Recent reviews by Prawnpaws

Superb horror immersive sim with excellent atmosphere

Kredolis is a pretty good adventure game with escape-room like puzzle mechanics. The puzzles were a mix of moderate and easy. There was, however, one puzzle towards the end that was pretty badly clued (by consensus, based on a couple of different threads in the Steam discussion group) that I needed help with.

The game is quite pretty and has good production values, and it was pleasant to be immersed in that world. I had no problem running it on in full screen on my widescreen 4K monitor (3840x1600). The game is played in first-person perspective with smooth motion (i.e. like any modern first person shooter, not node-based or slideshow like the original Myst) and performance while moving is fine, though I have a beefy GPU.

The only performance issue I had is the game would often pause for a second or two after an interaction with a puzzle element, so if you continue to move the mouse during this pause, when the pause is over, your view will snap to where your mouse ended up, which is jarring and disorienting.

The save game system is also confusing and/or buggy. It ostensibly offers 3 save slots, but I never quite figured it out how to properly use them. I had a near-miss where I thought all my progress was wiped due to confusion whether the game was actually saving vs loading when I wanted to do a save or a load. After that near-miss, I just relied on the autosave-on-quitting and continuing from the same save slot each time I restarted the game.

As I get older and my reflexes slow down (and just killing things gets boring), I play fewer FPSs that focus heavily on shooting. However I still enjoy FPSs as long as there is a good mix of puzzles, secrets, and open world exploration. This is especially true if such FPS's have creative level design and art, and if the fighting sections are not so difficult that I get bogged down having to retry sections many times after getting repeatedly killed. Vomitoreum fits my list of preferences very nicely. The controls are pretty tight and movement through the levels is generally a pleasure. The combat was not too taxing and I even managed to make to the titular end boss. I got this on sale for $0.99 and it most certainly was worth my money, and more importantly, it was worth my time.

Graphics are ok, as you can tell from the screenshots, especially for when the game was made.

I think the developers' goal with this game was just to introduce people to looking at stuff in VR and basic interaction with your VR controllers with items in the world. There there is no real locomotion of the kind where you can choose where to go next - there's just a teleport between fixed nodes on a one-way path as you solve "puzzles".

I think this game might be suitable for children or just to introduce your non-VR-gaming friends to the novelty of VR. If the game had been billed that way, I would have given it a thumbs up, or more likely, just not bought it. However, I feel like I was led to believe it be more. After all the Steam page description says "Explore a gorgeous and vibrant world". I feel the word "explore" here is deceptive advertising, given that you are on a very rigid fixed linear path of nodes in the world. As far as any immersive or explorative experience, the game is sorely lacking due this.

However. what kills it for me are the very boring and simple puzzles.

Based on the achievements I got in my 1.2 hours of gameplay, I think I was one or two puzzles from the end, when my controller batteries ran out and I had to quit. After taking off my headset, and thinking about it for a moment, I realized the only reason I would go back into the game would be for the mental satisfaction of completing something I started, and not because I was eager to explore or solve puzzles in this world based on what exploration and puzzle solving I had already experienced.

I decided my time would be better spent articulating how I felt and warning other people off by writing a steam review.

Really fun game. A Symmetric Escape is a not too long, not too difficult first person game full of puzzles. It is structured somewhat similarly to The Witness, in that there is one main puzzle type, and where sometimes solving a puzzle (or a series of puzzles) opens up a new path leading to more puzzles. In A Symmetric Escape, the main puzzle type is to fill in colors in a grid according to some rules of symmetry which are specified per puzzle, which would be the analog of "draw a line in a grid" in the Witness.

However, in A Symmetric Escape (unlike The Witness), it's pretty easy to figure out what the rules are, and the total set of rules (and pretty much everything else about the game) is vastly smaller in scope.

Thrown in are a few twists in the form of a handful of "environmental" puzzles that extend beyond just the one grid you're looking at. The art, music and object modelling are very basic as well, but perfectly adequate for what this games aims to achieve. This game does not pretend to be building a detailed world for you to be immersed in, and instead just focusses on the puzzles.

The puzzles are fun. They start out very simple to act as tutorial puzzles to teach you the rules, and then get more complicated. I didn't find any of the core (where everything you need to solve the puzzle is right in front of you on one grid) puzzles very difficult although a handful took a few minutes. The "environmental" puzzles were a little bit more challenging as well as more satisfying to figure out, but still easy once you figure out the parts involved.

I feel the game was just the right length. Had it been much longer without new puzzle variations, I think it would start wearing out it's welcome.

The game autosaves whenever you exit. I didn't encounter any bugs.

Overall. I highly recommend A Symmetric Escape.

I really enjoyed Blinded by Fear. The atmosphere was very immersive and tense most of the time, thanks to the great sound design, the dark and unusual graphics style, and the premise of being on a mostly (heh!) abandoned ship where some bad things went down. The anticipation brought on by the principal game mechanism that allows you to slowly uncover the environment that you're in was a huge contributor to the fun, tension, and eventually, terror...

There are some interesting puzzles that ordinarily wouldn't be difficult, but when you can hardly see anything, they are challenging enough. Most of them require you explore (which is fun due to tension brought on by the darkness) to find bits of the solution, There are also stealth sections, and some simple (but only after you've uncovered enough of the environment) platforming. There are logs to find and read that fill in the back-story of what might have happened to the crew.

There is no manual saving but there are autosave checkpoints, and they are reasonably generous in frequency. Passing a checkpoint even mid-level means you can quit the game and continue from that point in your next session. It's unfortunate that I had to say this, as it annoys me that there are many other games that forget any mid-level checkpoints once you exit the game.

It’s a fun game essentially about programming small finite state machines. Set in a first person environment with trivial platforming, but the platforms/doors are controlled by the state machines.

The finite state machines (the "classic computer" referred to in the description) have the same structure and programmability throughout the main part (i.e. not in what I would consider tutorial levels) of the game.

Some of programmable aspects (which I fully describe in the spoilery section below) are hidden in the earlier levels so you can learn the basics by trial and error, and are gradually introduced in the later levels where you at first learn about each of them by simple trial and error tutorials. There are no explicit explanations - you learn these programmable aspects just by playing around in the levels that introduce them.

I will describe the state machines structure and programmability in some computer sciency speak. This can be considered a bit of a spoiler so skip to the end of this review if you want to discover everything for yourself, which I recommend.

You have 5 major states arranged in a horizontal row. Each major state additionally has a color (minor state) associated with it, and the initial color of each major state is set by the puzzle.

You have a set of one to three (depending on the puzzle) instructions that you can apply to any and all major states (a bit more on that shortly). The instructions can be programmed with up to 2 predicates each that dictate if the respective branch of that instruction should be executed.

The predicate works by comparing the current color of the current major state. If the color matches, you can program in 3 things (these can be different for the two predicates) about the next state: (A) Whether to stay on the same current major state, or go to the one on the left or to go to the one on the right. (B) update the color of the current major state (C) select which one of the (up to three) instructions to execute next.

The machine will halt if you tell it to move left when you are already in the left-most major state or to move right when you are already in the right-most major state. It will also halt if neither of your predicates match.

Finally we get to what these state machines can control in the world, to allow you to reach the exit. Some puzzles need the color of all 5 states to be a certain pattern to open a door, power a platform (or a switch you have to walk to that controls something else), etc. Sometimes a door/platform/etc can be powered simply by just one particular major state being a certain color. However, later on you need to generate sequences of controls being activated by the same state machine running to allow you to reach the exit.

TLDR: the meat of the game is to program these machines so the correct final state, or sequence of states is generated. Usually it's very easy to know the final state or sequence you need to generate, but the tricky part is actually programming the machine to produce this sequence. That's the real puzzling aspect, and it's quite bit of fun.

It’s not a very long game. There are about 6 chapters, each introducing some new mechanic. Each chapter is 4 or 5 levels. Each level is one or two state machines that need be “programmed” and run to allow you to reach the exit. It took me to 5.5 hours to get through all the puzzles without any hints. Oh yes, I forgot to mention there is a hint system but I never used it.

I missed a few achievements that you get if you can solve certain levels in fewer instructions that instruction slots provided. I may go back to get them.

In summary this is a very fun finite state machine programming game that will especially appeal to someone who might be interested in this aspect of computer science. I really like the fact that the end results of the correct programming unlocks a path to the exit that you get to via walking in first person, rather than simply a checkmark that you solved the programing puzzle and moving you to the next programming challenge immediately.

Fairly short atmospheric escape room style game played from first person perspective. This is really a linear series of scenes ("rooms"), each with one main puzzle (or a series of very closely related sub-parts). I counted about 7 such rooms and thus 7 major puzzles (again some of them may have between 1 to 4 sub-parts, where you know when you have solved a sub-part); Each room has a very distinct look. They all look very interesting and/or somewhat mysterious, with a lot of detail in texture and modelling, brought to life with moody lighting and atmospheric sounds.

There was quite a variation of puzzles although none were particularly original or difficult, with the exception perhaps with some of the "board games". Yes, one room had three board games in it. I enjoyed these the least of all the puzzles as they were all timed, and two of them had an element of chance (drawing cards from a deck or rolling dice). In practice you really only need to beat two of three of these games.

Although the puzzles weren't original, it was still somewhat satisfying to solve them in anticipation what the next room would bring.

Quality of life features are bare-bones. The game does not properly support all monitor resolutions, and selecting the "wrong" one can get you in a state where you can no longer select things from the options menu - such as a different resolution or even quitting the game. I had to Alt-F4 a couple of times before I got the game in an acceptable and playable resolution. Also the default walking speed is extremely slow. There is a "fast" modifier key, which I ended up pressing all the time unless actually solving a puzzle. It would be nice to provide either a faster default walking speed, or provide an "always run" option. Game uses standard WASD first person controls, but keys are not rebindable. And there's no invert vertical mouse axis. Game autosaves at the beginning of each room. You can't walk back to the previous room, but there is essentially a level select option from a map, which I didn't use.

There is also a green button that eventually appears in each room to immediately open the exit. Watch out for this! First time I pressed it I didn't know it was basically an "I give up" button and thought it was part of the puzzle, and I soon found myself in the next room with no way to go back and solve the puzzle I missed. I had to start a brand new game. It would be nice if there was an in-game warning when you press the green button to ask for confirmation that you really want to skip the puzzles in this room.

Overall I enjoyed my time in this game, which is the first episode of at least two at the present time. I am looking forward to episode 2, especially if it maintains the same atmospheric mood, and hopefully with better, more original puzzle quality.

Stray is a relatively easy narrative third person platformer with light puzzle elements. The highlights are beautifully rendered environments and the animations of the cat protagonist that you control and who is very cute. The platforming and exploration sections can be fun (the controls and animation are quite fluid), but as mentioned before, they are very straight-forward (linear), and almost impossible to die within. The only slightly challenging parts are a few sequences where you have to outrun or evade some enemies, where failure can mean death. The story is not bad, if somewhat predictable. Still there were a few parts that were moving.

This is an extremely good game and an amazing value at full price. It is essentially a sokoban-like with a pretty unique base mechanic of blocks that stick together if their sides ever touch. The goal is to build a structure out of blocks using this method to allow your guy to reach the exit square.

The game is organized as an overworld of islands, where each island contains a series of individual puzzle entry points. Once you enter one of these, you are transported to a small puzzle island that you must solve. Once you solve an individual puzzle, you return to the overworld with a new block materialized at the puzzle entry point. These blocks in the overworld can be assembled to form bridges to other overworld islands or collectible trophies. The group of puzzles in an overworld island are related by a common theme or a new or unique additional game mechanic. Usually in such a group there is a mixture of easy and hard puzzles, where the easiest ones essentially act as tutorials for the theme of the island.

The puzzles themselves range from easy to difficult, and when I say difficult, I mean it really forces you to think outside of the box. It's amazing how these seemingly simple mechanics combine and how well-crafted the puzzles are to exploit the apparently simple rules. In my opinion, some of the basic pillars of quality puzzle design are how well crafted they are (for example not providing extra blocks or space to maneuver, forcing the player to be efficient), teaching you new tricks, and the satisfaction you get from solving them. I am happy to say that the quality of the puzzles is very high and consistently hits some or most of these pillars.

In addition, for some of the toughest individual puzzles, you can also opt to "gain insight" which takes you to a unique puzzle (associated with just that one hard puzzle) that presents a much more simplified version of the parent puzzle, and which you can hopefully more easily solve. By solving the insight level and analyzing what just happened, you gain insight into the parent puzzle. So you can regard these insight levels as hints, but really they are puzzles in their own right, just more geared towards teaching than challenging. I think this system is brilliant and gaining insight this way is much more satisfying than getting a direct hint that is directly related to the hard puzzle. I feel it is it is more respectful of the player's intelligence.

This game has a ton of levels and keeps introducing new mechanisms so it never gets stale. There are great quality of life features including an infinite undo, the ability to rotate the view slightly to get a better understanding of the layout, instant reset. Options are somewhat limited, but the game works flawlessly on all my PCs that are attached to a variety of displays of varying aspect ratios and resolutions. The only additional graphics option that I would have liked to see offered natively by the game is antialiasing, but fortunately I am able to force that in my graphics driver control panel.

The store description humbly states this is a A simple 3D puzzle game. I think it is a masterpiece comparable to classic standard bearers of the genre, like Stephen's Sausage Roll.