This game ranks as one of the biggest disappoints of my life and disturbed four people that represent three generations of gamers. Good job Broken Rules! We all need therapy now!

As you can see from the screenshots, Raetikon is visually stunning, with gorgeous graphical design and an engrossing world. It plays like a simple Metroidvania type game that relies on puzzle elements. Areas are gated off behind a "collect the bits" mechanic, but everything is so pretty, you don't even mind. The creature designs are origami given life. You play as a weird bird with shoes, that controls very much like the arcade game Joust, which works very well and seems fluid. The game dumps you right into the action, leaving you to figure things out, which is refreshing with all the hand holding these days. The story is pieced together by collecting runes to decipher ancient tablets, a gimmick that my kids and mother both enjoyed as they worked together to crack the code. It's not a necessary thing to accomplish to beat the game, but a nice side diversion. The music is also suitably haunting.

Sounds good so far, and it is. We enjoyed the laid back pacing that I would liken to the exploration of Proteus or Journey. Some have complained of the difficulty, but I had no issues, and only died once, in the bramble maze while being reckless. And there's two major issues with this short little game.

BUG. I have seen on forums where the developer promised to fix this over a year ago and guess what? They didn't. It's still there. If you open the areas in an order that the developers did not intend, the game becomes impossible to complete the traditional way. You get to a point where you are short three gold slivers to progress, and they simply do NOT exist if you mistakenly tackled the areas in the wrong order. This happened to me and the only way past it is through ANOTHER BUG that allows you to access the end areas by an obscure method. We wandered around for almost two hours backtracking, thinking that we were just missing a few slivers. It was triple checked, so I hit the internet and found mention of this bug on a forum. None of this was repaired as promised, so do NOT leave the area above the evil tree for last or you will have problems.

FINALLY... it's the ending. It IS memorable, you can't take that away from it, but does it ever kill a bit of your soul and leave a bad taste in your mouth. You go from heroic hope to stupid and evil.

SPOILERS!!!
....
....
...it seems through the whole adventure of Secrets of Raetikon that you are trying to save animals in cages. Yet at the end, you find out that you kill them and use their blood/essence to power a primitive game of Pong. After the credits, it dumps you into free roaming mode. The real horror is here, for not only did you murder the caged animals, but EVERY SINGLE animal on the planet. Everything is dead. Everything. So your stupid bird could play Pong. It's depressing and senseless.

We had talked about how fun it would be to just go back and replay it but that's not happening now. Your journey seems pointless, tainted and corrupted. Raetikon leaves a black splotch on your heart and a dead feeling in your soul. My kids were disturbed, and my mother was so messed up she watched several Let's Plays on youtube just to see other rections and if there's another ending.... the answer is NO. No other endings. You can't change it.

Therefore, I have a hard time recommending it, even though it's this lovely, wonderful game up until the end.
If you don't mind absurdly bad endings and would like a game that combines Castlevania:SOTN, Journey, Proteus and Joust together, then give this a shot. Personally, I doubt we will ever play it again. We discovered the Secrets of Raetikon afterall...

The secret was... the ending sucks.

This game ranks as one of the biggest disappoints of my life and disturbed four people that represent three generations of gamers. Good job Broken Rules! We all need therapy now! As you can see from the screenshots, Raetikon is visually stunning, with gorgeous graphical design and an engrossing world. It plays like a simple Metroidvania type game that relies on puzzle elements. Areas are gated off behind a "collect the bits" mechanic, but everything is so pretty, you don't even mind. The creature designs are origami given life. You play as a weird bird with shoes, that controls very much like the arcade game Joust, which works very well and seems fluid. The game dumps you right into the action, leaving you to figure things out, which is refreshing with all the hand holding these days. The story is pieced together by collecting runes to decipher ancient tablets, a gimmick that my kids and mother both enjoyed as they worked together to crack the code. It's not a necessary thing to accomplish to beat the game, but a nice side diversion. The music is also suitably haunting. Sounds good so far, and it is. We enjoyed the laid back pacing that I would liken to the exploration of Proteus or Journey. Some have complained of the difficulty, but I had no issues, and only died once, in the bramble maze while being reckless. And there's two major issues with this short little game. BUG. I have seen on forums where the developer promised to fix this over a year ago and guess what? They didn't. It's still there. If you open the areas in an order that the developers did not intend, the game becomes impossible to complete the traditional way. You get to a point where you are short three gold slivers to progress, and they simply do NOT exist if you mistakenly tackled the areas in the wrong order. This happened to me and the only way past it is through ANOTHER BUG that allows you to access the end areas by an obscure method. We wandered around for almost two hours backtracking, thinking that we were just missing a few slivers. It was triple checked, so I hit the internet and found mention of this bug on a forum. None of this was repaired as promised, so do NOT leave the area above the evil tree for last or you will have problems. FINALLY... it's the ending. It IS memorable, you can't take that away from it, but does it ever kill a bit of your soul and leave a bad taste in your mouth. You go from heroic hope to stupid and evil. SPOILERS!!! .... .... ...it seems through the whole adventure of Secrets of Raetikon that you are trying to save animals in cages. Yet at the end, you find out that you kill them and use their blood/essence to power a primitive game of Pong. After the credits, it dumps you into free roaming mode. The real horror is here, for not only did you murder the caged animals, but EVERY SINGLE animal on the planet. Everything is dead. Everything. So your stupid bird could play Pong. It's depressing and senseless. We had talked about how fun it would be to just go back and replay it but that's not happening now. Your journey seems pointless, tainted and corrupted. Raetikon leaves a black splotch on your heart and a dead feeling in your soul. My kids were disturbed, and my mother was so messed up she watched several Let's Plays on youtube just to see other rections and if there's another ending.... the answer is NO. No other endings. You can't change it. Therefore, I have a hard time recommending it, even though it's this lovely, wonderful game up until the end. If you don't mind absurdly bad endings and would like a game that combines Castlevania:SOTN, Journey, Proteus and Joust together, then give this a shot. Personally, I doubt we will ever play it again. We discovered the Secrets of Raetikon afterall... The secret was... the ending sucks.