Eternal Threads
Eternal Threads is a single-player, first-person story-driven puzzle game of time manipulation, choice and consequence.
As an operative tasked with fixing corruption in the timestream, you have been sent to the North of England in May 2015, where six people died in a house fire. Prohibited from simply stopping the fire, you must instead manipulate the choices made by the housemates in the week leading up to it so that they all survive the event.
From the outset, you have free and complete reign to explore the seven day timeline before the fire. You can watch and alter the significant events from the entire week as many times as you like and in whatever order you wish. Some decisions will have only minor effects on the timeline, moving objects around the house or revealing deeper stories and secrets. Major changes however, rewrite the timeline by changing existing events, adding new events and even replacing other events entirely.
You must traverse up and down this timeline, changing decisions at different moments throughout the week so that their effects interact and combine together to save all six housemates.
However, it is not just the housemates who have choices. Each of them can be saved from the fire in multiple ways, with each outcome having a profound effect on their lives in the future. Will you just search for the quickest and easiest solution, or can you find the best possible outcome for everyone?
Ultimately, everything is about choices and consequences.
Features
Choose how you want to follow the game’s story
Want to follow each of the six characters’ stories ‘Pulp Fiction’ style? That’s fine. Want to watch the whole thing like ‘Memento’, with the final event first and then moving back in time to see what caused it afterwards? That’s okay too. Or maybe you’re old school and just want to watch things in good-old chronological order? You can do that as well.
Watch and change things as many times as you like
Can’t remember exactly what happened in an event? Changed a decision and you’re not sure you like the consequences? That’s fine. Just pop back along the timeline and watch and change whatever you like, whenever you like, as many times as you like.
Change the past to affect the future
Setting up temporary base in the house mere hours after the fire, provides a unique perspective on events. As you look back through the timeline, past events play out in front of you in ghostly form, with the smoke and fire damaged house a constant reminder of what is to come. In addition, as you manipulate the past, the environment can be reset around you to match the changes taking place. Some new objects will appear, others will move around the house and the contents of rooms can change substantially as you change the past.
Witch’s Reign
So first things first, this game is not worth the $10 price tag. That’s a steep price for a game that is fairly short, at the time of this review.
I got this game on sale for $3 and that is a pretty good price!
This game is pretty good, it’s got some solid puzzle ideas and I like the simple art design. It’s a memory puzzle where you explore a dungeon of sorts and make sure you don’t die to traps and monsters. You have a small line of sight due to a candle that can be blown out or lit again in order to trick the monsters onto the traps.
– Real player with 0.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Choose Your Own Adventure Turn-Based Tactics Games.
Lucky me gets to write the first review for Witch’s Reign. This is a very simplistic, bare bones top down “survival horror puzzle”, whatever that’s supposed to mean. What you really get is what seems like a mobile app where you can only see one square ahead, and in only one direction, so you need to move around an obscured grid/maze without getting eaten by baddies or falling in traps.
This has been slapped together with Unity, the game engine that’s been enabling mediocrity everywhere and giving Starbucks baristas delusions of grandeur since 2005. However, it’s very unpolished, to the point I don’t think this is an asset flip or a copy+paste of someone else’s tutorial or game demo. Nor could I find it on app stores, although they have higher QA than Valve, so probably wouldn’t permit this. So, I guess kudos to the developer for having a try. I think that’s more likely the explanation, that someone wanted to make a game but didn’t really know how, but put it on Steam anyway. I kind of wish Steam wasn’t a dumping ground for half baked ideas, there’s places like itch.io for that.
– Real player with 0.1 hrs in game
Fate of Kai
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Review by Gaming Masterpieces - The greatest games of all time on Steam.
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A new good looking point and click adventure? Yea, let’s play it. But, but… this is not one.
It is something new. Something that plays completely different. It is a story that does not follow a path of time. It is a book, where you do things, get something, turn a few pages back and use the thing you just got. Kind of getting something from the future. Does it make sense? No, to be honest not for me. It does allow for some interesting puzzles, though.
– Real player with 7.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Choose Your Own Adventure Visual Novel Games.
Fate of Kai is a short comic book adventure where the player can pick up actions out of speech bubbles and use them in other places to see different events play out in subsequent pages. The only words in the entire game are the alterable actions, every other plot turn and twist is told through the artwork, which is very well done. The game is split into seven chapters that tells the whole story from beginning to end.
– Real player with 2.7 hrs in game
!“Time Lock VR-2”!
USE TIME MACHINE TO SOLVE THE PUZZLES
Time Agents may interact with the objects in different ways: slow down the object time, make time rewinds or even transport objects between timelines!
All quests are build with Time Travel mechanic in mind.
FIGHT ENEMIES AND BEAT MINIGAMES
Time Agents must be ready to fight different enemies and even bosses during the Time Travel.
Use special weapons and Time Control Tools to succeed every action moment!
FULLY INTERACTIVE VR ENVIRONMENT
TimeLock VR offers a fully functional environment with lots of interactions: you can throw objects, open every cabin, turn lighting on and off and much more.
Each room can be visited in different timelines.
Zoo World VR
Firstly I want to stress that in NO WAY have I spent 10 hours on this garbage. I must have either left it running or it’s just plain wrong. This is probably the most amateurish and clunky mess I have ever come across. The “controls” are just plain awful, no guide on how things work or what even the aim of the thing is. This is one hot mess. Whoever wrote the positive reviews must be shills for the developer. Only buy this if you want to see just how bad it actually is.
– Real player with 10.0 hrs in game
I really like this! I am a fan of VR walking simulators, and this provided a peaceful stroll through the woods. The animal models and animations are quite good too. It ran great on my Valve Index (and even includes finger tracking), and I have not yet encountered any bugs.
Here is some constructive criticism for future updates (but really these are nitpicks, this is a great first version in my mind!)
- The intro video should be on a fixed screen in 3D space. Having a video play at a fixed location in the VR viewport is nausea-inducing for many. But you are in good company: Elite Dangerous has this same problem.
– Real player with 1.1 hrs in game
Burn Me Twice
This game was absolutely stunning. Some mention the “glitchy” graphics. That part did not bother me in the slightest. The story kept me interested the entire time, and when I wasn’t playing the game, my mind was turning about how I could get to the next milestone, in the game. The atmosphere of the game is stunning. The music was my favorite part. I would purchase a soundtrack, to this game, for sure! The sound effects were also impeccable. I did have to wait for a bug to get fixed: I was unable to complete the last part of the game; I won’t go into detail, but it was an issue with the “bone zone”.
– Real player with 5.3 hrs in game
Nice little game that left me wanting more.
It seems to be heavily inspired by the Phoenix Wright series, similarly splitting gameplay into investigation phase, where you hunt for clues and evidence, and trial phase where you present what you’ve found in court. The major difference is that the trials are rather simplistic in comparison - unlike PW, there’s no witness interrogation, and the evidence pool is much smaller. On the other hand, investigations seem more involved - it has Zelda-style gameplay (sans combat for the most part), where you explore an open world from a top-down perspective and solve puzzles. There are unfortunately only two cases to solve (plus the actiony final sequence), and the first serves as a sort of tutorial, so it’s easy and straightforward. The second one, however, is pretty good, with a few somewhat challenging puzzles to solve.
– Real player with 4.5 hrs in game