Treasure Journey

Treasure Journey is a puzzle game in which you need to shovel your way through islands to retrieve keys and open chests.
Despite the tags, this game is not that much of a sokoban. There are some similarities though, so I guess it’s not too far either… but don’t expect a game as complex as most of sokobans are.

The game lets you do only one thing: destroy any destructible block with your shovel. You need to seek the keys in the levels and use them to open the chests.
There are no optional chests, opening all of them is mandatory as this is how you finish a level; there’s no exit to reach. The chests can be opened in any order; as long as you have a key available, you can open a chest.
So the core of Treasure Journey is optimization, the keys and chests often have a specific intended order you have to find.

There’s also a crystal to collect in each level. It sometimes increases the difficulty a bit because if you want it, you need to get it before opening all the chests.
The “sometimes” is because the crystals are not always very well thought out… in some levels it’s just a formality while in some others, the whole levels are made so that the crystal is the real objective and the chests are a joke.

There are 3 worlds, and each of them introduce a new mechanic. Though they are classic ones (teleportation pads, platforms that fall after you step on them…), they bring a bit of variety to the game and are cumulative – world 3 has the mechanics of world 1 and 2.
And what’s the mechanic of world 1? BOMBS! Bombs will be your main enemy, the puzzles usually revolve around them. They kill you if you’re in a certain range, so you either have to get rid of them or find a way around.

Seems like a good game so far?
Well, it would be… if it wasn’t for that worst enemy called camera.

Treasure Journey is ruined by horrendous controls. You move your character by clicking on a tile, and that in itself isn’t a problem.
However, if you look at any of the game’s screens, you’ll see what a typical level looks like : the puzzles are all islands with multiple layers and you often have to go very far up, or very far down with cubes blocking your vision.
That means you can’t see the whole puzzle from an angle, you have to be constantly rotating the camera in order to be able to tell your character where to go or see where could the keys/chests be. And we finally arrive at the heart of the problem : the camera is controlled with keys.
Like Q/E to go up/down, X/C to rotate on sides, W/A/S/D to zoom in or out and slide on sides… it’s really as awful as it sounds. Most games just put the camera on the right click of the mouse and it’s perfect, so I really don’t get it.

EDIT : The developer improved the camera based on my feedback and it’s much, much better. You should have no problem with the controls now.

I just have to mention the pathfinding, you know that thing that determines the optimal path when you order your character to move. It’s awkwardly done, it doesn’t take into account the bombs… so you can’t really click where you want to go, you always need to guide your character step by step or otherwise he’ll just run straight to his death.
In a 50/50 situation, the pathfinding will even proritize dying on a bomb lol. Come on, that’s some basic things to be careful about for a game like that.
There’s an undo button if you wondered, so you can fix the mistakes of the pathfinding but that’s just not supposed to happen.

Treasure Journey is a good little game, offering very decent things puzzle-wise.

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Developer: Argyron
Publisher: Argyron
Platform: Steam – Windows
Release Date: July 15, 2024