Puzzles For Clef (2024)

One-star rating and "total trash" tags are completely undeserved. I feel obliged to write a review, as someone who spent 20+ hours playing this game:

Bunny Clef just turned 15 and her older sister hid many puzzles around an island to celebrate! She meets many curious characters on her journey and learns more about her family's relationship to the island itself. It is such a lovely game.

The art style is soft, beautiful and unique - I was particularly in love with Clef's journal, which is designed like a real journal with plenty of dried flowers, washi tape, and of course the information you need.

But don't be fooled by the cutesy style, the puzzles in this game are tough. Which is good! I've been playing adventure games for so long, that it's difficult to find really well-designed ones. Clef does it, though, and if you like a good head-scratcher I cannot recommend it enough. The game has a strong connection to music, as the title may suggest, and there are four short 'seasonal melodies' that you can play to solve certain problems. Don't be scared if you are like me and don't have a single musical bone in your body, the musical parts aren't very difficult to figure out.

The game is designed to be cozy and low on stress, and as such you cannot miss any achievements. It's easy to fast-travel between levels and collect what you might have missed.

That said, achievements are the only reason I'm giving Clef four stars: as of writing this review, the last ~6 achievements are not obtainable. They are all optional collections, and the devs are working on updating the game, but if you're a completionist then you may want to wait until they patch it up.