The Refined Geek

I have to admit that I’m developing a soft spot for these indie exploration games. It started out as a relationship of convenience, my dedication to one review per week can sometimes see me scrambling for time and this particular genre of games usually doesn’t last much longer than a couple of hours. However over time I’ve come to appreciate their simplicity and the narratives that they create, whether through traditional means or through more abstract methods. Kairo by Lupus Studios is an abstract puzzler/exploration game that tells the tale of one possible future, and what might be done to save it.

Without little more than a title sequence you’re dropped into a strange, clinical world. Off in the distance you can see a building but there appears to be a large, insurmountable gap separating you from it. Tentatively you step forward and find that it isn’t a gap at all and you’re able to cross over to the mysterious structure. Once inside it appears to be a lot larger than it was from the outside and there are rooms heading off in every directly. Curiously you enter one only to find yourself confronted with all manner of puzzles, each of them building upon one another, seemingly towards a greater purpose that never quite reveals itself.

Kairo has a distinctly desolate feel to it with most of the lighting being of a single colour that varies from room to room. It also makes heavy use of the film grain effect to give a little more texture to the otherwise flat environment which isn’t a particularly bad thing and there is an option to turn it off should you find it bothersome. The simplicity is very deliberate  however as it ensures that key game elements stand out and, in the case of story elements, shifts control of the narrative over to you. I’ll admit to initially feeling like this was minimal effort design but the further I got into it the more I realised that each of the visual elements was very deliberate, even more so than I gave it credit for.

The core game of Kairo is that of a puzzler with each of the rooms using a different mechanic or a twist on a previous one so that even the similar puzzles won’t have the same solution. Most of them are fairly easy to work out, usually being based off tried and true mechanics that have been done in countless other games, however quite a few of them require quite a bit of abstract thinking. Indeed should you not know a lot of the common ideas in science and mathematics it’s quite likely that a lot of the puzzles will simply frustrate you since there’s really no way to guess the solution.

One such puzzle I could think of consisted of two dials with a central spinner. The dials were controlled by your X/Y position on a plate and each of the wheels contained 8 symbols on them and the central spinner displayed 2 symbols on it. Now any intrepid puzzle solver would look at that and think that you just needed to match the symbols up and, indeed, that’s the answer to the first part of the puzzle. However after that simply matching them doesn’t work but you’re quite likely to stumble over a solution just by chance (at least I did for the second one). The final one actually requires you to know π to a set number of digits (rounded up, as well) which, if you were like me, you won’t figure out on your own because you thought it was a pattern matching problem, not a numbers related one. I admit this might just be me getting stuck in a particular mindset but when you’re dealing in things that are this abstract I feel it might be better to include a couple more visual clues to help you along.

People who’ve played this game will be quick to point out that Kairo does in fact include a hint system that you can access at any time through the options menu. Indeed when I said you wouldn’t be able to figure it out on your own this was what I was referring to as after spending far too long being frustrated by the seeming lack of coherency in the puzzle that was the first place I went to. The hint system is a great inclusion as it helps those of us who just aren’t in the same head space as the developer and just don’t get what certain puzzles were trying to accomplish. I endeavoured to keep my use of the system to a minimum however as there’s nothing more satisfying than working something out on your own.

The lack of any kind of tutorial however does mean that there are some aspects of the game that will be hidden from you unless you go looking for them. In many of the levels in Kairo there are runes hidden away in places that are usually quite difficult to get to and unless you’re the kind of person to explore every section of a level fully you probably won’t know they’re there. Indeed I didn’t know they existed until near the end of the second section when I was nearly 2/3rds of the way through Kairo. So whilst I can appreciate a game that goes for the ultimate in simplicity a little hand holding wouldn’t go astray, at least so I didn’t find out that I was missing a relatively large part of the game without even knowing it.

Probably my biggest criticism, and this should say a lot about the game overall, are the sections that aren’t required for you to progress further. They’re included for narrative purposes, usually giving you some insight into Kairo’s larger purpose, however they either do not contain a puzzle to solve or they have one which is non-critical (although do provide some really good bits of story if you should complete them). Whilst looking at the hints will reveal whether or not you’re in one of these rooms I would’ve been a lot happier if there was some visual indication, just so I didn’t spend an inordinate amount of time looking for a puzzle that didn’t exist.

As for the story I will have to be honest and say that I wasn’t completely sure what was going on throughout most of the game. There are references to mathematics, biology and general science all over the place but apart from a couple key points (like the control room) I wasn’t really sure what was going on. After I was intrigued by the possibility of a secret ending, which isn’t so secret since there’s an achievement for it, I found many good plot summaries that detailed Kairo’s purpose. Reflecting on my time with Kairo it then became clear that all the clues were there and I simply missed a couple key interlinks that would have revealed everything to me. So should you be looking to play this game I’ll advise you to explore as much as humanly possible as the tale of Kairo is one of tragic beginnings that ends with hopeful redemption.

Kairo is a standout title that utilizes its fanatical simplicity to convey a message that will only reveal itself through careful examination. Whilst this dedication to stripping away all extraneous elements does mean that you might find Kairo wanting in some aspects as long as you know this going in you will likely appreciate it far more than if you approach it like a traditional game. It’s not for everyone, indeed unless you enjoy building your own narrative I’d probably steer clear, but Kairo will reward dedicated players who give it the careful attention it deserves.

Rating: 8.5/10

Kairo is available on PC right now for $8.00. Total play time was 3.2 hours with 27% of the achievements unlocked.

If you’ve ever played QWOP you can understand the appeal of games that are intrinsically badly designed, usually to provide challenge in an otherwise ru rudimentary game. I’m not sure what it is but they seem to trigger the competitive OCD part of my brain, pushing me to master them even though there’s little to be gained since none of the skills gained in these games translate to other titles. They do provide a rather weird sense of enjoyment though, usually when I find a way to beat the system through an emergent property of the game that is, again, due the deliberately bad programming/controls/physics. Surgery Simulator 2013 is yet another title that fits in the “deliberately bad but devilishly fun” genre and I spent some time with it over the past week.

Born out of this year’s Global Game Jam Surgery Simulator 2013 started off as a comical heart transplant simulator where you, an unnamed doctor (or are you? It’s never really made clear), must get a new heart in your patient before they run out of blood. Unlike games like Trauma Centre which attempt to recreate the tension of performing medical procedures like this Surgery Simulator instead puts you incontrol of a single hand that you must use to perform all tasks, one that’s incredibly awkward to control. Still you persevere, performing heart transplants, double kidney replacements and even a brain transplant.

For a game that was originally created in 48 hours I have to say I was very impressed with the graphics in Surgery Simulator 2013. Granted they’re nothing spectacular but the stylization, almost TF2 like in nature, adds to the overall comedic tone. The level of detail in the environments are also quite astounding with all sorts of stuff you’d expect to see in a reception/surgery and, quite surprisingly, most of them functioning in some way. I have to say I didn’t expect any of the floppy disks to work when I put them in the drive, nor the pen to draw on the paper when I first started mucking around.

The premise of Surgery Simulator 2013 is simple: you need to get the new organs in the patient before they run out of blood. This sounds a lot easier than it is as the patient loses blood every time you hack into them and should you be… less careful with where you bash/slash/cut they’ll start to continually lose blood, putting a firm timer on how long you have to complete it. This is made all the more difficult by the controls which aren’t exactly intuitive, especially with the way they interact with the various tools and organs you’ll be working with.

Your hand is controlled by a combination of your keyboard and mouse. The A, W, E, R and Space bar keys represent your fingers which works fairly well although I often found my hand getting out of place after a little while. Your hand’s position and rotation are controlled by the mouse with regular mouse movement changing the overall position, depressing the left mouse button dropping your hand down and the right mouse allowing you to rotate your arm and move your wrist. If this sounds confusing it most certainly is and this is where the challenge comes in, mastering these whacky controls in order to perform the correct actions.

I thought that since I’d played a little bit of the original game I’d be more than capable of doing the same actions in the full version of Surgery Simulator 2013 but I couldn’t have been more wrong. The original was a little more liberal in what you could accomplish without severely injuring your patient like being able to bust open the entire rib cage with a single, well placed hammer strike. Attempting the same thing in this version seemed to do a lot more harm than good, often resulting in ~10% of their blood disappearing and leaving them bleeding rather quickly. It seems that the best way to complete most surgeries was with a light, precise touch, something I didn’t think was actually possible.

So whilst you might be able to accomplish everything by using the power tools to slice and dice your way through and knock organs flying with the hammer should you want to go after any of the numerous achievements you’d be advised to try the light touch and use the scalpel/surgery laser more often. Indeed whilst I might not be at A++ level on any of the surgeries yet I definitely found it a lot easier once I started playing it a little more carefully. There’s also the green syringe on the side which when used on the patient stops any bleeding completely which is a godsend when you’re trying to find out where to cut and failing miserably.

If you’re not finding the regular surgeries much of a challenge then there’s the Ambulance Mode which ratches up the difficult level significantly. You’ll get all the same tools however you’ll be constantly bounced around, moving all your tools around and often throwing something onto/into your patient. You can also lose things out the back of the ambulance, including the organ you’re trying to replace. Whilst it’s not impossible it sure is a damn sight harder, especially when the fire extinguisher keeps landing on your patient’s head.

For a game that was built in 48 hours then polished over the next few months Surgery Simulator is a surprisingly well done game, expertly capturing the “so bad it’s good” idea with it’s awkward control scheme and rediculous game premise. If you’re someone who likes to master the nigh on impossible then there’s a lot to love in Surgery Simulator 2013 and the myraid of achievements is sure to keep you coming back in the hopes of performing the perfect surgery. It’s certainly not a game for everyone, especially if you can’t stand being frustrated by bad controls, but the hilarity that ensues is most definitely worth the price of admission.

Rating: 8.5/10

Surgery Simulator 2013 is available on PC right now for $9.99. Total game time was approximately 2 hours with 29% of the achievements unlocked.

I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that I have something of a soft spot for the Tomb Raider series. It was all the way back in 1996 when I first encountered it, my hand-me-down computer barely able to run it due to the intense 3D graphics that weren’t exactly common at the time. Combine that with the platforming and lets be honest here, even though Lara was low poly she was in fact female, you had a game that served to capture my attention for far longer than any other game managed to do. However after the next couple iterations in the series I found myself attracted to other interests, and the rest of the Tomb Raider series was left unplayed. The reboot piqued my interest however as whilst Lara was an interesting character in her own right her origin story was never quite fleshed out, at least not my satisfaction.

Tomb Raider begins dramatically with you aboard the ship Endurance which is headed towards a small island off the coast of Japan in search of the old Japanese kingdom Yamatai. Before long though your ship is ravaged by a severe storm, cutting the ship in half and stranding everyone on the nearby island. This would be bad enough but the island is inhabited by a group of mercenary/cultists who capture you and your friend. Thus your transformational journey begins and it’s not long before the naive archaeology graduate turns into the Lara Croft we’re all so familiar with.

Coming off the graphics high that is Crysis 3 had me a little disappointed with the graphics in Tomb Raider, at least initially. I had turned everything up to its maximum which made it look pretty decent by comparison although it seems my graphics card is starting to show its age as it struggled to render most scenes, especially the more open world ones. However comparing it directly to Crysis 3 isn’t exactly fair as Tomb Raider isn’t designed to be a graphical marvel and in its own right it’s actually quite spectacular. Judging by the number of screenshots I snapped during my initial play through I’d have to rate it above most games that have come out recently and put down the initial disappointment to my disproportionate expectations.

Compared to the Tomb Raiders of yore the modern day reboot is a cornucopia of different game mechanics. The core is still your bog standard 3D platformer with many sections involving you running, jumping and climbing over everything to get to the next objective. Combined with that however is your Gears of War style cover based 3rd person shooter as well as a crafting system and large environments that hide all sorts of treasure should you be willing to look for it. For those of you who’ve played any of the Uncharted series you’ll be familiar with the majority of the game play right off the bat as they both play similarly, albeit with their own twists on certain ideas.

Whilst there’s a certain level of satisfaction to be had when you get a platforming section just right the first time around I have to say that it usually isn’t my favourite part of games like this. This probably comes from the early days of 3D platforming where you needed razor-like precision in order to make most jumps which was arguably where the challenge came from in most of those early games. Thankfully however Tomb Raider is a little more forgiving in that department as whilst none of the jumps are particularly hard should they be at some weird angle that’d only be achievable after 20 attempts your leaps of faith will actually be corrected ever so slightly should you make it in the correct direction. If you bollocks it up completely there will be no saving you but this little feature certainly made my platforming experience a lot better than it has been in the past.

The cover based shooting is also, for the most part, fluid and satisfying, providing you with ample challenge no matter what your weapon of choice might be. Like most shooter based games I tend to prefer one shot kill weapons (as I tend to panic when in spray and pray mode) and thus favoured the bow for the majority of the game. This was a viable strategy for about 60% of the game until they started wearing face masks which meant one shot kills were no longer possible, even with a fully upgraded bow. If I’m honest that kind of pissed me off as I took pride in being able to hit headshots while under heavy fire and the removal of that mechanic seemed like a really cheap way to ratchet up the difficulty. Of course it didn’t really do that since I just switched to the rifle, but it did make me wonder why I’d bothered upgrading the bow all the way when its intended purpose no longer existed.

Crafting works by gathering salvage from crates and enemies which you can then use at camp to upgrade your weapons. Not all of the upgrades are available to you instantly however and in order to unlock them you have to find additional weapon pieces that are scattered randomly throughout the environment. If you’re a min-maxer like me you’ll often find yourself with a huge excess of salvage as there’s no real point to upgrading every weapon but you’ll still have enough to keep all bar 1 of them at maximum without too much trouble. The same can be said for the skill point upgrades as past a certain point the additional skills will likely not fit into your style of play but you’ll be force to spend them in order to unlock the next tier of skills.

The experience/level system is a mixed bag where some upgrades are almost essential, others improve parts of the game that were tedious and the rest are simply not useful in the slightest. The cartography upgrade for instance, which identifies relics, books and caches through walls, takes out a lot of the pain of finding things which are almost not worth seeking out otherwise. The animal tracking upgrade however is rather pointless as you spend a fair chunk of the game no where near any animals. Indeed it seems that whilst you can sort of play the game in your own way your talent selection won’t be significantly different from anyone else’s, due to the next tier being locked until you spend the required number of skill points. It’s not exactly a terrible thing but it does make me feel like I’m wasting points on things I’ll never really use which just doesn’t sit well with the min-maxer in me.

I’m not one for exploration in most games, it feels like a cheap way to make the game go for longer, however Tomb Raider made it a lot easier with use of the survival instincts mechanic which highlighted areas of interest. They also made the optional tombs short and succinct, with the rewards for doing them being well worth your time. It was a really refreshing experience and unlike many other exploration type games I didn’t finish this one feeling like I had ignored the vast majority of the game because I didn’t want to play the cat and mouse game with the designers. I hope other games take note of this as it really was one of the stand out features of Tomb Raider.

Tomb Raider is not without its bugs and glitches, one of which is demonstrated above. As you can see on the left hand side there are walls there preventing you from getting in, however turning slightly makes them disappear, along with several other items in the room. This is in addition to other bugs like events not triggering which then leaves you stranded or results in you dying, ledges that look climbable but aren’t and the targeting reticle lying about having an enemy in your sights. These are all things that can be worked around and none of them stopped me from finishing the game but they did mar an otherwise highly polished experience.

Of course this whole reboot was done to tell Lara’s origin story of how she transformed herself into the grizzled Tomb Raider we know and love. In some respects Tomb Raider showcases this brilliantly with Lara struggling to come to terms with a brutal world that she survives in. At other times however it devolves into a PG rated torture porn where Lara is beaten, injured and brutalized in every conceivable way. It starts off being shocking but quickly wears thin as the writers attempt to hammer home the idea that she’s a naive girl that’s being rapidly transformed. It’s a passable story overall, even if the mysticism was a little overwrought, but hopefully future instalments will forgo the torture in favour of something a little more meaty.

Reboots are always a tricky thing to get right as you’re taking a well established universe and essentially redefining it in an attempt to reinvigorate (and hopefully extend) the fan base. For something as long running as Tomb Raider this is no small risk but thankfully I feel that Crystal Dynamics has done a great job, producing a game that wouldn’t be out of place even if the franchise didn’t have such a long history. It’s by no means a perfect game, plagued with a so-so story and bugs by the handful, but it certainly does the IP justice whilst giving them a firm platform from which they can build on.

Rating: 8.25/10

Tomb Raider is available on PC, Xbox360 and PlayStation 3 right now for $69.99, $78 and $78 respectively. Game was played on the PC with 9.6 hours played, 74% completion and 32% of the achievements unlocked.

There seemed to be an inflection point some time ago, around the time when the first Portal was released, when game developers suddenly realized the potential in creating non-traditional puzzler games that focused on ingenious mechanics. I’ll have to admit prior to this time puzzlers bored me as they were typically quite simplistic in nature and lacked any real novelty to keep me interested. This is probably also due to the indie renaissance which has seen many unique ideas make it to fruition that would not have done so otherwise. The Bridge is one such game, combining several different mechanics to form an incredibly intriguing puzzler.

The Bridge puts you in control of an unnamed individual who’s napping below an apple tree, a very Newtonian scene. Your introduction into the core game mechanics begins immediately as its your job to wake him up by rotating the scene clockwise/counter-clockwise until some apples shake loose from the tree and wake him with a sound bonk to the head. You then walk over to your house which contains doorways to places that are much larger than their outside would let on and your descent into a mad Escher-esque world begins.

As someone who’s become a bit of a fan of black and white photography the art style of The Bridge tickles me in just the right ways. The environments are all very pristine, in the sense that they feel like they were drawn on a computer rather than in a notebook. This is contrasted by the characters which are by comparison messy, feeling more like they’ve been scribbled in over the top. Indeed this is how your character is brought into the level initially and the juxtaposition of the organic style vs the pristine environment is quite intriguing.

I was quite surprised at how visually interesting each puzzle was as whilst black and white is a great medium to dabble in it doesn’t usually make for the most interesting games. This is mostly due to the environments themselves as like any of Escher’s works there’s an inordinate amount of detail just waiting to be discovered if you look hard enough. Indeed this level of detail forms part of the primary game mechanic where you’ll need to pay close attention to everything that’s going on in order to progress. There’s more to it than that of course but it’s probably the main reason I didn’t find myself getting inexorably bored with the constant black and white environment.

The Bridge starts of relatively simple with the main mechanic being your ability to rotate the entire screen 360 degrees whilst some of the external aspects remain constant. Gravity is one such property that remains constant despite any rotational changes you might make, always drawing you down towards the bottom of the screen. This is then made more difficult by the introduction of hazards like falling off ledges into the abyss and the addition of The Tormentors, large rocks with garish faces on them that will kill you instantly should you accidentally cross their path.

Thankfully like Braid and other puzzlers there’s a rewind mechanic that allows you to back pedal at any moment should you find yourself in a spot of bother. It’s useful for those moments when you’ve made a mistake that can be easily corrected however there were many times when I found myself going for the reset button instead due to the situation I got myself into requiring far too long to rewind in order to fix. This isn’t to The Bridge’s detriment however as it encourages you to experiment with random things without the fear of having to restart all over again. For a game that one could easily tire of if the repetition gets too high mechanics like this are almost a necessity and it’s good to see that The Bridge has included it.

As you progress several other intriguing mechanics are brought into play. There’s the switchers which will flip you from one side of an object to another, allowing you to access otherwise inaccessible paths. At the same time it also switches your colour from the default grey to white which also complicates certain matters as you can’t enter a grey door when you’re white and vice versa. This means that whilst a puzzle might look easy on the surface in reality you have to do a very specific set of swaps in order to get the right colour so you can use the door. Of course this isn’t explained to you until you attempt to open a differently colour door for the first time, which is a really cheeky move on the devs part.

The last, and by far most interesting, mechanic is the one that freezes you in position whilst everything still moves and, intriguingly, modifies the direction of gravity of those objects at the same time. It’s kind of hard to explain as I didn’t really understand what was happening until a particular puzzle required it (previously the solutions could be derived by simply inspecting the puzzle and putting things in certain locations) but once you see it in action it becomes clear how you need to use it in order to solve the puzzles. This is of course in addition to the previous two mechanics which makes some of the later puzzles incredibly intricate and, by the same token, very satisfying to solve.

There’s also some semblance of a story behind The Bridge however it’s limited to a few passages of text in between levels and the varying bits and pieces you get when you do certain things (like dying in certain ways) but in all honesty it’s really just background noise to the more intriguing puzzles. There’s references to obscure mathematical principles and what not all over the shop so there’s probably something in there for intrepid story hunters to dig up but nothing really motivated me to pursue it. a

The Bridge is a glorious non-traditional puzzler combining a glorious art style with several unique game mechanics to create a game that’s very enjoyable to play and incredibly satisfying to master. The Escher-esque world that the game developers have created is simply fantastic combining many of his ideas into puzzles that are on the surface obtuse and indecipherable but are in fact completely and utterly logical. I sincerely hope that it is destined for other platforms soon as this game would be incredible on a tablet, especially if motion controls were used for the tilting. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with The Bridge and whilst it might not have contained the usual story element that I crave in indie games it more than made up for it with intriguing and unique game play.

Rating: 8.75/10

The Bridge is available on PC right now for $14.99. Total play time was approximately 2.5 hours with 38% of the achievements unlocked.

I’ve become a really big fan of titles that challenge our expectations and perceptions of what constitutes a game. Usually this comes down to mechanics, like how Half Life 2 introduced physics based puzzles (something that was essentially impossible previously) but there have been many titles that have up ended the traditional idea of how games should operate. Quite often this leads to novel experiences that you just won’t find in other games, although there have been some notable exceptions. Antichamber is one such game that takes your preconceived notions of traditional game mechanics and continuously breaks them down in order to build them back up and does so in an incredibly intriguing way.

Antichamber throws you into a dark room with 3 walls that look like chalkboards and one that’s a window, with the apparent exit sitting behind it, tantalizingly out of reach. You’ll then turn your eyes to what looks like the beginnings of a map whereby a single click will transport you into a room. Things seem somewhat normal at first but it doesn’t take long before you’re seemingly trapped in a world that’s constantly changing the rules on you, forcing you to break all the conceptions you have about how things should behave and reforming them to fit into this strange new world.

The world of Antichamber is one of stark contrasts with the primary colour being white which is then offset by heavily saturated colours, all blended together in cel-shading to give everything this slightly surreal cartoonish feel to it. The visual style reminds me of The Unfinished Swan which similarly used white as the primary colour and it works just as well when its transported from that whimsical world to the cold, unforgiving world that is Antichamber. This combined with the decidedly organic sounds that proliferate the environment make for an unique experience that’s hard to put into words accurately but it certainly does work well.

Now this is the point in the review when I go over the core game mechanics which, for most games, typically consists of a few well known ideas with an unique twist. Whilst there are some familiar mechanics in Antichamber they are really only a distraction when compared to the variety of ways in which the game world behaves differently to that of any other game. Looking at a wall from one side could should you one thing while looking at it from another could show you something entirely different. You could walk down the same path dozens of times, seemingly going around in circles, only to find that if you turn around the correct path suddenly appears before you. Just when you think you’ve figured them all though you’ll likely be surprised by yet another strange twist on how this reality operates, forcing you to rethink not only the current puzzle but all of the ones that you encountered previously.

The non-euclidean geometry is only the beginning as well. Part way through you’ll be given a gun, for want of a better term, that’s capable of removing, storing and then placing blocks ala Minecraft style. Initially the use of blocks is relatively limited, usually used in order to trigger switches, hold doors open or as ledge for you to jump on. However as you go through the various levels you’ll be able to find upgrades to it that will allow you to draw blocks in a line, required for some puzzles where you can’t place blocks directly, and another which allows you to tell blocks to move to a certain point. The mechanics sound simple on their own but their use is really anything but leading to a whole bunch of highly frustrating yet satisfying puzzles.

The use of all these tools as well as the non-euclidean nature of most the puzzles is actually fairly intuitive for the most part which most puzzles having a pretty obvious solution should you be familiar with this particular style of game. This is primarily due to the not-so-secret hints that are contained within every little pictograph that’s lying around before/after each puzzle which gives you a bit of indication of how to go about solving it. Without any tutorial to speak of however there are some mechanics that aren’t really explained at all which can lead to you getting stuck with no way of progressing until you haphazardly figure it out or look it up online.

The prime example of this for me was the ability to generate an unlimited number of blocks if you drew a hollow square on a wall. Upon completing said square it will fill itself in, generating a large number of blocks for you to use which can then be used to generate even more, ad infinitum. The “Too Many Lasers” puzzle is a prime example of a puzzle that you will simply not be able to solve unless you’re aware of this mechanic and a quick Googling around reveals that most people discovered this mechanic by mistake, not by intuition from the game. It’s probably the biggest criticism that I’ll level at Antichamber as whilst I can understand the idea of making discovery part of the game you at least need to include a decent way of discovering the core mechanics, especially when its as vital as the one I mentioned.

There’s also an incredible amount of emergent game play possible once you’ve got the fully upgraded manipulator gun and a decent supply of blocks stored up. Whilst I’m sure this has been taken into consideration during Antichamber’s design there were a couple puzzles which I put in the too hard basket early on only to come back later and breeze through thanks to my stash of blocks. Not all of them can be done like this due to the use of the block destroying gates but there are quite a few that you can break severely should you manage to bring your blocks along.

For a game with potential for so many game breaking bugs I’m happy to report that my experience with Antichamber was mostly trouble free with the exception of trying to get it to run at the start. There’s a rather unfortunate bug in earlier versions of the PhysX engine which conflicts with the UDK which causes Antichamber to die before you can even get into it. Thankfully checking the discussion forums on Steam led to me finding the required update and the game ran smoothly after then. This solution isn’t working for everyone at the moment so your mileage may vary.

Antichamber is a truly mesmerizing and challenging game, filled with puzzles that will break down your preconceptions, rebuild them and then unceremoniously break them again just to keep it interesting. So many of the puzzles were incredibly cheeky in their implementation, teasing you openly for thinking that something should have worked which simply didn’t. It was one of those times where getting a puzzle wrong was actually one of the most enjoyable aspects as I know the coding behind this must have been an incredible challenge developer, something I really appreciate. Antichamber is right up there with titles like Portal for its innovative game play and definitely makes my list of must play games for 2013.

Rating: 9.25/10

Antichamber is available on PC right now $19.99. Total game time was 4 hours.

I missed the boat on many of Tim Schafer’s games. Whilst I was aware of the titles that rocketed him to game developer stardom (Monkey Island, Manic Mansion and Psychonauts) I never ended up seeking them out, even more recently when I’ve been told I have to play them. You can probably attribute that to the fact that many of my friends had Apple IIs or other similar Mac computers and as such weren’t able to share games with me, the primary one being the original Monkey Island series. Still his games seem to have something of a following and if the Kickstarter for the Doublefine Adventure was anything to go by I figured their latest release, The Cave, would be worth playing.

Upon starting up The Cave you’ll be greeted by a smooth talking narrator who introduces himself as the cave you’re about to dive into, something we’re told just to go along with. After a short setting of the scene you’re then introduced to the 7 playable characters that you can choose to bring with you on the journey. They are (in no particular order): The Knight, The Adventurer, The Monk, The Twins, The Time Traveler, The Scientist and The Hillbilly. Each of them has their own little story which you’ll dive into as you venture deep into the cave, revealing their troublesome past and hopefully work towards making their present a little better.

The Cave has gone for a stylized 2.5D environment, locking your movement to the traditional 2D platformer style which uses 3D models for everything on screen. Typically heavy stylization goes hand in hand with simplicity (as the choice to heavily stylize is usually done as a trade off for better performance) however The Cave’s various environments are drenched in detail with modern lighting effects, particle systems and intricate set pieces. All put together it works very well with each of the various sections of the cave having its own distinct feeling, especially the unique character rooms.

At the beginning you’re shown the group of 7 characters and you get to choose 3 of them to go along for the ride. The choice is arbitrary as no matter who you end up choosing you will be able to make it through to the end. Your choice of characters only affects the path you will take to reach the end although there are some sections which might go a bit quicker if you choose certain characters over others. In the end though due to the unfortunate choice of 7 characters rather than say 6 or 9 you’ll have to play the game through a full 3 times in order to see all of the character’s stories, if that’s of interest to you.

The Cave is your traditional puzzler/platformer, making you jump from platform to platform in order to find the right items to use in the right place or to pull various levers in order to progress to the next section. The twist comes from each of the characters that you choose to take on your journey as each of them has some kind of special ability that can be used to solve the puzzles. Now for the most part these abilities really only come into play during the character’s unique section of the cave but there are times during the intervening puzzles where these abilities might come in handy. The Knight for instance can go completely invulnerable which is kind of handy when you want to fall off ledges in order to descend quickly.

Thankfully there’s no real inventory to speak of so you won’t spend your time hoarding dozens of items in the hopes you’ll need to use them. Instead in The Cave each of your 3 characters can only hold a single item at a time. Whilst there are some puzzles that require all of your characters to have an item and be doing something with it most of the time it’s only the main character that needs to do so. However much like other puzzle games there’s no shortage of things which you can pick up and interact with which can sometimes have you holding things that serve no purpose what so ever. This is part of the challenge of course but its usually fairly obvious what goes where.

As for the puzzles themselves most of them are relatively obvious with solutions that come about organically or by trial and error should you get stuck. Usually frustration sets in when you’ve picked up an item at one place then placed it down to get another item that you need to use right then and there, forcing you to backtrack some distance to get it again. There were some puzzles which stumped me to the point of needing a walk through guide but most of them were me thinking a puzzle should was solved when it really wasn’t. There was one puzzle which I thought was a bit rough however (the final stage, very last puzzle if you’re wondering) which whilst not being rubber duck key sort of thing was still in the realms of “LOL DEVELOPER LOGIC”.

The Cave is well coded considering its simultaneous release across several different platforms however there was one quirk which proved to be endlessly frustrating and one hilarious bug (pictured above). The quirk seems to be due to the dual control scheme that The Cave uses, letting you control your characters with the keyboard or mouse (or both at the same time, if you’re so inclined). However if you click in a location and then try to use the keyboard, like I tended to do accidentally when resting my hand on the mouse, there’s a 3 second or so period where the keyboard just simply doesn’t respond. This isn’t due to my keyboard or mouse as I don’t have this problem in any other game and it caused no end of frustration when my characters wouldn’t move the way I told them to. It’s not exactly game breaking but it is incredibly frustrating so I hope it gets fixed soon.

The bug shown above is also nothing really serious, just a clipping issue where my character was able to swim through the ground, but there’s probably a quick fix to it that could be implemented without too much trouble.

I thought the story of The Cave was interesting but lacked any real depth to it. Sure the character’s backgrounds are explored decently through the cave paintings and their unique puzzle caves but none of them are particularly likeable or relatable. Now I get this is the point some what but their stories didn’t have any impact on me one way or the other. It’s made up for in spades by the fun and novel game mechanics so I guess what I’m getting at is that the story is serviceable but that’s not the reason I’d be playing the game.

The Cave is a solid platformer that brings in unique game mechanics and a pleasant art style to form a game that’s quite enjoyable to play. Many are seeing this as a teaser of things to come with the Doublefine Adventure and if this is true it should be shaping up to be something quite special, especially for fans of Schafer’s games. I had a good time with The Cave, although my second play through didn’t last particularly long (I stopped about half way through the first unique puzzle) but then again I’m the kind of player who gets rapidly disinterested in games I’ve already completed. The Cave is certainly worth a play through just for the unique experience it provides.

Rating: 8.25/10

The Cave is available right now on PC, Xbox360, Playstation 3 and WiiU right now for $19.99 and an equivalent amount of points on the varying systems respectively. Game was played on the PC with 4 hours played and 19% of the achievements unlocked.

Way back in the day, before I had a decent Internet connection and Steam, I was something of a handheld gaming fiend. I can remember my GameBoy fondly, it was a giant device in my little hands and I had but one game to play on it: Nigel Mansell’s World Championship Racing. I kind of skipped the next couple generations of handhelds though (unless you count playing the demo unit at work) but I did have a PSP for a long time, one that was modded to heck and back. I even bought my wife a Nintendo DS as a present which is still loved to this day but more for its utility value than a gaming platform. The end result of this is that while I was aware of Scribblenauts I never really bothered to check it out. That is until it became available on Steam late last year.

Scribblenauts Unlimited puts you in control of Maxwell, a rooster helmeted kid who’s been bestowed with the incredible power of being able to bring any object to life through the use of his magical notebook. Like any kid with unlimited power Maxwell, accompanied by his sister Lily, goes a bit crazy and starts creating all sorts of mischief. That is until an old man curses both of them and tells them that it can only be lifted should they use their powers to help out others. Strangely enough Maxwell seems unaffected by this curse but his sister starts turning to stone. Therefore its up to Maxwell to do good deeds in order to collect Starites, the only things capable of healing Lily.

When I first started up Scribblenauts Unlimited it’s art style reminded me heavily of the flash games of yesteryear as it has similar colour palettes and animation styles. This seems to be purely coincidental however as whilst 5th Cell has a history of mobile/casual game development they haven’t made a single flash game although some of their recent titles were apparently inspired by them. The simplistic art style combines well with their sound design which incorporates a lot of subtle background music, universal voice acting (ala The Sims) and hilarious sound effects.

Scribblenauts Unlimited is a 2D puzzler that has a rather unique game play mechanic: you can create nearly any object you can think of by simply typing it out. So unlike most puzzlers where you either have to get a combination of items/switches/things right or search around for hours looking for the appropriate key or whatever you’re instead presented some kind of problem from a someone/thing walking around and then its up to you to come up with the most appropriate item to solve it. Since you have literally tens of thousands of items to choose from it’s usually easy to find something to get the job done, but that’s not where the fun comes from.

One of the situations I can remember was a group of kids had lost their ball in an old man’s yard and wanted me to get it back for them. Easy enough I just walked over there to pick it up however the old man intervened and took the ball away from me. It’s obvious then that they want you to distract the old man so you can get the ball but I figured there was a better way. I gave myself a grappling hook and shot the ball and dragged it back to me, completing the mission. This also had the hilarious consequence of also triggering the old man to retrieve it which confused the physics engine and sent me flying across the map.

You can also add adjectives to almost any object in the world which can significantly change their properties. Whilst I usually used this for hilarious effect, like creating a Bacon Narwhal or a Flying Supersonic Armoured Stegosaurus, it also made some of the puzzles incredibly easy. For instance when a kid was getting attacked by a bully all I did to solve the puzzle was add “friendly” as an objective to said bully and he turned from giver of wedgies to nerd lover. It also ends up making some rather weird objects, like if you write “psychic glasses” you get a pair of glasses that has a crystal ball stuck on the front of it.

While the default Maxwell is more than capable of completing all the puzzles you’ll probably find yourself wanting to get around levels faster, especially as they start to increase in size. Most of the time I’d draw myself up a Fast Jetpack (adding fast to it doubles the speed) in order to get around better although I graduated to my supersonic flying stegosaurus after I realised they had dinosaurs coded in. It would be nice if you could use the inventory system to set up a default set of items for you as any time you reset the level you’ll lose everything, even the costumes Maxwell is wearing. In fact the whole inventory seems pointless as it’s just as fast to type things out as it is to use them from there. That’s probably a hangover from its DS origins, though.

From a technical perspective Scribblenauts Unlimited is solid with the only real problems coming out of the physics engine getting into weird edge cases like the aforementioned grappling hook incident. In terms of the game play though it does get repetitive really quickly as whilst you can make all sorts of hilarious combinations it starts to wear thing after you’ve made several things that are on fire or made Cthulu fight Zeus for the 100th time. It does play well in small bursts though which, again, I think is due to its DS origins and its concurrent release on the WiiU which is arguably more aimed towards casual players.

There’s also a rudimentary story but it’s really only that, serving only to provide a kind of backdrop with a moral that can be summed up as “be good to one another”. I’m not saying its bad, just incredibly simplistic and considering it really only comes into play at the start and the end means that there’s no character development at all. Of course this is a game that sacrifices story in favour game play so I won’t judge it too harshly based on that but it’s something that bears mentioning.

Scribblenauts Unlimited is one of those games where the emergent game play is what makes it so much fun and the puzzles just seem to be catalysts to bring on all sorts of unintended behaviour. It really is a lot of fun to solve puzzles in completely unintuitive ways, especially if the solution simply makes no sense. It does start to wear thin quite quickly however and would probably be far better positioned as an iOS title since it lends itself so well to short bursts of game play. Still it’s technically sound, very enjoyable and both visually and aurally pleasing so it’s probably worth a look in if you’re looking for a break from more traditional games.

Rating: 7.9/10

Scribblenauts Unlimited is available on PC, WiiU and Nintendo 3DS right now for $49.99, $78 and $58 respectively. Game was played on the PC with 5.5 hours total playtime and 50% of the achievements unlocked.

Much to the chagrin of many of my friends I haven’t really got into the whole Walking Dead craze that seemed to sweep the Internet over the past couple years, mostly because my wife went ahead and started watching them without me. Couple that with the fact that I’m a terrible reader (I only seem to find time for it on long haul flights) I have also given the comics on which the whole craze is based a miss. I tell you this because The Walking Dead game seemed to attract just as much fandom as the IP’s other incarnations but that was most certainly not the reason I decided to play it. Instead I had heard that Telltale Games had done well with this particular franchise and since their treatment of Sam & Max was pretty decent I figured the hype was probably well earned.

The Walking Dead takes place in modern day America with you playing as Lee Everett, a university professor who’s been recently convicted of killing his wife’s lover and is on his way to jail. On the way however the police car you’re in hits an unidentified person sending the car tumbling over the embankment and leaving you trapped in the car. After looking around it’s clear that something is amiss with the officer who was driving you rising from the dead and attempting to attack you. Things only seem to get worse from here on out as you struggle to survive and protect the few people you manage to team up with.

Whilst I haven’t played many Telltale games (although I’ve watched someone play through most of the Sam & Max series) I still got the feeling that their titles had a distinctive style and The Walking Dead certainly fits in with that idea. Due to the extreme cross platform nature of The Walking Dead the graphics aren’t particularly great but the heavy use of comic-book stylization (I’ve seen people say its cel-shaded but I’m not entirely sure about that) means that it still works well. The animations and sound effects are somewhat rudimentary but this is made up in spades by the voice acting which I’ll touch on more later.

Whilst The Walking Dead is more like an interactive movie with game elements the core game mechanics are those of an adventure game coupled with a few modern innovations like quick time events to drive some of the more action oriented sections. If you’ve played other titles in the same genre like Heavy Rain then this style will be very familiar to you where the game play elements are there to serve as a break from the usually quite intense story sections. Of course decisions you make during these sections can also have an impact on how the story unfolds, something which The Walking Dead informs you of at the start of every episode.

Even for a modern adventure game the puzzles that are thrown at you are rather simplistic usually consisting of you tracking down a particular item or following the bouncing ball in order to progress to the next area. Some of the puzzles are also completely optional, as far as I could tell, as there were a couple times when I’d do things that didn’t seem to have any impact past the scene in question. For a game that is heavily focused on the story rather than the game play I can’t really fault it for this as hard puzzles usually only serve to break immersion and frustrate the player but if you were expecting The Longest Journey level brain ticklers than you’ll be disappointed.

What I was thankful for was the simplistic inventory system that shied away from having some form of combine or use one item with another item type mechanic that a lot of games like this have. Usually this just ends up in frustration as you try to find the right item combination in order to solve the problem, something that I’m not usually a fan of. Instead if you have an item that can interact with something in the world it’ll show up as an option taking a lot of the guesswork out of the equation. Sure figuring something out can be fun and The Walking Dead certainly has some satisfying challenges but playing inventory item roulette isn’t one of them.

The Walking Dead is, for the most part, bug and glitch free however I had several occasions when the game broke on me in one way or another. Typically this took the form of the keyboard or mouse simply not responding during an interactive section, rendering me unable to progress any further until I reloaded. This wasn’t usually a problem but sometimes it did mean losing a bit of progress, forcing me to replay through a section. By far the worst bug was when a particular cut scene somehow managed to double itself up with all the characters saying their lines twice over the top of each other and the animations attempting to do the same. Personally I’d put this down to the multi-platform release which means that the amount of time that Telltale could spend on QAing each platform was reduced significantly. In all honesty though I thought most of these bugs would be ironed out given the time since the initial release.

Realistically though you wouldn’t be playing this game for the game mechanics, you’ll be playing it for the story. The Walking Dead tells you in no uncertain terms that the choices you make will affect the outcome of the game and that’s 100% true. Depending on the choices you make certain characters may or may not be alive, people might react to you differently or you might end up in a situation that you didn’t expect to find yourself in. At the end of each episode you’ll also be greeted with a statistic screen which shows how your choices lined up with the greater community and the results can be rather surprising at times.

What really got me initially were the small decisions that I’d make in the heat of the moment having drastic repercussions later on, sometimes right after doing so. Traditionally your choices in these kinds of games were almost irrelevant due to the complexity of creating multiple story arcs that have some level of coherency. The Walking Dead still has decisions like that at times during the game but it’s hard to know which one is which before you make it. I can’t tell you the number of times that I found myself wanting to go back and change something because the result wasn’t what I had expected but since there’s no quick save/load function (a deliberate omission) there’s really no way to do it unless you want to play the whole episode over again. Even then you might not be able to shape the story in the way you want.

I also want to give a lot of credit to the voice acting as it’s not easy to make something fully voice acted and have it come out as well as it has in The Walking Dead. Whilst there can be some strange fluctuations in tone should you choose different types of responses (Lee usually has passive, neutral and aggressive options) the sound bites themselves are well spoken and full of emotion which is probably one of the reasons I found it so easy to sympathize with the characters. There’s been quite a few games I’ve played recently that have been ruined by sub-par voice actors so The Walking Dead was a welcome change and one that I hope more game developers take note of.

The story was one of the great examples where I could hate everything that was happening but still felt a deep emotional connection to most of the characters. The relationship between Lee and Clem is a beautiful one and whilst I won’t spoil the ending anyone who’s been through it will tell you that it’s utterly heart breaking, to the point where I was just staring at the monitor, not wanting to accept what was happening. From what I can gather though this is what The Walking Dead franchise is all about and it does a damn good job of making you care for a lot of people before putting them through all sorts of hell, taking you along with them.

The Walking Dead is a great example of an episodic game done right as each of the sections stands well on its own but together they form something that is very much greater than the sum of its parts. The graphics are simple yet well executed, the voice acting superb and the story so engrossing that you’re likely to be thinking “what if” for a long time to come after you finish it. If you’re a fan of adventure games or The Walking Dead itself then there’s going to be a lot to love in this cinematic adventure game and I can recommend it enough.

Rating: 9.0/10

The Walking Dead is available on PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox360 and iOS right now for $24.99, $29.99, $29.99 and $14.99. Game was played on the PC with around 10 hours played and 100% of the achievements unlocked. 

Us PC gamers are always slightly wary of ports. The reasoning behind it is twofold, primarily stemming from the fact that many ports are rush jobs, leaving us stuck with interfaces that were obviously designed for another platform and failing to take advantage of our PC hardware. It’s also partly due to our slight bruised pride from no longer being the platform any more and the issues with ports just seem to be yet another strike against us. Strangely enough though I’ve found ports from the portable market, mostly from iOS and Android, have actually been quite good with Galaxy on Fire 2 genuinely surprising me with how well it translated to the PC platform. Waking Mars is another title that found its fame on the mobile market and now, thanks to Steam’s Greenlight project, has found its way onto the PC.

Waking Mars is set in the not too distant future of 2093 where a team of scientists, including you playing as Liang, have been sent to investigate some of the caves that were discovered on Mars. You’re not going in blind however as some time before your team sent a robot, named OCTO (presumably because it had 8 legs), down to investigate and the pictures it sent back indicated there was life down there. However shortly after sending those pictures communications were lost and whilst his recovery wasn’t a prime directive it did necessitate the need to go down and investigate these life forms further and discover a whole new world that has been lurking underneath Mar’s surface for an eternity.

Unlike most of the adventure/puzzle/point and click adventures I review on here Waking Mars isn’t done in pixel art fashion. Rather its done in a hand drawn style, one that’s very familiar but I can’t place my finger on where I’ve seen it before. Whilst the animation is a bit wonky at times, for both your character and some of the NPCs in the world, it’s still quite passable. The colour palettes are also quite bright and varied which helps to make sure that you don’t get visual fatigue looking at the same sodden brown landscape for hours on end.

The core game of Waking Mars is a cross between exploration and puzzle solving. Primarily your aim is to increase the “biomass” of each section by making the various creatures and plants reproduce in the little section you’re currently in. Initially this just starts of with you planting seeds and watering them (which then makes them produce more seeds) but it grows into a complex puzzle of what you should plant where and managing the different types of soil in order to make sure you can produce the required amount of biomass. Once you reach the required level the door to the next level will open up, allowing you to dive deeper into the cave.

As far as puzzle mechanics go its pretty novel especially when you get further along when there are certain plants that will kill other plants which also spread voraciously if not kept under control. Each room obviously has an intended solution, one that if done properly will see you complete it with a minimum of fuss and waiting. This can be something of a blessing or a curse as early on you don’t have the right tools to undo your mistakes. Thankfully up until a certain point all the puzzles are designed to not block you until you get to a stage where you can generate any number of the right seeds you need, as shown below.

This particular level also demonstrates the potential for emergent game play mechanics that can be lovingly exploited should you have the time to do so. In this particular area I had what I called a Yellow Seed Reactor (the ones that can grow in the acidic ground) where regular green seeds seemed to collect. Also in the same area was a couple of those life forms that eat the green seeds to reproduce and since the seeds will keep coming as long as I don’t pick them up they had a near infinite supply of food with which to reproduce. In the same area there was also one of the acidic plants that reproduces when it eats one of those little things so whenever I needed a couple of those seeds I’d simply travel back there and wait.

Indeed the way I completed that level was by simply sitting there and watching the reactor in progress as there really is no limit to the amount of times those little buggers can reproduce. It can also backfire horribly on you as they run away when you get near them and the collision detection gets a bit wonky when there’s 100 of them together, usually resulting in a mass suicide that drops hundreds of biomass in a second. I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was hilarious though because seeing them all explode out only to fall over and die is pretty bloody funny.

Past a certain point however the puzzles start to feel very samey as you’re just repeating the same motions over and over again. Once you’re in the big chamber you have pretty much unlimited access to all the seeds you need which makes most of the harder puzzles moot but at the same time it also means you’re forever trucking back and forth between locations in order to get the right materials ready in order to progress through. This might not have been as much of a problem if I was playing it on my smart phone since I’d only be playing it for 10~20 mins at a time (and its broken up perfectly for that) but sitting down and playing it for a couple hours means the repetition gets to you and doesn’t make for compelling game play.

The story is also semi-interesting although it feels like it was lacking any direction. Your motives seem to wander from investigation to getting back to base camp to investigating random signals at different points on the map, all without a clear sense of direction. There’s heaps of additional objectives to do but there’s no driving force, either in upgrades or in terms of the story, to push you to do them. Again this feels like an artefact of its mobile origins where it was designed to be picked up and played for a bit and then put down again until the next session.

Waking Mars is fun and novel, exploring an idea that all my fellow space nuts would love to be true. The core game mechanic is certainly refreshing after all the exploration/puzzler games I’ve played of late but after a while it starts to look all the same. The so-so story that has troubles with direction and pacing doesn’t help this either but that doesn’t stop Waking Mars from being a game that’s worth a look in. I’d probably recommend it on Android or iOS as it seems to be well designed for that and whilst it doesn’t translate badly to PC I still think you’d have a better time elsewhere.

Rating: 7.75/10

Waking Mars is available on Android, iOS and PC right now for $4.99, $4.99 and $9.99 respectively. Game was played entirely on the PC with 3 hours played and 47% of the achievements unlocked.

If there’s one thing that Wadjet Eye Games does well it’s sci-fi point and click adventure games. I can remember seeing the trailers for Gemini Rue and just getting swept up in it, loving the idea of revisiting a genre I hadn’t touched in the better part of a decade. Their next release (although not developed by them) in Resonance managed to continue the trend, invoking that same nostalgic feeling whilst also bringing some solid game play that reinvigorated the genre. When I was approached to preview Primordia (and subsequently given the chance to play it before it came out) I was beyond excited and today I bring you my first day 0 review of Wadjet Eye’s latest game.

Primordia is set in a post-apocalyptic future where you play as Horatio Nullbuilt, a robot who’s found himself stranded in the middle of a vast desert with a ship called the UNNIIC. It doesn’t seem like he’s particularly unhappy with his current situation, having spent his time salvaging the wrecks in the nearby vicinity to build his companion Crispin Horatiobuilt, but that’s all thrown into disarray when a strange robot forces its way into his ship and, after shooting Horatio, steals the central power core dooming Horatio and Crispin to die when their charge runs out. Of course this will not stand and this begins your quest to find your power supply and see the mysterious robot brought to justice.

Like all of Wadjet Eye’s previous titles Primordia is brought to you in brilliant pixel-art form bringing the great level of detail that we’ve come to expect from them. The colour palette is distinctly post-apocalyptic future, favouring muted shades of everything interspersed with bright neon glows every so often. Like Gemini Rue before it this really does convey a certain mood as even when other characters greet you cheerfully you can’t help but shake that feeling that something is still amiss, something fundamental. Coupled with every line being fully voiced acted Primordia is exactly what I had come to expect, a pretty good achievement to say the least.

The core of Primordia is your tired and true point and click adventure. Each screen is essentially a mini exploration game where you’ll spend countless minutes pouring over every detail, hovering your mouse over each section to see if it lights up with text that indicates you can interact with it. Unlike other games which make interactive parts obvious by highlighting them Primordia gives you no such luxury, instead forcing you to use your eyes and mouse in tandem to discover each and every interact-able part. For some this will be an exercise in frustration but for those of us who revel in this genre it’s all part of the fun, at least for the first 10 minutes or so on every screen.

Like all point and click adventures Primordia follows the traditional game sequence whereby you’re given free reign over a particular section, being able to walk/click/interact as much as you like, but in order to progress you must solve some kind of puzzle that’s blocking your way. This usually takes the form of finding out which items work with each other which can then be used on said blockade in order to progress further but there are also challenges that rely on you being able to decipher riddles and logic puzzles. Cleverly such puzzles aren’t brute forcible like they are in many similar titles, giving you a couple tries before you’re sent away in order to find another way to solve it.

What I really love about Primordia, and indeed any of the more modern point and click adventures, is the revamps of the inventory system that take away much of the tedium that was present in their ancestors. Primordia has your typical inventory, which can get rather cluttered towards the end, but it also includes a “datapack” which stores critical information that you glean from the environment and NPCs. Gone are the days when you had to rely on pen and paper or solely on your memory in order to figure out the solution to a puzzle which is an absolute godsend. It can also function as something of a red herring too, providing you with information that’s not relevant at all, which adds some challenge back in.

Another great improvement is the use of side kicks, in Primordia’s case Crispin, as hint machines that can help you get unstuck if you’ve been struggling with a particular puzzle. The clues aren’t always helpful, indeed many times asking Crispin what to do results in snide remarks or things I had already thought of, but there were many points where I found myself simply unable to think of new ideas. It was at this point that Crispin could jump start my brain again which I was really appreciative of given the lack of a walk through guide that would do the same.

I have to admit that the first half of my time spent with Primordia was one of frustration as there were many puzzles that I just simply couldn’t manage to figure out in a decent amount of time. Eventually I figured out that I just needed to take a break from it at this point and upon returning would usually be able to continue on. However towards the end something just clicked and all the challenges started to make sense. It might have been dumb luck, indeed there were some puzzles I solved by simply clicking the right item on the right place at the right time without even thinking about it, but I still feel that there’s a certain mindset you need to be in. Once you get it though Primordia becomes immensely more enjoyable.

Of course the main reason I play games like this is for their stories and Primordia does not disappoint. Things are slow going at the start, mostly because its just focusing on you and your companion, but the lore and back story of each character slowly builds around you until you get to a point where you realise you’re in the depths of something that’s far bigger than yourself. The way it morphs from a simple story of “get my power core back” to a full blown political conspiracy story really engaged me and the last 2 hours I spent with this game just seemed to fly by. I get the feeling there are alternate endings as well, meaning I don’t think I’ve explored every option yet, which means there’s even a bit of agency granted to the player. That’s pretty rare for this kind of game.

Primordia is a fantastic game and it was everything that I had come to expect from Wadjet Eye Games. The art work is great, the characters vibrant and believable and the puzzles, whilst frustrating at times, are incredibly satisfying when you manage to complete them without any outside help. I could really go on but the fact is that you’d be much better off just playing it as the story is what makes this game so enjoyable and I’d rather not spoil it for you here.

Rating: 9/10

Primordia is available on PC right now for $9.99. Total game time was approximately 6 hours.