Recent reviews by BinarySplit

Recommended with caveats. Relicta is in the same class of physics-puzzlers as Portal, Talos Principal, Antichamber, etc. If you liked any of them, Relicta definitely belongs on your wishlist... but not at the top.

Relicta has a huge number of fun puzzles - it's really good value for money if you're in the mood for them. The problem is that Relicta is really not as polished as the others. The story's sufficiently interesting, but almost all characters are impatient and snarky, making them quite unpleasant to listen to. The hub map is a completely unnecessary sprawling maze full of easy-to-miss collectables that only add frustration to the experience. Many of the puzzles (especially in the DLC) are excessively long, meaning you have to replay a lot every time you ragequit/softlock and have to reset. If I wasn't already hooked on the puzzles, there were many moments where I would have just stopped playing.

So basically, Relicta isn't the game that will get you hooked on this genre, but it's a good hit to feed the addiction. Play the other major physics-puzzler games first.

Mixed review. You can tell a lot of effort went into Escape Legacy. There's plenty of fun to be had and the replayability is implemented quite well. However, some of the frustrations ultimately ruin the experience.

It's too easy to get stuck, and it's usually unclear whether you're stuck because you're misunderstanding the puzzle, or because you haven't found all the clues yet. The clue locations are randomized each playthrough, so sometimes you might spend 20 minutes scouring every corner unable to find a missing clue, then restart and find it in the first minute.

It also feels kind of bad to play - the character acceleration is awfully slow, the camera jerks around a lot (head bob, animated door-opening sequences), and even with the brightness adjustment option there's far too much darkness for a game about finding hidden objects. I feel like too much work went into making the game feel realistic for VR, at detriment to the gameplay.

That said, I suspect my above complaints don't apply to the VR version. I only played the non-VR version, but having direct control over the camera without the molasses-like movement acceleration sounds like it would make it a lot easier to find hidden objects.

A solid medium-difficulty puzzle/adventure game, perfect for de-stressing & taking your mind off of life stuff. The puzzles seem to be at the perfect balance where they're not so easy you get bored, but not so hard you keep getting stuck. Story isn't a major focus, but there's enough there to keep you interested. So far I've enjoyed the prologue, Chapter 1 and Chapter 2. I'm saving Chapter 3 for a rainy day.

The best part: each chapter is well priced for its quality/duration. Each chapter was better than the last. The prologue is definitely worth a try - it's short, but is a self-contained part of the story worth playing before Chapter 1.

A solid medium-difficulty puzzle/adventure game, perfect for de-stressing & taking your mind off of life stuff. The puzzles seem to be at the perfect balance where they're not so easy you get bored, but not so hard you keep getting stuck. Story isn't a major focus, but there's enough there to keep you interested. So far I've enjoyed the prologue, Chapter 1 and Chapter 2. I'm saving Chapter 3 for a rainy day.

The best part: it's well priced for its quality/duration. Don't wait for a sale, just buy it if it sounds interesting to you. Or play the prologue first, because it's also good and worth your time.

I bought this alongside The Line from the same developer, and I have ultimately the same complaint: I couldn't find where the gameplay actually began. I explored the game world completely, but couldn't find anything interactable that would allow me to progress.

I couldn't find where the actual gameplay was... I explored for half an hour, read a bunch of letters, but couldn't find any way to make any progression. After scouring the map for anything I could have missed, I gave up and refunded it.

It's HARRDDD. If you enjoyed the original Myst, you'll love RHEM. If you're the kind of person that easily gets stuck and frustrated, RHEM is probably too difficult. I enjoyed a lot of the puzzles, but had to look up hints/solutions for many others, and ultimately gave up before finishing it.

The other caveat is that this game is technically pretty janky. Once most of the map opens up, you'll find you have to spend a lot of time back-tracking and even though you know exactly where to go, it takes a LONG time to navigate between areas, even with transitions turned off. Also, sometimes Esc takes you to the menu, sometimes it quits the game without saving. I lost some progress accidentally this way.

If those two things don't bother you, then RHEM IV is absolutely worth playing. The puzzles are really good and there are a lot of them.

BIG CAVEAT: The sequel is a mess that's not really worth playing even if you can get past the softlocks.

RtMI is a flawed but relatively fun twist on the standard adventure game formula. The big innovation is that there are many ways to achieve most goals. Sometimes you'll fail and lose items, but there will always another way. However, the alternative ways may not always be obvious and that's the bad side of the game. It's easy to miss stuff, so sometimes you're stuck pixel hunting or trying to combine every item with every other item.

Overall, the story is pretty cool, the puzzles are a bit easy but still fun, but the exploration / finding items for solving puzzles part is a bit frustrating. Overall it was a positive experience, and considering I got it for NZ$1 (90%-off) it was definitely good value for money.

Recommendation: Wait for a sale. Avoid the sequel.

Pros: You get to play as the monkey, which adds a few more interesting puzzles

Cons: The story is less compelling and the puzzles are even more obtuse than the first game. Also, it's possible to still make several hours of progress AFTER unknowingly putting the game in an unwinnable state. It's actually pretty easy to softlock - I found quite a few people complaining about it when I went looking for solutions.

UPDATE: I hex-edited my save so that I could get past the softlock. The endings weren't worth it.

I regret waiting so long to try Quern. I cannot imagine a better Uru-like puzzle game. Originally I assumed it was more of a Myst-like, where puzzle-solving requires a lot more patience than I actually have. However Quern had exactly the right amount of difficulty - clues aren't excessively difficult to find, every puzzle requires enough thinking that nothing feels like busywork, and it never let me feel like I was playing by unfair rules so I was never tempted to check a walkthrough.

Recommendation: Don't even wait for a sale. It's incredibly good.