Recent reviews by Prawnpaws

Cute

Better than I expected after reading some of the reviews. This game is feels a bit like a Dead Space game, minus the combat (and weapons) and not quite as dark and scary. What is left is a fairly linear exploration game set in space, with some environmental puzzles (quite reminiscent of those in Dead Space), and a story that is exposed via audio logs, emails, and a hologram re-enactments.There are some minor ability upgrades unlocked as you progress, and these essentially introduce new game mechanics used for overcoming certain puzzle types. The environmental puzzles are not very difficult, but a few gave me a little pause and then some satisfaction after solving themThe story and main mission are simple but serviceable, and the sub-missions fairly varied. Overall production values are quite good.

The gameplay was mostly tedious.

The biggest challenge in the puzzles was finding objects in the rooms; floaty controls and a requirement of opening and checking countless drawers and cupboards with said controls. The logic required in solving puzzles was usually very easy or not particularly logical but solvable with some easy trial and error. Ultimately for a game that calls itself an escape room, puzzle quality should be very important, and I am afraid the puzzles here were just boring.

On the positive side, the game has some nice (although low-poly) African-inspired aesthetic, some lovely background music, and a not half bad background story that gradually gets exposed through letters that you find and through some excellent voice-over narration.

So boring! Trivial timeworn puzzles that usually yield a key or an object. The rest is navigating what is essentially a maze of very similar-looking rooms to use your key to find an unlock the next room or to place a collected object to open a chest/door/safe that will yield the next key or object. I got it on sale for 71% off, and requested a refund as it is just a waste of time.

It's short yes - took me about 3 hours, so get it on sale. I don't understand all the negative reviews. The puzzles are not very hard but they are novel and fun. The scenery in the game is beautiful. For those three reasons (novel, fun, pretty), I give it a thumbs up.

The narration - it is not necessary to listen to it to make progress - I don't recall it providing any real hints, but as someone who usually ignores droning narration, I found it amusing and to me surprise I actually found it thought-provoking and interesting towards the end. Most importantly, you really can just ignore it - it does not interfere nor delay you from making any progress in game.

Very enjoyable first person puzzle game.

The puzzles are all based on the ability to record your actions for about 10 seconds then allow them to be replayed by a clone while you can go about your business, with the assistance of the clone. There are some interesting subtleties to this mechanism that you will need to figure out to solve some of the puzzles. Ultimately you solve puzzles so you can move forward in the game world.

There is a barebones story about trying to find your father who was "lost" in this world.

The game world is organized as a hub with three domains to visit. At the beginning of the game, you go through a few tutorial type puzzles to get to this main hub. You have to solve each domain to the point of unlocking the next domain. To do that, you need to solve puzzles in the current domain so that you acquire at least 4 crystals. All the crystals in a domain are visible from afar, and you have to solve a series of puzzles to get to each crystal. Each domain contains 5 crystals, so on average you can skip the puzzles leading to one crystal in each domain. However, if you acquire all the crystals, it will unlock a secret area at the end of the game with a final puzzle which was quite challenging.

There are few game mechanisms: cubes to be placed on buttons or to jump on to reach someplace higher, and various switches to open doors or move platforms. Later in the game you will get one upgrade related to the clone-recording and and one new type of device / game mechanism required to solve puzzles that is pretty cool but I don't want to spoil.

The game looks quite pretty, with low poly graphics. The main attraction is the puzzles. They are good - it was surprising that with such few game mechanisms, the puzzles were quite creative and never really got old. Most were not too hard but there was a handful of head-scratchers. You will also come across puzzles where you think that the 10 seconds of clone time you get are not enough to solve the puzzle ... which usually means you are missing a different solution. However, there is also handful of puzzles that had a tight timing requirement that you had to fit within the 10 second window, because that was the only solution. However with some trial and error and figuring the optimal time to start the recording, these are not too too hard. You will also need some basic platforming skills.

The closest game that I think I would compare Hourglass to is "The Sojourn". Though smaller in scope, I found Hourglass more enjoyable because of the creative puzzles, and each puzzle is quite short (once you figure out how to solve it) and focused. The game autosaves after each puzzle (or is it at the beginning of each puzzle), and there is a puzzle reset/restart mechanism.

This game is absolutely brilliant! It's a steal currently at 75% off. Had I known it was this good beforehand, I would have waited to buy it while *not* on sale to support the developer.

On first glance, Minimal Crypt looks like a sokoban-like with a handful of novel mechanics. It is that, but the main new mechanic actually introduces a very different dimension to the puzzle solving; it becomes not simply about planning a route, but also requires some higher level reasoning of sequencing to build literal layers of "paint" that makes the traversal possible.

Add to that, some puzzles throw a little subterfuge to trip you up further. I won't say any more about that but if you're curious you can read the discussion thread where I asked for a hint (subject "Logical Burden 12 seems impossible") and I got a response from the developer and some of their ideas of how to craft a puzzle. Oh yeah, I should mention the devs are really cool like that.

What I am trying to say in a roundabout way is that the puzzle design is really good. I'm about halfway through all the levels. There is a mix of easy and hard. Some of them seem really easy once you figure out the key trick or strategy - but that is not always obvious. The game is not as hard as say Stephen's Sausage Roll - most levels here are small (fit in an 8x8 grid) so there is a limited number of moves required, but sometimes you really need to take a moment to sit back on reflect on what are possible and impossible strategies that may lead to a solution. As the dev so eloquently put it for the level I needed a hint on: "it captures several layers of thinking (high-level and execution)"

Add to that, the game has a simple clear aesthetic, infinite undo, instant reset and chill music. There are a lot of levels /puzzles and all are unlocked after the tutorial chapter. This brings me to the organization of the puzzles in the game: There are 6 or 7 chapters, each introducing a new mechanic. Within each chapter there are roughly 10 puzzles that start off gently by introducing the new mechanic of that chapter, then have a bunch core puzzles then finishing with one or two really tough ones.

This game has it all. Some brilliant puzzles (the ones are not brilliant are there to warm you up to get ready for the brilliant ones), great quality of life features (infinite undo), nice aesthetic, and full game unlock early on to avoid anyone getting completely stuck.

This is a very good game in my opinion, although not without some annoyances.

At the core of it, it contains a lot of word puzzles in the form of a hint word and a space to fill in the answer word based on the hint. However, what kind of "rule" to apply on the hint to transform it into the answer can vary a lot. There are visual clues near or on the puzzle that guide you to which rule set you should be thinking about for a given puzzle. There is a reasonable process of teaching you how to associate between these visual clues and what rule set to apply, but the game does not hold your hand at all. It is up to you to figure out what are the relevant visual clues to associate with rules, and the exact nature of the rules. It's all very good fun, but you need English proficiency.

The other aspect of the grand puzzle is navigating the world, or what you might also call exploration. There are non-euclidean spaces (yes Antichamber is closest game with that kind layout that comes to mind), doors that are unlocked by solving word puzzles, (almost) invisible doors, and some platforming. Generally these are fine and fun but this is also where the annoyances sometimes come in. Navigating the world can be a bit of a chore and it's easy to get lost. After many hours of playing, you will naturally remember some of the layout, unlock many doors to shortcuts, and discover the quick-travel mechanism. So with time, navigation definitely gets easier. But sometimes it is still a chore.

I have put in 45 hours already and think I have completed most of the game (based on achievements) but am now in a position where I have to comb through the world again, check every corridor or door that I may have missed or magically opened up after solving a word puzzle elsewhere, to try and find the next set of unsolved word puzzles. It's a bit of a chore since the world is quite large, and as I mentioned before, hard to really map in your head because of the non-Euclidean aspect. Still, when you do discover a new area, there's a wonderful sense of discovery followed by varying levels of head-scratching based on the word puzzles in the area.

I would not place Lingo quite at the level of The Witness or Antichamber, both of which I consider absolute masterpieces, but Lingo is very very good, and an incredible achievement for a solo developer.

I'm really enjoying this game so far. A very decent puzzle platformer with a very fresh mechanic. The controls are extremely simple - most of the time you just use 2 keys for moving left and right. There are some other keys used, but never in a situation that requires precise timing for using them.

I am writing this review mainly on behalf of people who may be enticed by the puzzling aspect of the game but concerned that the game may be too tough requiring very fast reflexes. I would say as long as you have some reflexes and patience, so you should try out this game because I found the puzzling aspect worth it,

Please bear in mind I only just reached world 3 (from about 10 or so if I recall from the world select screen), but I am enjoying this game so much this far and wanted to write a review now.

Every world adds a new mechanic to keep the gameplay fresh. Every world so far as 12 levels total. Two of these are special: One is unlocked only after you find and turn on secret switches in one of the 10 normal levels, and the other is unlocked using stars that you collect from completing levels (nearly) perfectly. I managed to unlock both of these special levels in the first world. One of the special levels was just a slightly harder version of the rest of the levels in that world, but the other was ridiculously hard from a timing/reflexes point of view and it's unlikely that I have the coordination to complete it.

This brings us the type of challenges this game presents. I would say it is divided roughly evenly between requiring dexterity and precision timing, and requiring brains to figure out the puzzle of what sequence to try and execute. Actually to be honest, at my age my reflexes are slowing down and I would say the bigger challenge is the dexterity part which is why I am increasingly shying away from games that require such precision. However, in this case I found the puzzling part satisfying and enjoyable enough that I don't mind retrying the same tricky timing section ten times.

I think what is so appealing to me is that this momentum based mechanic is very fresh; after seeing and playing countless great, masterpiece-level puzzle games that fundamentally rely on a Sokoban mechanic but with very cool new twists and variations, it is so nice to see something so different with zero Sokoban basis. Maybe this is not a fair comparison across very different genres, since this game requires reflexes and most Sokoban-based puzzlers don't. I guess I wanted to point out that there is a very fresh "thinking" component to this game that is still simple enough to describe as the thinking component of Sokoban-likes, but also so very different.

Again (if the rest of the game is similar to the levels I have played so far), 11 of the 12 levels in each world can be completed perfectly using my aging reflexes. Being perfect means not using the "partial reset" key to get you out of a dead end. I think some levels allow you 1 or 2 of these partial resets and you can still get the star. I call it a partial reset because using that option still preserves the state of the switches on the level to what you may have set them to earlier. You can also completely restart a level (resetting the state of all the switches in it), in which case you are given a new chance to complete it perfectly and get the star.

It seems that the bonus unlockable-by-stars level on each world requires increasing multiples of 10 stars collected (I assume cumulatively). In other words: world 1's bonus levels requires 10 stars, world 2's bonus requires 20 stars, etc., so the bottom line is that I think you can still unlock all the bonus levels in the game even if you only perfect 10 of the 12 levels in each world on average.

It also seems that the next world is unlocked after you complete a certain number of levels in a world - I am not sure how many. I do not believe there is any requirement to complete any of those perfectly to unlock the next world. This means that as long as you complete most levels (use the partial-reset key to get you out of dead ends as many times as you want) you should be able to unlock all the levels in the games except the (in my opinion) ridiculously hard one in each world.

Good first person escape-room style puzzle game with cool color-themed mechanic. Short but definitely worth it especially if you get it on sale.