My feelings about this game are split. On one hand, the gameplay is incredibly unique, and the game provides an interesting take on non-Euclidean geometry. On the other hand, this may be the most confusing game I have ever played. If Steam had an option between thumbs-up and thumbs-down, that would be what I choose for this game.

If you are debating purchasing this game but lack the time/interest to read my entire review, scroll to the last paragraph.


Recursive Ruin is a game where the player can shift around an infinitely recursive world. What that means is that each area is contained within itself (like a chain of mirrors) and the player can decide to change where or how the area sits within itself. This concept is difficult to grasp at first but gets easier with time. This leads to an incredibly unique thinking-outside-the-box style of puzzles that are easily some of the coolest I have ever seen. The art style is strangely fitting for an infinitely recursive world and enhances the experience of wandering around these areas.

The story, which has many problems I will cover later, packs a hefty and emotional punch. The heavy themes of depression and loneliness combined with the fact that the levels repeat infinitely make the game feel almost claustrophobic despite the infinitely open nature of the level design. The game also dips its toes into themes of psychological horror here and there.

Put everything together and you get a unique and interesting puzzle game that would be a healthy addition to any gamer's library, that is if it were not for...


First: the game is not optimized properly. During some of the more open levels, the game consistently dropped frames. My PC is not a potato, this game should be able to run smoothly on every level, but it is unable to on those open levels. This does not make the game unplayable, but it is a little less playable on those levels.

Second: the game is too short. I would be okay with a game like this having at least five hours of puzzle-solving gameplay to it, but this game simply does not. I would say this game consists of about 40-50% puzzle gameplay with the rest being dedicated to the story. If the game were eight hours long, this would not be much of an issue, but the game is only about 4-5 hours long. The length would also not be an issue if the story were worthwhile, but that brings me to...

Third: the narrative is extremely confusing. I still have no idea how to feel about the story of this game. None of it seemed to make any sense. The levels where you are wandering around your small apartment, despite being extremely dull, are the only parts of the story that connect with one another. The rest of the narrative seems completely random and meaningless. Characters are introduced during infinite levels, and none of them are at all memorable. None of them seem to have any purpose, and they refrain from telling the player what the purpose of the game is or what they are doing outside of overly verbose hints. There are some references to ichor consuming the world, but none of that is ever fleshed out fully, and none of the characters seem to have any purpose or discernible intent.

The story wraps up with so many loose ends, which combined with the fact that nothing I did seemed to have an impact on the characters made me feel like everything I did was utterly pointless. Some of the levels (specifically the fifth and eleventh) hold absolutely no bearing on the rest of the story and serve only as cryptic metaphors. Throughout the game, there are flashbacks that show you memories of the character you play as, and those are partially interesting, but they feel completely irrelevant by the end, since none of them connect to the story within the infinite levels and have little relevance to what your character does during the apartment levels.


This game feels like a fever dream. The incredible visuals and puzzles combined with the wildly confusing haphazard story and the mild psychological horror themes drive that point home quite excessively. I think this game would benefit from the story being entirely removed. If this game had no story and was exclusively about solving these kaleidoscopic puzzles, then there would be far less filler, there would be no desire for the game to make sense, and the intrigue that a lack of a narrative creates does wonders for this style of game.

Throughout my experience playing this game, I consistently compared it to other non-Euclidean puzzle games. Specifically, I kept coming back to the comparison of this game to Manifold Garden. Both are games where infinite recursion is a main theme, but Manifold Garden succeeds where this game fails: the lack of narrative. There are exactly zero words spoken to the player in Manifold Garden and yet the atmosphere and intrigue of that game is much stronger than this one.


I would be lying if I said I did not enjoy this game. In fact, I would recommend this game in a heartbeat if it had no story. If you are like me and you have enjoyed many similar non-Euclidean puzzle games (specifically the ones mentioned below) or if you are a sucker for abstract artsy stories, then I wholeheartedly recommend this game to you. It may not be worth $15, but if you can pick the game up on sale, then I say go for it. If you are just looking for a neat space-bending puzzle game then your time and money would be better spent on Antichamber, COCOON, Manifold Garden, Patrick's Parabox, or Viewfinder.

My Glitchwave review: https://glitchwave.com/game/recursive-ruin/review/Zassafras/89187579/

Welcome to Toribash Next! In this game, you will experience abhorrent physics, unbearable lag, horrible netcode/multiplayer system, unpleasant visuals, awful sound design, unbalanced mechanics, sluggish and gross movement, garbage controls, a terrible menu, countless bugs, and every problem present in the original game.

You want good physics? Too bad! You get a physics engine where doing anything can result in your Tori flying into the stratosphere or flailing everywhere. During one of my multiplayer matches I had a sword in my hand, and started randomly sliding in a circle after putting the top of the sword into the floor while still holding it.

You want a fun multiplayer experience? Not happening. Instead, you get a lag-fest, where you may have to measure time in minutes per turn due to lag. You also receive terrible 4-player experiences where other players can steal your spot mid-match if you are playing with multiple Toris at once (which the game lets you do if the player count isn't 4 yet). I lost a match because someone who joined mid-match decided they wanted to steal one of my spots. Additionally, for every player in the room, there's a visible camera model that can completely block your view, in case you wanted to actually look at your Tori.

You want appealing visuals? Oops! The developers decided that the tranquil empty plane of the original game is too boring, so they ruined the look of the background, and they also decided that every Tori would by default be the worst shade of gray possible. To add, the ghosts are also gray and make the game way more confusing, since it's hard to tell whose ghost is whose. Plus, the rendering system is awful, making the ghosts look far more solid than they should be, interfering with movement and planning.

You want a game that has at least halfway decent sound design? That's unfortunate. This game's sounds are all mixed horribly, which is most evident in the music. Each song that appears in the game is ripped from the original game, which would be nice, if they didn't completely change how they sound and screw with the stereo levels. Additionally, I could go without hearing an awful shouting noise every time someone joins my multiplayer lobby.

You want competitively viable mechanics? Keep dreaming. The point system is entirely broken, since you can get all your hard-earned points taken away at complete random. Additionally, the weapons have no balancing. You'd expect that landing gunshots gives you tons of points, but they only give you 100 points per hit. For context, I played a game with guns, missed every shot, yet still got 1,000 points by touching another player's foot.

You want satisfying or fast movement? Tough. What you get is slow, unresponsive joints that only move fast when you are flying all over the place. You also get the most disgusting over-extended joints that could easily make anyone shudder. Additionally, the ghost moves unbearably slow, so adjusting your Tori quickly is next to impossible without an instinctual knowledge of how your Tori moves, which is impractical because the game could decide you made a wrong move and make you fly all over the place.

You want controls that work? You won't find that here! Controlling your Tori is miserable, due to the complete lack of consistency. Sometimes, playing this devolves into a game of "move the camera around randomly so that you can move a single joint," because moving joints doesn't always work. You could be hovering your mouse right over the joint with the clearest view of it, and the game still refuses to change its state when you click, scroll, or press Z/X while hovering over it. Also, hardly any of the useful hotkeys from the original game exist in this one, which makes creating replays a chore.

You want a menu that isn't ridiculously unintuitive? Unlucky. The game's menu is sorted terribly and has had buttons completely vanish. God forbid you want to leave a multiplayer room to watch a replay, because then you have to click on a button that no longer exists to get to the top of the menu, just so you can click on replays. Saving replays is also a hassle, since you can't name them, and have to either have auto-save on, or click a button hidden behind a separate menu bound to a different button.

You want to play a game that doesn't have a laundry list of game-breaking bugs? You'd better look somewhere else. The sheer quantity of game-breaking bugs this game contains is unholy. I've even mentioned a few here, like the random removal of points or your Tori being shot into the stratosphere, but there's also various crashes, collision issues, rendering problems, and countless other bugs that would take too long to name here. If you want to see a more comprehensive list of the bugs present here, the Toribash forums have some threads about this game's bugs. Plus, all the issues that the original game had, such as the random lopsided physics that prevented symmetrical movement are only made worse in this version.

You want to play a fun game? You've come to the wrong place. This game is completely unplayable. The fact that we waited 7 years for this is insulting. I haven't been able to play this game for more than 30 minutes per week because of how miserable it is to play. Just play the original. That game is actually good.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot! This game spells the word "right" wrong. This isn't a joke. You can see this in the game by hovering over your right shoulder or right elbow to see "Rigth Bicep" or "Rigth Tricep." What a joke.
https://v1.steam.hlxgame.cc/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3164325555

1 Year update: Hardly anything in this game has been fixed (including Rigth Bicep) and most of the player base has fully abandoned it. If you're still thinking of downloading this game in hopes of finding someone else on the game at all, then I'd go for the original game instead.

My Glitchwave review: https://glitchwave.com/game/toribash-next/review/Zassafras/89179189/