49 people found this review helpful
5 people found this review funny
Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 32.1 hrs on record (21.7 hrs at review time)
Posted: 23 Jun, 2019 @ 9:52pm
Updated: 8 Sep, 2019 @ 11:09pm

I am playing this on an iMac Retina, 8GB-3.3 GHz-Core i5, with an AMD Radeon R9 M395 video card & running El Capitan 10.11.6.

Well, to get to right to the point, This is the best puzzle game I have ever played!

Now, for the reasons why. Often, a puzzle game is satisfied to get by on the strength of its gameplay, and not a lot of effort is put into the presentation. Well, in this game the presentation glows like a shiny diamond. The graphics are great, with a lot of detail, and are perfect for the game. The sounds are just right, and fit the game like a glove. I could not ask for more from the game in these areas.

The meat of the game is you build a Rube Goldberg sort of machine using pieces from a box of parts, and must accomplish a certain result as best you can. And here is where the game really excels. You are not just trying to solve the puzzle, but you will also be judged on how expensive your machine is (how many parts you used), how big your machine is (how much space does it take up), and how many commands you give your machine. Yes, there is a beautiful little set of programming orders that you give your machine, and it is very easy to use. Some games that require some programming to do can be intimidating, but this is simple clicking & dragging of little squares with a single command on them, and the whole process is easy to figure out and use (but, as with the best puzzles, hard to master). Sometimes, after I had solved a puzzle, I would just turn my machine on to watch it run, it was that fun.

When you solve the puzzle, you will see a nice little graph that will tell you how you did in each of the three categories, and best of all, if any of your Steam friends play this game, it will show you how well your puzzle did compared to theirs in each category! One of the beauties of this game, is not just that there are lots of puzzles to solve, but even after you have solved a puzzle, it is still fun to go back and try to do better. Here is a article with videos I found on Rock,Paper, and Shotgun that shows someone solving the same puzzle many different ways.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/02/27/what-works-and-why-opus-magnum/

You will never run out of things to do in this game.

Finally, there is a fun mini-game within Opus Magnum that is a lot of fun to play, and the game and puzzles are presented within the framework of a story that is also well done & interesting.

So, I have to come up with some negatives, and this is literally the only thing that I could come up with. There are only 5 Steam Achievements for the game, and three of them involve that fun little mini game (Sigmar’s Garden), not the main game. Really devs, You were so close to being perfect, you just needed to add some more achievements.

To sum it up, if you like puzzle games at all, you simply must have this game in your library.
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3 Comments
curselove 14 Aug, 2019 @ 11:28pm 
IFIYGD 23 Jun, 2019 @ 11:21pm 
Hoping this one is part of the Summer Sale, for sure. :)
kycaver 23 Jun, 2019 @ 10:04pm 
To all my puzzle playing friends, I give this game my highest recommendation. With the Steam Summer Sale coming up, keep this treasure in mind.:slimehappy: