Recent reviews by simssi

Quite good Lucasarts style point & click puzzle game. Humor and gameplay are close to Monkey Island and Sam & Max series of games. The game is competently written, with some actually funny jokes which is rare in games these days. Graphics are well made, with character animations being some of the best I've seen in the genre. The jazzy soundtrack and the voice acting are competently made and suit the genre.

It's not perfect though. There were some puzzles where I figured out the general idea of the solution, but didn't know how to do it the exact way the game wanted (some keywords: butter, truth serum, plunger). In a few cases, I feel like there was nothing obvious hinting at the solution and even the in-game hintline didn't help (example: medical briefcase). In situations where the solution is almost right or could work in theory it would have been useful if the character would have at least said out loud why the solution doesn't work. It's also an opportunity to inject more jokes and personality into the game. On a related note it seemed that almost always using the "wrong" items together resulted in a generic line like "nope" instead of being customized for that interaction, which is a shame because that's one of my favorite things in point & click games.

There were also some bugs; mostly minor sprite sorting issues in cutscenes and dialogue mistimings. There was one time where a character had dialogue options referring to a discussion which hadn't happened yet (Herman Merman's dialogue with Lady Unterwald about luring Arthur out of his cabin), and I did manage to soft-lock the game once (clicking the wrong thing while walking towards the twins as Herman Merman), requiring a restart - thankfully the autosave was just a few minutes prior. In general I think the game got a bit buggier and less interesting gameplay-wise in the last few chapters.

Despite these issues, this is still one of the best point & clicks not made by a company named Lucasarts or Telltale. Great job!

Viewfinder is an innovative and well executed first person puzzler, following in the footsteps of Portal, Antichamber, The Witness, Superliminal and Manifold Garden. The genre staples are all here - boxes, buttons, perspective tricks, impossible spaces and so on - but the camera / photo mechanic is obviously the main event. I played the demo before the release and it was so good that I was worried it could have contained all of the game's best bits (which I thought was the case with Superliminal), but my worries were fortunately unfounded. The demo took me about 15 to 25 minutes to beat the first time, while the full game (including optional levels) took me about 4.5 hours. In short, I think it's an essential game for fans of the genre. You can pet the cat.

The game follows a Valve-like design philosophy for puzzles: every few levels a new element or aspect of existing ones is introducd, and then incrementally expanded upon with increasingly difficult puzzles. The game never lingers on a single puzzle type for too long, and the pacing is mostly excellent. The only critique I have regarding puzzles is that it doesn't go far enough; the difficulty curve is so gentle that every level feels like a tutorial, and apart from the final level the game never gets a chance to challenge the player with the full toolbox of puzzle elements. But if the biggest criticism I can come up with is that I wanted more, then that's a pretty good sign.

The story aspect didn't really do much for me, but at least it wasn't actively annoying like in Superliminal. Most dialogue in the game is optional, accessed by activating gramophones scattered around the levels. I did listen to most of it, and it wasn't really relevant to the puzzles. There are also notes and letters to find, which are similarly optional.

Graphics and audio are gorgeous and implemented well. Overall the game has a very comfy atmosphere, with soft lighting, pettable cats and a relaxing soundtrack. From a technology point of view the game is a masterpiece. The camera mechanic does very complex things I haven't seen in any other game, and despite this I did not experience any notable bugs and the performance remained smooth throughout.

So yeah, strongly recommended. A DLC pack or a way to make custom levels would be nice, but even without those it's probably the best first person puzzler since Portal 2.

The Turing Test is a first person puzzler which is so Portal-like it could have almost been a Portal 2 mod. The basic gameplay loop is familiar: you walk into a puzzle chamber, exchange a few words with the station's AI, solve the puzzle with classic elements like laser beams and magnets - and then repeat that for 5 to 7 hours. It is competently made and has sufficient production values - the music and audio design are especially good - though you can tell it's an indie production from things like using the same tileset for the almost the entire game and the bizarrely plain loading screen (which just says loading with two different fonts?). The story is told through short dialogues, audio logs, environmental storytelling and short cutscenes, and it is engaging enough with a few twists along the way. From a story point of view the game was about the right length for me, but I think there was still some unrealized potential with the puzzle mechanics. Ideally this game should have had a level editor to allow modders to continue exploring those mechanics even after the story is wrapped up.

If you've played enough first person puzzle games then there are not many new things here, but it's solidly made and therefore is a non-brainer to pick up for a discount.

It's smaller on the inside.

After waiting for the game for 1.5 years, Hyperbolica ended up being a mixed bag. The non-euclidean environments are mind-bending (in a good way) and a bit nauseating (in a bad way). I was kind of expecting a puzzle game, but in the 3.5 hours it took me to finish the game there were maybe 2 or 3 puzzles. I can accept that Hyperbolica is not focused on puzzles, but in my mind it does not succeed as an exploration or comedy game either. I'm glad I got to experience the game's environments and I think the world needs more innovative games like this, but ultimately only the end result matters.

The writing is, for the lack of a better word, cringy. There are way too many NPCs, usually with nothing interesting or funny to say. Their lines remind me of Pokemon NPCs mixed with Reddit comments. Thinly veiled pop culture references are not comedy nor clever observations. There is technically a story but it doesn't really go anywhere or affect anything.

The exploration aspect is mostly walking around the world & pressing E on everything to receive items, then backtracking to a different environment to rub them on something to receive more items. I did not 100% the game so there might be more interesting things to find but what I saw during my playthrough did not motivate me to continue. Some of the game's environments are excellent, but equally many are repetitive and boring (such as the winter world and most of the city).

The game world is far too large for the amount of actual content there is, which is made worse by the most interesting aspect of the game: the use of hyperbolic geometry. Since spaces have much more volume than they would in a traditional euclidean game, there is simply more area to fill with things to do. Hyperbolica has chosen to populate every space with the aforementioned NPCs because they are relatively cheap and quick to produce. I understand the time and budget constraints of indie development, but maybe they should have kept the world smaller and focused on quality over quantity.

Also, screw the skiing minigame. I spent at least half an hour trying to complete it until I figured out a sufficiently cheesy strategy to maximize fuel use.

An excellent logic game with an amazing set of levels. It's like Sudoku and / or Minesweeper, but significantly better than either. The infinite mode is OK as a timewaster (I've completed 250 randomly generated levels at the time of writing), but they are no match for the expertly handcrafted puzzles.

What do Portal, Antichamber, The Stanley Parable, The Witness, Manifold Garden and Outer Wilds have in common?

a) They are first person games centered around the themes of perspective, perception and/or weird physics. Each of them has something to say and critique about traditional puzzle game mechanics and tropes, sometimes quite literally. These are the same themes explored by Superliminal.
b) They are better games than Superliminal.

But don't get me wrong - Superliminal is still an enjoyable experience, for the most part. It is quite short, as it took me a little less than 2 hours, which is not a lot of game for the full asking price of about 16 euros. The two hours were pretty tightly packed, with new ideas in almost every room.

There are some gameplay ideas I have not seen in any other game, but to be honest the demo contains many of the best bits. There were quite a few moments which made me almost say out loud "You got me game, well done" and do a little golf clap, but that feeling passes quickly. The implementation of those ideas was not exactly perfect. Player controls and physics feel floaty and occasionally glitchy (You know that "Unity game feel"? It feels exactly like that), and I even managed to softlock the game a couple of times. However, the generous checkpoint system allowed me to continue without losing almost any progress. Overall the gameplay is enjoyable, and the decently clever puzzles are more than enough to make it worth your while. The game doesn't spend too much time with any single puzzle mechanic, which left me longing for a bit more.

I did not enjoy the story / narrative / dialogue, which felt like it was written by mashing together bits of Portal, Inception and a soulless self-help book. I was much more amused by some of the clever gameplay moments than anything said by either of the 2 voiced characters. This wouldn't matter that much if there weren't so many great puzzle games with great stories or at least a few laughs.

However, I ultimately conditionally recommend the game if a) you've played all the other games in genre and b) you don't find the price for a game this short offensive. There is at least a developer commentary, some challenge modes and level editor which should give the game a bit more replay value.