Puzzle games make up about less than five percent of my game library. I don't mind the occasional puzzle in a point-and-click adventure game or action-adventure if it helps to mix things up a little, but if they become the main focus, I tend to lose interest pretty quickly.

With that said, MacGuffin's Curse happens to be the only puzzle game in the past few years that I actually endeavoured to complete. I think that the writing is a large factor which helped me see it through to the end. The plot is rather simple, but much of the dialogue and other interactions are written with a good-natured charm that I found rather endearing, similar to Brawsome's previous release on Steam, Jolly Rover. The story is not overwrought. It doesn't lay itself thick with excessive world-building or verbose character exchanges. It's there to give some context (in an interesting way though) to what you will be doing: pushing blocks around.

Similar to Sokoban, there are many rooms where boxes, crates, batteries and such will need to pushed and pulled around in order to unlock a door and progress to the next room. I never played Sokoban much, but I quite liked block pushing puzzles in the Legend of Zelda series, so this was kind of nice. I found most of the rooms were of a size which ensured that I didn't have to spend too much time on each puzzle. It's for this reason that I found the pacing of MacGuffin's Curse to be quite good, for a puzzle game. On some days, I still played in short bursts to avoid 'puzzle burnout'.

For much of my time though, I was able to stick with the puzzles for extended sessions. The art and music certainly helped with that. Both were pleasing to my senses and I never found either to be grating, as can sometimes be the case when we get stuck and we're forced to listen to the same track repeatedly. It was mentioned in the developer's commentary that a conscious decision was made to avoid composing music which would get on our nerves in those situations. I think they succeeded.

There were other smaller touches which showed me that the developers put a lot of thought into crafting a quality experience for the player, such as the built-in hint system, a quick puzzle reset feature and fast-travel. All of this adds up to a puzzle game that is no longer than it needs to be, with only my puzzle-solving abilities being the limiting factor. I'm not really into puzzle games, but MacGuffin's Curse grew on me and was worth sticking with until the end. It's a hidden gem.

Puzzle games make up about less than five percent of my game library. I don't mind the occasional puzzle in a point-and-click adventure game or action-adventure if it helps to mix things up a little, but if they become the main focus, I tend to lose interest pretty quickly. With that said, [b] MacGuffin's Curse [/b] happens to be the only puzzle game in the past few years that I actually endeavoured to complete. I think that the writing is a large factor which helped me see it through to the end. The plot is rather simple, but much of the dialogue and other interactions are written with a good-natured charm that I found rather endearing, similar to [b] Brawsome's [/b] previous release on Steam, [b]Jolly Rover[/b]. The story is not overwrought. It doesn't lay itself thick with excessive world-building or verbose character exchanges. It's there to give some context (in an interesting way though) to what you will be doing: pushing blocks around. Similar to [b]Sokoban[/b], there are many rooms where boxes, crates, batteries and such will need to pushed and pulled around in order to unlock a door and progress to the next room. I never played [b]Sokoban[/b] much, but I quite liked block pushing puzzles in the [b]Legend of Zelda[/b] series, so this was kind of nice. I found most of the rooms were of a size which ensured that I didn't have to spend too much time on each puzzle. It's for this reason that I found the pacing of [b]MacGuffin's Curse[/b] to be quite good, for a puzzle game. On some days, I still played in short bursts to avoid 'puzzle burnout'. For much of my time though, I was able to stick with the puzzles for extended sessions. The art and music certainly helped with that. Both were pleasing to my senses and I never found either to be grating, as can sometimes be the case when we get stuck and we're forced to listen to the same track repeatedly. It was mentioned in the developer's commentary that a conscious decision was made to avoid composing music which would get on our nerves in those situations. I think they succeeded. There were other smaller touches which showed me that the developers put a lot of thought into crafting a quality experience for the player, such as the built-in hint system, a quick puzzle reset feature and fast-travel. All of this adds up to a puzzle game that is no longer than it needs to be, with only my puzzle-solving abilities being the limiting factor. I'm not really into puzzle games, but [b] MacGuffin's Curse [/b] grew on me and was worth sticking with until the end. It's a hidden gem.