I don't understand all the positive reviews this game has. I just don't.

In my eyes, this isn't much of a puzzle game at all. The only reason I was able to finish the main game, was because the story interested me enough to keep me going and push through the "puzzles". I put puzzles in quotes because the amount of levels in the main game that I would call a puzzle is countable on one hand. Most of the levels in the game are just: place objects in the furthest place they can still connect with something, fetch the new objects you can now use, repeat. Doing this it is possible to solve nearly every puzzle in the game with minimal to no thinking, and it's not as if this solution is any slower than any other, especially when using the fast forward feature which can be used while walking to go extremely fast (I'm actually really glad that feature is in the game, it allows timing/waiting based levels to be done very quickly).

There were only a few puzzles where I actually had to stop for a moment, look at my surroundings and think about what I had to do next in order to progress the puzzle. Even in these rare few levels where I actually had to think to solve a puzzle, it was usually quite shallow, although that isn't a problem by itself. Had there been more levels like these few levels, this amount of depth would have been okay, as at least you would be able to feel accomplished after solving a puzzle, and the story is interesting enough to keep you playing.

It could be that the real intention of the game is to attempt to get all the stars, which I haven't done. If this is the case, and the real game is figuring out how to collect them and playing the puzzles they unlock, then the game should communicate more clearly that this is what you are supposed to do. Even if that would be the case though, the main puzzles are still way too shallow and samey. I should say that collecting some of the stars requires some out of the box thinking, such as using elements from several puzzles across the map with each other. These stars were the most interesting / puzzle like part of the game I ran into while playing. Sadly, the shallow game play of most levels made me lose interest in collecting the stars, as I just wanted to be done with the game and be able to read / experience the story.

When the game introduced some of the later mechanics, (especially the recording mechanic) I was hoping to see more interesting puzzles based around this. Turns out the puzzles were still the same, except that you now had to also do as much as you could within this new mechanic.

Still, you should probably buy this game on sale, as apparently the great majority of people who play this game enjoy it thoroughly, and praise as if it came from heaven. If you are looking for a hard puzzle game however, you should stay far away from this game. Go check out something like Stephen's Sausage Roll instead.