ReThink | Lite

I was looking for a chill and moderately hard experience when I launched ReThink | Lite, little did I know I’d soon have to play the hardest ReThink game.
ReThink | Lite is described as a spiritual successor to ReThink 2 with easier controls than ReThink 3/4, and I agree on that. ReThink 3 especially was a bit “unfair”, you usually only have a few spots where you can place your cubes in the ReThink games but ReThink 3 worked differently and instead gave you the freedom to place your cubes anywhere inside large areas.
This rendered the game pretty hard and frustrating sometimes, ReThink | Lite goes back to a very classic formula without either the changes from ReThink 3 nor the new mechanics of ReThink 4.

The strength of ReThink | Lite lies in its deceptive simplicity, it feels like playing the old ReThink games… except it’s REALLY challenging. This game has some of the hardest puzzles of the series by far, some of them are absolute nightmares and got me stuck for hours because they very smartly trick you into wrong assumptions.
I also think the visual design of the puzzles was a lot more elegant. I really liked the layout of the areas, you get plenty of symmetric and interconnected puzzles as always but I felt like they were better handled and satisfying to look at. Probably because this game is a bit open like ReThink 4, you can tackle a few puzzles in any order but the areas stay pretty linear and confined.

The difficulty curve is also smoother than the other ReThink games. ReThink 1 was far too easy, ReThink 2 was too easy and suddenly became very hard near the end, ReThink 3 was difficult because of design decisions and ReThink 4 was extremely challenging from the beginning.
ReThink | Lite manages to find that sweet spot, with no puzzles being too easy for veterans or too hard for new players (well at least for the first few areas).

Yaeko really outdid themself with ReThink | Lite, this is the classic ReThink formula refined to near perfection. And unlike ReThink 4, I think ReThink | Lite is also a great entry point if you’ve never tried the series.
I wish ReThink 5 had followed the same direction, very highly recommended.

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Developer: Yaeko
Publisher: Yaeko
Platforms: Steam – Windows
Release Date: October 16, 2023