Taiji
Taiji is an adventure puzzle-solving game set in a mysterious world full of puzzles. Unlike many adventure games, the puzzles in Taiji all use a consistent interface: a grid of tiles which can be toggled on or off.
Although this might seem simple, the consistency of the interface frees the player from guesswork or pixel hunting that happens in many adventure games. It is always clear what the player must interact with in order to solve the puzzle, but it is never entirely clear what they must do. There are many different areas in the game, each with their own visual and mechanical themes. As you explore this dense world, it is important to think hard and to pay close attention, as vital clues are sometimes hidden in plain sight.
Read More: Best Difficult Puzzle Games.
The Long Gate
The first thing you notice about this game is the grandeur and mystery of its environment, and it doesn’t ever let up; as I moved through the different sections of the game I marveled at the design of the machinery and rooms. The soundtrack provides an excellent backdrop to levels that are variously organic, mechanical, dark, and alien. The puzzles themselves are unlike anything I’ve seen in a game before. Built on the simple (and very much real) principles of electricity, the puzzles quickly take you from clicking on/off switches to troubleshooting gigantic electromechanical computers. Sometimes the goal is clear, other times not so much. This forced me to experiment and learn the principles before I could really solve anything complicated. The learning curve steps up quite a bit at some points, but not unreasonably so. A very satisfying challenge with plenty of those “oh I get it now” dopamine hits. Highly recommended.
– Real player with 26.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Difficult Atmospheric Games.
Ok, so I’ve just finished the game for the first time (replaying soon because I still need that sweet, sweet 100% engineer mode achievement!) but I wanted to get my immediate feedback at 14.4hrs in onto paper :P
Firstly, a bit of my background. I’m a researcher in Computational Chemistry, and have a keen interest in quantum computing and electronics. I mention this as I think I’m not your typical audience, as not every gamer will have my experience with these kinds of things.
Onto the review! Spoilers abound from here on out so don’t read on if you care about those!
– Real player with 14.4 hrs in game
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– Real player with 3.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Difficult Puzzle Games.
This game is tripe. I spent nearly 40 minutes very slowly trudging from room to room with no idea what I was meant to be doing. Putting aside the bad english translations which I could get the jist of, there is still no coherent plot or instructions. The controls are terrible, you move glacially slowly and you spend forever waiting for dialogue boxes to close trying to open doors and explore. I think this game is a big maze of number-matching item fetch quests and as it takes about 10 minutes waiting for you character to move from one side of the map to the other at snails pace, frankly life is too short.
– Real player with 0.7 hrs in game
Grandma’s Footsteps
Inspired by the classic children’s game: ‘Red Light Green Light’… comes a… not so children’s game.
The Story
You are staying at your Grandma’s house for the weekend to keep her company. Now, your Grandma is famous in the family for her cookies! And being the ‘cookie-loving’ grandson that you are, you cannot keep your mind off of her scrumptious, freshly baked goods!
As you explore through the different rooms of Grandma’s house, you notice Grandma getting on with her day to day house-work and activities: sweeping the hallway, cleaning the dishes, catching up on knitting projects and so on…
You and Grandma are best of friends! She takes you to the park to feed the ducks, to the beach to build sandcastles together and she always has her renowned cookies an arms length away! You’ve always wanted to learn to make cookies with her, but every time you ask to she refuses, saying how she’ll take her secret cookie recipe to the grave with her!
As the years have gone by, Grandma’s eyes have been getting worse, as has her memory! She always forgets where she leaves her glasses.
She likes to joke when she tells you her bedtime stories, saying how she carries a shotgun on her at all times in case intruders try to steal her recipe!! Grandma does make you laugh, you love her silly stories!
The Game
So how do you play Grandma’s Footsteps?
Grandma’s house is made up of 6 different rooms (levels). To unlock the next room along you will need to approach grandma in the current room you are in to receive a cookie!
But Grandma is always on the look out for intruders after her secret cookie recipe!
Grandma isn’t wearing her glasses, meaning she cannot see her Grandson properly… So when she turns around… don’t move, or else her bedtime stories you so well know and love, may just become reality…
The Night of Joe
You have been so nervous, holding your CV in your hand for a job you need but don’t really see yourself doing. After the interview (that went horrible) you went to the bathroom to “refresh”, and you ended up falling asleep…When you woke up you still had this weird dream in your mind about a guy in the clouds telling you to be careful and giving you something…was it a flashlight?
Strangely you realize that it’s already night time and you’re alone in the supermarket. You’re holding the flashlight in your hand, thinking that you are still dreaming but it is reality.
Something strange is going on here…
While walking between the shelves looking for an exit you realize that you are not alone, something in the Night is hunting you.
Armed with your special flashlight, will you have what it takes to get out of the building?
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Each time you die the location of some objectives are randomized.
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Find and activate electric panels to then take the escalators and go on the next level.
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Stop the monster with the special mode of your flashlight, but be careful it uses more battery and you will be defenseless in the dark.
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Survive the Night.
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No gore.
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Meet Joe’s special humor.
cat notebook
Like a walk through a museum, you move through art and the art moves you. Nobody can tell you how it should make you feel. But maybe by the end of the experience, the ordeal, you’ll leave the museum a stronger person. That is the beauty of Cat Notebook; there is no wrong way to play, no wrong way to go. At the end of it all is an audiovisual experience that changes you for the better, or for the worse. For those seeking deep introspection, you’ve come to the right place.
– Real player with 71.7 hrs in game
I’m not sure how to approach reviewing this game(?), so I suppose I’ll just see how my experience stacks up to the list of features in the description.
“• explore a cat notebook”
I definitely did that, so, check that one off.
“• many unique illustrations to look at and songs to listen to”
To be precise, there are 97 unique illustrations, and 97 songs to go along with each one. Accurate enough so far.
“• do cat-like things”
You can move around. You can meow, sleep, and sit. Seems pretty cat-like.
– Real player with 10.3 hrs in game
How I learned to Skate
“This is a story about how I learned to skate. It was hard…"
How I learned to Skate is a desperately difficult ice-skating challenge about a boy learning to skate for the first time, following an increasingly burdensome path, chasing after the girl he could never have.
Gameplay
Control individual legs and body tilt to move the ice-skater with a mouse or a controller. It’s simple.
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Raise a leg
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Choose a direction
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Release the leg
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Tilt the body to turn
Additional info
This game is all about learning and mastering a new unique mechanic.
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A challenge with checkpoints.
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Inspired by a Warcraft 3 mod that I love, Polar Escape 5
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Merged together with instantaneous mouse controls from Getting Over It
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Takes roughly 12 hours to complete, depending on how fast you learn. Roughly 3 hours for the demo.
Aya’s Journey
This is a change in pace for me, because I genuinely hate writing this review.
I’ve wondered why the ‘Limbo’ style games never caught on. Until now. This game is like Death Stranding, except bad. Bad in an irredeemable way. I don’t even think it matters what I say, because this game seems to be in eternal ‘Early Access.’ It’s very likely the 2 people working on this game (that’s not a joke), gave up on this project as no progress has been made in 3 years.
But hey that’s what happens when you allow 2 people to run a game company with ADHD. (that’s a zinger).
– Real player with 3.6 hrs in game
If your a fan of Limbo then you will like this. Few times I had to push an item a little to long to get it in place for the puzzle but not sure yet if that is part of the story or lack of. Can’t wait to see what else comes of this title…
Pros: Artwork, Atmosphere, similar style as Limbo, price, early access
Cons: Repetive Soundtrack, pushing something at a slow pace for what seems a little to long
– Real player with 1.9 hrs in game
Commander ‘85
I had very high hopes for Commander 85, unfortunately after many, many hours of trying to figure it out, I can’t recommend it in its current state. The game is buggy and either crashes or simply… stops working in the most random places. Objects get stuck in my character’s hand, I can’t select dialogue options…
Bugs aside, the game is incredibly confusing and chaotic. I spent hours trying to understand how it works, due to a lack of clear instructions to anyone who isn’t familiar with how computer programming/hacking works. It’s hours of trying to memorize the commands, figuring out which one to use, how to input it, how everything I do affects the game… by the time I understood HOW to play, I had died several times, without really understanding why.
– Real player with 13.5 hrs in game
This is a game that offers little to no hand holding. I’ve learned most of what I figured out by trial and error. If you’re stuck you can take a look at the top secret file that contains hints/tricks for beating the game. I feel a lot of the negative reviews are people who didn’t like the style of the game or didn’t understand how to play. You must be patient and keep at it. I recommend this game but only to those who like a game that leaves a lot to the user to figure out.
– Real player with 3.6 hrs in game
Dark Egypt
The scenery at the start of the game is probably the only highlight of this game. The lack of clear instructions make it very difficult for a first time player to complete this game without additional guides. Moreover, the lackluster gameplay does not really compensate for the uninspiring plot. The map itself is also just straight up a maze (and not in a good way).
– Real player with 11.1 hrs in game
This is a niche game for people who don’t mind a lot of downtime waiting for the game to load (or relaunch after a crash) and love to die a lot trying to figure out how to survive traps and other situations.
It looks nice, has fitting noises/music, decent, challenging gameplay, but also fun-destroying technical issues.
The game’s two big problems are frequent crashes and long load times, and these issues occur together. When you launch the game your savegame will load fine, but after you die you have a much higher than even chance of the game crashing, but only after you’ve sat through the half minute load time of course. Yep, half a minute. After every single death / crash. With not a lot of textures to load (and from an SSD drive) and a static light map that should have been pre-rendered for all levels when the game launched, not on every savegame load. There shouldn’t even be a load time. You can expect to spend 80%+ of your time watching the game launch after a crash or watching the load screen.
– Real player with 3.6 hrs in game