Recent reviews by ethteck

I enjoyed this! I needed some nudges, but the developer was helpful in the discussion forums and gave me what I needed to keep going. Good music, cute Easter eggs, and fun puzzles :)

I did the first couple of puzzles, thought the game was way too easy, and then entered the hotel...

I can't wait to delve into this more tomorrow. In the meantime, I can already tell this is something special, and I've had a lot of fun getting acquainted with the world and presentation.

Edit 1:
7.6 hours in and I'm not even halfway done with the game. I'm loving the puzzles, the world, the mystery. it's all great. get this game

This was so good and intriguing. People in the reviews keep saying it didn't overstay its welcome. Imo, it didn't stay long enough; I would be happy with a 20-30 hour game like this. I hope the developer continues to make more content in this world, because I love the mini/meta puzzles, as well as the atmosphere.

I played this game with a friend online. I was immediately disappointed that we were going to have uneven experiences. I played on the PC, meaning I actually got to play the game. He played the companion app on an iPad. For this review, I'm going to refer to the PC version as "the game" and the companion app as "the app". I think it's clear that much, much more attention and effort was put into the game than the app, and it's a shame that two players are forced to choose who will have the lesser experience.

Visually, the art style is very charming and refreshing. It reminded me of Psychonauts / Telltale. However, there are zero graphics settings I was able to find, and the resolution of the game is not good. Combined with the fact that the art has a kind of comic book style, this led to a lot of eye strain for me over time, as lots of things are small and are hard to read or see. Also, I'm not sure if this was just a weird coincidence or bad timing, but I started to get motion sick after playing multiple rooms in a session, which rarely happens to me.

There's a story, but it's kind of delivered in an extremely formulaic way. It's always done right as you start a room, essentially delaying getting to actually play the game. My friend and I didn't really feel engaged with it at all, and I felt like the dialogue explaining the villain's motivation was forced and unnatural.

I think a lot of the puzzles in isolation were great. There were lots of times where I realized I wasn't describing things with the proper amount of specificity or in the proper dimension to help my friend, and vice-versa. I liked that my assumptions of what they were seeing were challenged, and I had to try communicating in a different way. That being said, my friend had a less engaging time on the app than I did on the game. Most gameplay on the app is merely reading information to the other player. There are a few drag-and-drop minigames on the app, but that's about it. The app only has 2d art. For the game itself, there's exploration of the rooms in 3d, which feels much more immersive and allows you to discover things more organically. There's also the fun side-game of finding all the clue tokens. Speaking of which...

The game has a clue system that involves spending these tokens you find strewn about each room. You put them into a machine which then prints out a ticket with the clue. However, the clue is just one word??? The tutorial room forces you to use a clue, but my friend and I avoided clues after this..until the final room. We were stuck on a puzzle, and we decided to use a clue. We got folder. There's no folder in this car, and the answer had nothing to do with one. One of the other clues was search. Really? That's what I've been doing this whole time! Searching for the code!

Another strong negative: this game seems to suffer from poor English localization, which really becomes a problem when it gets in the way of solving puzzles. One puzzle involves matching symbols to a diagram of a computer chip. There are logical rules that you have to reconcile to figure out where all the symbols go. However, the language used here is very ambiguous and not natural. They use the phrase "X is in front of Y" to mean "X is across from Y". My friend and I assumed "in front of" meant "before". This led to tons of confusion and frustration before another friend guessed that it could have meant "across from". This puzzle took so much longer than it needed to, simply because we didn't understand what it saying.

I don't regret all my time spent on this game, but there are a few major issues I have that prevent me from recommending it. Clues need to be better, localization needs a second pass, and the game should provide more graphical options. Please let us increase the resolution.

Deeper issues such as the uneven nature of the app being far inferior to the game are not easily fixable, but I think this can be overlooked and is possibly not even an issue, depending on the people playing. For me, it was a huge bummer. I have faith this development team can do a good job at this genre, and I hope they try again, but I would not recommend this to anyone unless you're willing to put up with everything I described above.

I really enjoyed the concept of this game and don't regret buying it, but I just felt it could be so much more than what I got. The mechanic is interesting, and I was really hoping to see it expanded upon and it just wasn't. I also didn't really find the rewards that interesting, and the secrets were kind of always tucked away in the exact same fashion.

That being said, I think this genre/developer has promise. If you are interested in a ~4 hour puzzle game that isn't just another of the same thing we've seen a million times over, I do think this is worth playing. And I hope the sequel takes the concept much further and gets more creative with it.

Extremely clever, constantly mixing it up and with a great hint system to boot. Don't read any more reviews, just get it. I've been waiting for a game just like this. It also isn't getting the attention it deserves, so just buy and play the game. bye

A great, short FMV adventure game with more great music from Masafumi Takada. I love adventure games, FMV games, and everyone behind this.

I just finshed this game. Ridiculously unnecessary story aside, this is a very challenging game that is very addicting for someone like me who doesn't like letting the game win.

This is the kind of game that just takes patience and practice. Good luck finishing any levels before the score timer runs out though. On the occasion I was able to, it was just barely before the clock ran out.

I'm not sure why people are complaining about the game. There is a casual mode that supposedly makes the game easier. I didn't actually ever try it (/brag) but that was out of my own stubbornness. Anyway, good game.

Most of the reviews here are trash so far. I'm only a little over an hour into the game, but I just want to say that Supergiant Games has really stepped up their game (hoho) with Transistor.

Yet again featuring Logan Cunningham as the narrator of sorts, Transistor exists in its own different universe. The aesthetic appeal of the game will grab you instantly, with hand-painted graphics, fantastic visual effects, and wonderful soundtrack. So many little unnecessary but definitely appreciated features have been put into the game as well, giving it an extra layer of polish.

The gameplay is its own beast, and it has been done exceedingly well, allowing the player to shift between realtime fighting and strategic combat at the whim of the player. It feels completely different from Bastion, regardless of the fact that the two games have similar presentation and graphical style.

There are some bugs right now (some of which are game breaking for certain setups), but these will surely be fixed within the next few hours or days. I'll update my review when I'm finshed.