a few levels and overall it feels unremarkable. Not that that's all bad. The puzzles seem interesting enough, although I've just had finished with what felt like the tutorial levels before going to bed early due to an annoying cold. I'm hopeful that they will develop in interesting ways.
What most concerns me, though, is the amount of dialogue and cutscenes. The quality of the dialogue is on par with the terrible voice acting, and there's just too much of it. Hey, devs, I'm not here for the generic story, I'm here for the puzzles. So you don't need to try so hard. Less is more.
Reminds of qube 1 and qube 2. the puzzles leave me thinking for a bit and are not too easy but not too hard to where you want to bash your keyboard.
I've played very little of this game but i already have an opinion, i'll edit later if i change my mind. Starting with the cons because there are a lot.
- I'm not fond of the sound so far: labs have a datacenter sound for some reason, the facility's AI that you talk to all the time sounds like it's in your head, answer timings feel wrong during conversations, the sound effect that the gloves make could have been better and there are no footstep sounds.
- Too much random unnecesary swearing, wich wouldn't be a bad thing if this were some kind of detective or crime game, but the characters are scientists in the moon and they have a heavy indian accent so it's really weird.
- Music is unremarkable, and overly dramaric at times.
- Gameplay doesn't feel original, putting cubes on big buttons on the floor is portal's trademark, instead of getting a physics defying gun you get physics defying gloves, it's just not different enough.
- There's a permanent dirty-lens effect wich i find annoying, i wondered if it was because my character is wearing a space helmet so i tried looking in a reflective surface to see my character, looked …
I've played very little of this game but i already have an opinion, i'll edit later if i change my mind. Starting with the cons because there are a lot.
- I'm not fond of the sound so far: labs have a datacenter sound for some reason, the facility's AI that you talk to all the time sounds like it's in your head, answer timings feel wrong during conversations, the sound effect that the gloves make could have been better and there are no footstep sounds.
- Too much random unnecesary swearing, wich wouldn't be a bad thing if this were some kind of detective or crime game, but the characters are scientists in the moon and they have a heavy indian accent so it's really weird.
- Music is unremarkable, and overly dramaric at times.
- Gameplay doesn't feel original, putting cubes on big buttons on the floor is portal's trademark, instead of getting a physics defying gun you get physics defying gloves, it's just not different enough.
- There's a permanent dirty-lens effect wich i find annoying, i wondered if it was because my character is wearing a space helmet so i tried looking in a reflective surface to see my character, looked at some glass in a door and, surprise surprise, the "reflection" is just a blurred photograph of a random common house, i opened the door and there was nothing similar behind it.
- The labs design feels like a child's idea of what a lab looks like, they tossed a couple of flasks filled with neon colored liquids and a microscope and that's it.
- The pause menu is as basic as it gets, reminiscent of a flash game.
- The story's excuse for why you have to solve puzzles is the worst i've heard so far.
Pros:
- Graphics are nice, if you ignore the reflections.
- Yeah, that's it
Can't comment about the story or the puzzle's quality yet because i haven't played enough for that.
I'm reconsidering if i want to finish this game, but since i have a weak spot for puzzle platformers i probably will. This weak spot for the genre is also the sole reason for me to give it 3 stars instead of two.
