Patterna
An enjoyable puzzle game, Patterna kept my attention for dozens and dozens of hours. You need to determine which cells are or are not marked as part of ‘the pattern’ based on given distribution/adjacency information, somewhat akin to Minesweeper or Hexcells. Like the latter of those, all puzzles are set up in a way that you never strictly need to make a random guess.
The thing that’s really singular about Patterna in my view is the robustness of the random level generator. I was able to find settings that generated interesting random puzzles more often than not. The only issue is that sometimes the chain of reasoning was difficult enough that I needed to break out pen and paper and brute force the next move, which generally felt more like bookkeeping than entertainment. On the whole, though, the game did a good job of hitting a reasonable middle ground of difficulty.
– Real player with 97.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Ambient Relaxing Games.
In short: Patterna is a challenging hard-logic puzzle game with a steep learning curve. The mechanics are varied and the replayability infinite, but it is very rough around the edges with poor and sometimes frustrating implementation. If you have a low tolerance for bad UI, stay away. If you can stomach that and are a seasoned veteran of logic games, Patterna is well worth buying at full price.
In long: The developer himself compares Patterna’s mechanics to Hexcells, and one can immediately see the inspiration. But Patterna is far from a knock-off, does its own thing and expands gameplay well beyond the scope of Hexcells. Nodes may be revealed or not, may be part of a pattern or not, may carry information about nodes around them up to a distance of 3, may describe the length of the chain they are part of, may have up to 4 colors, may be unlinked, linked or directionally linked, etc. The complexity is smart and truly awe-inspiring, but comes at a cost:
– Real player with 74.7 hrs in game
Anagrams
Overview:
This has become one of my new favorite games! I have been playing it almost every night to wind down before bed. The music is very relaxing and with dark mode it’s easy on the eyes for nighttime. If you like the aesthetic of Mini Metro and Hexcells I think you will enjoy this game.
Game Modes:
My favorite game modes are Classic and Blitz. I also really love Zen when I just want to play a casual game. I really appreciate that I have the ability to select the type of game I would like to play based on my mood. You aren’t stuck to just one game mode like some other puzzle games. It helps to make the game more dynamic and also addictive! You can play super relaxing game modes or if you are more into fast paced challenging games you have that option as well.
– Real player with 24.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Ambient Relaxing Games.
The game do not stress you at all. Just play as long as you want.
– Real player with 23.4 hrs in game
Kanso
How to describe Kanso? Well, you play with your mouse, and you have to draw a line around a shape! Sounds pretty simple right?
This is one of those relaxing, zen like games, where you think everything is all easy and simple, but quickly you realise that things take some skill. This is a “line following” game. Everything is very bright and colourful and really is a joy to play.
As you draw around the shapes, there are “Koi like Daemons”, they kind of look like giant sperms, or perhaps tadpoles, they are on their own little journey, come into contact with them and you will have to start again. As you draw your line, you cannot go backwards, only forwards, but you can speed up or slow down, or even stop, that will allow you to avoid the Daemons, and finish the shape. As you progress through the levels, the shapes become more interesting and there are more Daemons to avoid, some will try to follow you, some will avoid you, some do not care about you. But you must always care about all of them if you want to progress.
– Real player with 0.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Ambient Relaxing Games.
Fool’s Paradise
Fool’s Paradise is a beautiful indie game. I liked everything about it: atmosphere, music, puzzles. I recommend buy this game. 10/10
– Real player with 6.5 hrs in game
This game…. in simple words.. painful. Unfortunately i thought it would be a fun indie game to checkout but after playing it for about an hour and getting nowhere I am calling this a bust. The camera and motion controls are lacking. Interacting with objects is awful. Its makes noises like you have done something but nothing occurs. There is no clear direction and although in most games that take that approach this is a subtle suggestion on flow to the story where as this game has not flow at all. Honestly its like painful. I don’t want to crush developers but in this case it needs some TLC. Def not trying again.
– Real player with 1.3 hrs in game
Schematic
edit: every issue got fixed (undo, back to menu, windowed mode), so flipped the review to positive.
schematic is all about turning on lights, much like turn on the light . in this case, both black and gray energy has to reach each lamp, at which point they’ll excuse themselves from the circuit. that’s the general idea, though there are a few other mechanics, like fuses that disappear if they don’t get energy from either end, but their removal is not a win condition. in fact, their presence is often crucial for solving a level.
– Real player with 1.3 hrs in game
A simple puzzle game. Can get a little frustrating at times but solving makes it all better
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game
Sudokolorful
It’s a very relaxing game. Perfect for when you just want to chill out and still exercise your brain a little. I liked the idea of a color-based Sudoku. It would be interesting if we had an option for customizing our own palettes.
– Real player with 7.9 hrs in game
It’s very colourful!
Love a good puzzle game!
Nominated it for the Sit Back And Relax Award during the Autumn 2021 Game Awards event.
– Real player with 1.5 hrs in game
Relax Simulator
~really nice games, good graphics, great sound effects, absolutely horrible music. Does anyone know of any way to turn the awful ‘music’ off ? ..and it would be great if the added more puzzles -or the ability to import some maybe, or a DLC pack ..?
– Real player with 8.3 hrs in game
I feel relaxed.
– Real player with 3.6 hrs in game
soundStrider
You will want two things: your headphones, and to read the game’s manual before playing.
Even then, this isn’t for everyone. If it is for you, you’ll find a hypnotic soundscape worth exploring.
I would describe it as an audio-only walking simulator; there are minimal graphics (as you can see in the screenshots), but you can even turn them off completely and play only by sound. There are waypoints that you can hear, and you can walk from one to the next on a trance-like journey, finding strangely relaxing varied soundscapes. There aren’t many games like this; of those somewhat similar that I played, it reminded me most of Proteus – but the focus on audio is of course much higher here.
– Real player with 0.6 hrs in game
Errrrrm, okaym well the ‘game’ does what it says you walk around and noises occur. pressing buttons on the controller did stuff and if I;m honest I have no clue as to what I was doing.
One big thing missing currently for a game that the Visually Impaired can play is Text to Speech in the menus. I dug around with my maginfier in hand and found a list of random settings, but no real accessibility options page.
I got in game and walked around randomly heading towards some sounds. Arrived at a sound and nothing seemed to happen, is this sound a ‘breadcrumb’? it got louder and more annoying as I approached. Found a button on the controller that made a boing noise.
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game
My Hole is a Mouth of Dirt
‘We lose ourselves in the things we love. We find ourselves there too.’ - Kirstin Martz
In this surreal psychological horror made in RPGmaker MV, Mole enters a tunnel complex under the premise he is being guided by God to complete a purpose during the ‘Endtimes’. Throughout Mole’s time spent down there we see him seeking out the Voice to direct him and, it is here, we see the mental journey being taken until Mole is finally ‘told’ what he must do by the Voice which is to bring a baby to Him. It is this task that enables Mole to confront struggles & overcome challenges in order to complete this Purpose.
– Real player with 3.0 hrs in game
I feel physically sick after playing this because of how involved I got and how badly the jumpscares got me, and I think this is worth a shot, however I do have some notes:
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The speed: I get giving a run option would mean rethinking a lot of the chase parts, but it was kind of frustrating in some points.
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The music: I’d never recommend lyrics AND writing you have to read and understand (it’s not accessible for many people), and some of the music felt particularly out of place - in particular, the jukebox was playing something too cheery. It was not bad, just weird.
– Real player with 1.1 hrs in game
OVIVO
Quite an unusual game, fantastic visual design! It feels like half a post modern art installation and half a puzzle-platformer.
Although the core gameplay mechanic is very simple(you switch between two colors) they’ve managed to build surprisingly rich set of different gameplay elements with it.
Art design is definitely something. The amount of hidden references and allusions is just mind blowing and I definitely haven’t spotted all of them.
Special praise for the soundtrack, it goes perfectly with both the general feel of the game and specifics of each level.
– Real player with 30.2 hrs in game
My goodness this game is simply stunning. The visual style speaks for itself; if you’re interested in this almost sort of Native American or tribal white-on-black starkness, you know this game is for you already and you should play it. The mechanics feel just like they should and there’s only one annoying bit where left and right get reversed (I raged a little bit). The music is great but they are fixed songs on loops, not responsive to your actions or the progression of the level as in 140 for example. Still, excellent compositions that fit the game’s mood perfectly.
– Real player with 5.6 hrs in game