I only played this because it was free and figured it would be a relaxing experience based on the title image. It started off poorly with no introduction of any kind, and no the description on the store page does not count. The first puzzles were easy mazes. Then I found the black and white puzzle door followed by the …
I only played this because it was free and figured it would be a relaxing experience based on the title image. It started off poorly with no introduction of any kind, and no the description on the store page does not count. The first puzzles were easy mazes. Then I found the black and white puzzle door followed by the series of simple tutorial puzzles that taught the rules. One thing I was impressed with was how the game never directly told the puzzle rules, instead relying on very creative simple puzzles to teach the rules. That was a much more satisfying way to learn. Then I moved to the symmetry peninsula and ran into my first troubles with the optional blank translucent panels. I eventually figured out the solution was based on the scenery in the background. I could not solve the last one though and had to look it up. Then I went into the desert. While I understood how to find the solutions by seeing the scratches on the panel, I could not figure out how to reveal the entire panels. I solved the first using trial and error but then failing the next one powered off that panel and forced me to redo the previous puzzle. This killed the game for me and was nothing short of obnoxious disrespect for my time. So fuck it, for the rest of this area (any any other area with this feature) I just looked up the solutions.
I kinda went clockwise around the island, skipping the quarry because I was not taught tetris yet. At this point I gave each puzzle a few minutes and attempts before looking up the answers; some I solved on my own and some I did not. But when I did look up the solutions I made sure to understand how they were derived. Some puzzles required moving back and forth from the panel and a different perspective, and really needed a photo or sketch, so I took the easiest route of coping off the walkthrough. The puzzles about walking the path instead of directly using the panel were interesting, though it was a pain to have to go back to look at the panel to make sure I was doing it correctly. I looked up the tetris solutions to learn how they worked because I did not want to spend time backtracking. Many of the big puzzles overwhelmed me (like the 1 on top of the castle that combined the 4 previous solutions), so I just looked up the solutions without even trying to solve on my own. I noticed the circles with paths in the shipwreck and wondered what they were for. I thought maybe they were for puzzle solutions inside the ship, and then after realizing there was no way to get inside I wondered if it was unfinished. So I completed every puzzle from shadow forest, to greenhouse bunker, to swamp, to temple, to jungle, to town, to orchard, then quarry and finally the ending. Even though I lacked the patience to solve every puzzle on my own, I was very impressed with the design of the puzzles and how they pushed the creative limits of what line drawing puzzles could be. The environment was gorgeous and I was impressed at how it was incorporated into the puzzles, though the permanence of the world felt contrived. In some places were damage or removed features that had to be accounted for, while others just so happened to be frozen in the perfect sun placement and trees that seemingly did not grow. A puzzle that really stood out to me was a bird chirp audio puzzle where the speaker was broken, so you had to look at the debris and realize that the different sized speakers represented the different pitches.
Most of the end game puzzles were too annoying to solve on my own, and I was left very dissatisfied with the ending. Especially how it reset everything and expected me to solve many puzzles again. I knew something was up with those humming black obelisks, and that there was a secret challenge area, but damned if I am repeating content. I found 2 audio logs and watched the clips in the theatre, and I can't believe that someone actually wasted my time by putting that nonsense in a game. 1 video was just a guy walking back and forth for minutes not saying anything. I was eating wondering when he would talk, then got up to put away dishes and wash up, and when I got back he was still pacing without a word uttered. WTF. I turned that garbage off. If I wanted to listen to some random podcast or watch videos from the 70s that are probably played in university philosophy classes, then I would go look them up. I expect games to have original content, to tell me some kind of narrative about the fictional world that was created. The best that I could come up with as the plot to this game was: some pretentious asshole or assholes made a fake island full of puzzles, that may or may not have alienated them from more sensible people. Maybe the player is that asshole and is stuck in a memory wipe loop or something, or maybe the player is a lab rat. The lack of narrative context means the game lacks the glue needed to hold its components together. It might as well be a series of abstract puzzles without a 3D world and avatar. I imagine if this game replaced the puzzles with gameplay that I would find more fun; first person shooting. It would be the same map only with enemies instead of puzzles. That would still be a boring pretentious game.
5.0/10
