Recent reviews by Innocentive

Unforgettable Voyage is a fun little puzzle game in the sokoban style. The basic idea is that you control up to three different characters each with their own abilities of manipulating puzzle objects. There are 48 puzzles each with multiple objectives and the learning curve is comfortable. I took my time and really enjoyed collecting all the treasure and eggs (sic!) there are and it took me around eight hours ... which is a good amount of entertainment for the asking price of 5 € (current sale price is only 4 €). Strongly recommended!

I find Relicta to be an extremely fine first person puzzle game. It definitely draws from games such as Portal 2, The Talos Principle or Q.U.B.E but has unique puzzle mechanics.

Basically you have to move cubes around and place them on 'buttons' in order to proceed and finish each test. That is done to a great part by using your gloves which can apply a positive or a negative polarity to cubes. Although that sounds very simple there is a vast array of using these manipulations for a certain outcome. What makes Relicta stand out among the multitude of FPP games is that puzzle areas are vast and require a particular understanding of which intermediate goal can be, and has to be, achieved in what order. I thoroughly enjoyed "reading" the environment and making my conclusions as to what I should do next.

As to the visuals, Relicta certainly is a beautiful game but save for regular radio communication you are alone and the lunar station the game plays in feels sort of empty but that is a minor gripe. The voice acting is good but be cautioned that there is a lot of strong language if you are sensitive to that sort of thing.

Lately, two bonus campaigns have been added for free which almost doubles the content of Relicta so it is a definitve recommentation from me. Expecially considering that it is on sale for another two days and costs only 10 €. Go and get it!

Röki does everything right and was a real pleasure for me to play. It has an amazing story line with beautiful visuals and sound design and intriguing characters. The game mechanics are exceptionally well executed. Let's go through these items from end to beginning.

The game is played with a controller which I found incredible since the game is a point-and-click adventure at its core: In order to progress through the story, which is pretty much linear, you have to find/combine certain items. In my opinion, the controller integration works outstandingly well and, in fact, removes the one thing that has me troubled with modern p&c adventures: having played my first p&c game about thirty years ago, the contraints of indirectly moving your avatar through mouse clicks feels "old" and tedious to me by now. Using a controller feels so much more natural and allowed for me to empathise with the game avatar in a much deeper way while still keeping all the other characteristics of a p&c title, mainly progressing through the story in a non-violent way by solving one mini-quest at a time.

These quests are well integrated into the story line, at no point did they feel forced by the devs which is a huge plus. Furthermore, only one or two quests had me deeply puzzled (and that was due to my lack of attention!), so I'd say solving the quests does not get in the way of experiencing the story and its progression. Rather the opposite is the case: they add to the story.

Quests are either environmental in nature, i.e. find something to open a locked gate, or they are given to you by persons ... if you count beings from scandinavian folklore among those. There are plenty of mythological figures that help and/or impede your journey and it was a real pleasure "getting to know" all of them. I'd say that the devs did a very fine job of integrating these beings from old tales into the story. Each being you encounter has a particular character that is outlined by its actions and words, however, I wouldn't say that these characters are particularly deep, just deep enough to add to the experience of the gameplay.

As to the visuals and the sound there really isn't much to say because I found them to be flawless and beautiful. There's just one particularity I'd like to note: speech is basically subtitles with an appropriate verbal sound added. Spoken word really is an exception in Röki and if I'm not mistaken the only words hearably uttered are a couple of names. So, on one side, the audio does not get in the way of clicking through a dialogue or a comment at your own pace. On the other side, those dialogues and comments do not lack the company of an approriate audio output.

Now to the story. On its surface, the story is about a girl trying to save its kidnapped younger brother. To that end, she is forced deep into Scandiavian mythology which is excellently embellishing the main plot. Upon her quest such topics as family, loss, and responsibility are pondered but in a very pleasant and non-intrusive way. Those underlying themes of the main plot touched me in a profound way. There are not many games that I can emotionally connect to but this title certainly did the trick for me. I'm aware that this may differ for other persons but I'm also convinced that Röki does a very good job in allowing the player to lose themselves in the story.

Finally, if you're still reading you probably know already that I wholeheartedly recommend this game ... even at the rather steep price tag of 21.99€ (currently still 15% off for 18.69€). The devs did a wonderful job with this title and put a lot of heart and soul into it so it's worth every penny. Go get it!

Playing through Simply Puzzles: Junctions was fun for me. It is a minimalistic numbers puzzle game and as such is very reminiscent of Tametsi and the Hexcells series even though its puzzles are not as unique and rather generic. Yet there has not been another similar game in quite a while that was able to keep my attention all the way through to the end.

Junctions puzzles consist of a board with a rectangular grid and some numbers on the grid junctions which tell you how many lines have to touch that number. Each square of the grid has to be filled with a diagonal line so obviously there are only two options to fill any given square. On top of that simple rule the player is not allowed to form any given shape with the lines on the board, i.e. there must not be a closed "loop" of lines. Finally and most importantly, none of the puzzles require any guessing!

What intriguied me about the game was exploriong all the different facets of "starting clues". Aside form the obvious clues, e.g. a 0 or a 4 on the board, there are plenty of other deductions that can be made in order to start filling an untouched section of the board and finding those was very satisfying. Yet the amount of deductions to apply is limited and with 100 puzzles to complete some may find the gameplay a bit repetitive. As mentioned before, Junctions does not reach the craftsmanship of such games as Tametsi or Hexcells.

There would be some room for improvement. Most important for me would be a feature that lets you highlight a specific continuous line on the board, especially in the later puzzles of the game. It can be quite challenging to figure those out on your own on a board with about 100 squares that are mostly filled. I know such feature from conceptis puzzles games and it would simply facilitate solving the puzzles as opposed to progressing the puzzle solution.

Nonetheless, I find Junctions much better than plenty of other minimalistic number puzzle games out there and as such it deserves my recommendation. It took me a little over 5 hours to complete all puzzles. For a price of 2.39€ that's a good amount of content.

At its core Elli is a puzzle game that is dressed in platforming. I very much enjoyed playing it all the way through the end which took me a little over 6.5 hours..

The puzzles in the beginning are pretty simple and there is next to no real platforming. But the further you progress into the story the more complex the puzzles get. Towards the end some puzzles span over multiple rooms which made it just the right amount of challenging for me. Yet the platforming difficulty, with a handful of exceptions, is only raised to a moderately challenging level throughout the game which I particularly liked because that way the platforming never really got into the way of solving the puzzles.

The puzzles consist of different mechanics that mostly are specific to the world you're in. There are about five worlds you travel through in a linear fashion. As mentioned before there are puzzles that span over multiple rooms but the way to solve these puzzles is still linear. The core puzzle mechanic is finding keys or placing boxes/cubes on buttons to open doors. In that respect you need to use your wand to make things visible that are hidden. In many cases that is the only way to proceed.

As mentioned above the platforming is not particularly challenging. Apart from the usual horizontal aspect there is quite a bit of verticality to the platforming. Mechanics include lowering and crumbling platforms as well as traps like spikes and fireballs. Particularly in the middle of the game there's also a lot of maneuvering on narrow ledges.

Having said all that, I think that Elli does a good job in implementing the above things. At first I was a bit annoyed that the camera perspective is half static, i.e. it moves automatically along the way the player is moving, but I got used to that quickly. Controlling the player model was smooth and very responsive. To date there appears to be no keyboard/mouse controls, playing with an XBox360 controller worked just fine for me. The world is beautiful and some puzzle sections actually have quite a far view which provided for an appropriate amount of depth to your surroundings. The music is above average even though nothing spetacular.

All in all, I can definitely recommend this game to anyone who is looking for a mildly challenging puzzle platformer, especially now while there's still a 10% release discount. But even at the suggested price of 7.39€ Elli gets a green light from me. Now if the devs would only add some Steam achievements ... trhat would be perfection.

Phantom Path is a neat little puzzle game. Having finished the game in about ten hours, there's a lot that I liked but also some stuff that took away from a very good experience.

The game is separated into separate levels, each containing one and sometimes two puzzles to open the exit to the next level. Each exit requires yellow or blue fire in particular pillars around the level. In the beginning it is pretty straight forward to find a fire of the required color and bring it to specific pillars. The further you progress it becomes more challenging, especially with the introduction of more puzzle elements. There are teleporters and bridges which also require a source of power that you have to find and provide. Furthermore there are so-called arcane walls that only let you pass if you have transformed into a floaty phantom thingy. Problem is that you can only do that transformation in certain positions of the map and as long as you are transformed you cannot interact with anything or exit the level, so you have to transform back first.

As with any game of this kind, it revolves mainly around reading the environment of each specific level, deducing which actions require what and prioritizing those actions by achievability. I'd say that the game does a pretty good job in readability. Only rarely did I find myself completely stumped as to what I'd have to do next. And each time I felt there was no way forward it was because I had overlooked something that in fact was not difficult see. So all in all I had a pretty great puzzling experience!

However, there were some downsides for me: the camera angle is fixed which sometimes made it quite difficult to see elements further away. I'm assuming the developer did this on purpose but I fail to see the logic. In my opinion the puzzles would be difficult enough without that artificial restraint. And then there are those dark phantoms that pop up every now and then. They can kill you if you come to close. But since they are introduced (and escorted off) the level with particular sounds they are not difficult to stay away from (if they are even close to your position), So in effect all they do is force you to wait a couple of seconds until they are gone and, thus, interupt puzzle flow. The same is true (and even worse) with black floaty phantoms that oscilate between certain pillars in some levels. They are a total nuisance because with every step you take you have to make sure that they do not swing by a pillar near you sometime soon. Fortunately they are only in a handful of levels if my memory serves me right.

Another thing that has to be noted is that there is a lot of running back and forth. However, that is not a bad thing per se. It rather is an integral part of the particular kind of puzzle game that Phantom Path is where you need a to get b but in order to get a you first need c etc. Some players may be turned off by this feature of such particular puzzles.

Finally, there's also some exploration as to finding loot and treasure which I found to be a nice side to the puzzling. There is a back story being toldd through books and letters you can find. The visuals are pleasing while the music sounded a bit cheap in my ears. Thankfully, the latter managed not to get annoying so I was fine with that.

To sum it all up, Phantom Path certainly is an enjoyable game for players who like this kind of puzzle even if it has some minor flaws. At the time of this review pricing was 8.19€ which I deem appropriate for the amount of gameplay. With all of that being written, I can definitively recommend it.

What a great game! I totally lost myself in this little gem of a puzzle platformer and I hope you can, too.

The premise of each level is simple: open the exit. For that you have to move some kind of energy source into certain positions by using the ever expanding variety of tools, i.e. puzzle mechanics. There is nothing more to say without giving too much away because Lumote manages in a spectacular way to confuse the player with all those flashy neon colors and shiny objects. And learning to read your surroundings and to make sense of them is where the experience becomes really satisfying.

I bought the title on a 25% sale and I'd say that it was money well spent. I'd also recommend Lumote at the regular price. But given that most players will probably finish the game in under ten hours you may find it a bit pricey. I'd counter by stressing that there is a significant replay value because I'm 100% sure that most players (like myself) sort of stumbled over most of the solutions in the first playthrough. There's plenty of room for improvement if you're into that kind of a challenge!

Unfortunately, I cannot recommend this game because the content does not justify the price of 16.79€.

The puzzle mechanics are interesting as you have to connect separate parts scattered on both sides of a sheet of paper by folding and rotating that paper in certain ways so that your character can move towards the level goal. Yet in my opinion the puzzles fall sort of flat because there is no real difficulty involved. In the vast majority of puzzles the positions of those separate parts make too obvious what you are supposed to do, especially because the options of valid actions are kind of limited.

There is a story which I, however, did not really care for, It is about the hardships of a long-distance relationship due to one partner getting a significant job in another city. In particular I was turned of by the quality of the internal struggles both characters face. C'mon, if you make a decision then stick with it and don't constantly whine about it / doubt it over and over again! On top of that, as far as I understood it, in the end the couple "makes it work" by one partner just giving up his/her dream ... seriously? How does that solve anything?

Finally, I felt that the controls were a bit too slow for my taste which made puzzle solving a bit tedious but I can see a potential reasoning behind that on the developers' side. Nonetheless it added to my overall dissatisfaction with the game.

All in all, I feel kinda bad for not recommending this title because the core of the game is a really neat idea. But to reiterate the pricing is simply over the top in relation to content and overall the gameplay experience was not exactly satisfying. If this title looks interesting to you I strongly recommend waiting for a sale at 10€ tops.

I really like this little puzzler. It reminds me of She Remembered Caterpillars and has interesting puzzle mechanics.

You have to direct three explorers through a series of puzzles. The puzzle mechanics require a certain kind of collaboration between the explorers because certain actions, that let one explorer progress, usually require a particular other explorer. So there is a fair amount of thinking ahead required.

The puzzles are quite well constructed and readable in terms of which intermediate goals to strive for in what order so that you can reach the final goal. The learning curve is fair and two more elaborate puzzle mecahanics are introduced only at a later stage in the game. On top of that you can hunt for coins in hidden in vases for extra achievements.

All in all, this one is a definite recommendation for me even though there could have been a little more content for the price. Yet I'm all for higher quality than quantity and the quality of the puzzles certainly is good!

The Room VR: A Dark Matter is everything you would expect from a VR version of The Room. Beautiful environments, intriguing puzzles, fascinating mechanics. I'd say it is a must have for every puzzle loving owner of a vr headset ...

... if there wasn't the issue of the pricing. 29.99€ at the time of release (without any release discount) is hard to swallow. I 100%ed the game in 2.9 hours (without using any hints) so 6 minutes of play time cost me around 1€!

So, definite recommendation for the title but if you've got any patience or are low on cash you should probably wait for a sale offer. I'd say the content is worth 15-20€ max.