TIME BREAKER

Let’s just quickly talk about the positives: the game is beautiful and runs smoothly. It’s short but the price is correct so ok.

Now I know this is a small-scale project but that doesn’t grant it immunity to criticism, I paid for it and the dev will never improve if the truth is never told (and this truth is not an illusion sorry).
And despite the harsh review, I’ll still check out Desordre to see the evolution. Every dev has to begin somewhere, ReThink is one of my favorite puzzle game series and it also had a kind of weak start.
But let’s get to the main point: why this game is absolutely horrible.

First the “puzzles” are just ridiculously easy. And don’t tell me there are several difficulties with the step counter, this is just an artificial way of increasing difficulty that is, I think, not fun in this game. It was challenging and kinda interesting in Portal because of the portals mechanics but here I just don’t see the point especially considering there are collectibles to find.
But the main problem here is not the absence of intelligence in the “puzzles”, it’s the way everything is designed to make you waste your time.

The level design is just abysmal:
– Uninteresting puzzles, you instantly know how to do them. And if you don’t it’s because of one of the following points, NOT because you needed to think
– Hidden PUZZLE items and that’s a shame (no problem for the collectibles to be in the game) but man you can’t just hide a core element of a puzzle in a corner wtf
– Hidden puzzle objectives, like yeah “activate 2 connectors” but where are they??? Oooooh they are the small dots 50km away in a random place in the background, cool. Or the other laser puzzles in which you have to find small hidden holes where the laser must go instead of actually building a solution
– Annoying platforming with cubes obstructing your sight
– Traps and small crevaces on the floor to kill you for no reason
– Long boring rooms with risky jumps just to make you fall and retry

That’s how you design lazy uninteresting filler puzzles, not fair and good ones. The platforming parts can also be very frustrating sometimes.

Apart from that the story is the crazy AI stuff as usual, the lore is a big mess and the notes don’t really help to understand it better. The way our character is reacting is nice though at least (the words in the air).
My collectibles are also bugged, I have 30/31 but I have 0 left to find (I checked all the rooms).

I can’t say it’s the worst puzzle game I’ve played because Magnetic: Cage Closed exists but yeah, that’s one hell of a bad puzzle game.

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Developer: SHK Interactive
Publisher: SHK Interactive
Platforms: Steam – Windows
Release Date: May 17, 2022