For more puzzle game reviews, news and everything puzzle-related, follow Puzzle Lovers and check out our Steam group.

mystic escape: diary of a prisoner is a lo-fi 1st-person point & click adventure with a japanese setting and a narrative that kept me interested despite some clunky controls and frustrating puzzles, and as it turns out, almost zero payoff without finding all the collectibles.

you wake up on a boat, not knowing where you are, how you got there and what happened before. noticing a glimmer in the distance you decide to investigate and end up on an island full of puzzles. plenty of variety through the 11 chapters, each with its own prominent puzzle type (laser redirection, jigsaws, lights out, etc.) and many others to mix things up even further, though as always, I could've done with fewer rotating ones. some are typical, well-known brainteasers, some are lesser-known, and none of them involve timing or quick reflexes, and there are no musical puzzles either.

I like mechanical puzzles, stuff like the room series, for example, but for some reason many of the puzzles here didn't click with me and often I couldn't even figure out how to solve them. only origamis can be skipped, and maybe it was my mood or impatience at the time, but I found myself turning to the built-in hint system more often than I would've liked. it straight-up shows the solution for the current area or puzzle, you can pause and fast-forward, but a few hints first would've been preferable.

most of the chapters are fine, but 6 and 7 were the lowest points for me. the former laser redirecting, and a lot of it, the latter ring puzzles, also a lot of them, to be solved without all the information on-screen. you're standing next to them, with the pattern to recreate by rotating the rings somewhere off-screen, and the inside of the rings wasn't even visible without constantly moving back and forth. inside view got added to the bottom right corner on request, but I still found these really tedious.

speaking of back and forth, controls are a bit iffy. it's your typical pointing & clicking to get around and interact, right click zooms out, holding left click over an item in the inventory embiggens them and you can rotate them, but movement and camera angles caused me a lot of frustration, sometimes I wanted to move and interacted with an item instead, or vice versa. using items isn't by dragging them around, click once in the inventory to select them, then again wherever you want to use them. it's fine, just a bit different.

iffy controls are especially problematic when it comes to collectibles, which are mandatory for the real ending. each chapter has a few, noted on the level select screen. you have to find pieces of paper to reveal a location somewhere in the level that might be tricky to find and properly click on too, then often open a hidden compartment and grab a fragment. chapters can be replayed individually, and once you finish them, no need to restart, you can go back to the last checkpoint where most of the level is still accessible and hunt down the missing ones.

progress is saved if you quit mid-chapter and a bunch of quality of life features got patched in right before release, separate volume settings, x/y axis flip, etc. and windowed mode and resolutions are available via the unity launcher.

I haven't said a lot of positives about the game, but I liked the graphics, the audio and the narrative, some of the puzzles were fun as well, but it wasn't as enjoyable on the whole as I'd expected. some puzzle types were really frustrating and overstayed their welcome, but I'm sure many people will find them fine and have a better time than I did. and since I kept missing collectibles, and around the middle gave up on them entirely, the lack of a proper ending left a sour taste as well.

if you're intrigued by the look of the game or the puzzles and don't mind somewhat clunky controls, give it a shot, it will keep you busy for several hours, even more if you go for all the well-hidden collectibles, but I think the full price is a bit much, so maybe wait for a sale.

Definitely a thumbs up for me. At first, it's confusing what exactly you're supposed to do and how the controls work but once you figure that out it's smooth sailing from there. The puzzles slowly become extremely addicting and some very frustrating (my favorites were the magnifying glass dot ones and the light beams). I also really appreciate the inclusion of the hint system and that skip button for the origami - because those are brutal! The length of the game is great for the price as well.

You know what, I had fun playing this game. And maybe in this cruel and broken world, that's all we can hope for.

Pros
- unique puzzles (like origami)
- yogi bear cameo
- mega64 camera work
- lofi japanese aesthetic
- well balanced difficulty
- modernist plot

Cons
- too much origami
- no ending
- pixel hunting
- finicky movement
- puzzles you don't understand even after you've solved them
- puzzles that don't register as correct even after you've solved them

Follow "First Person Exploration and Puzzle Games" for more games like this!

It's alright. It's like an extremely low budget version of "The Room". Like "The Room" games, there's no instructions on what to do, but that's fine because there are plenty of contextual clues. And also similar to those games, some of the puzzles are pretty good, and others are really bad, but that's fine because there's a generous hint system in place.

If you've played all "The Room" games and are itching for more, I'd say this is worth a shot.

Mystic Escape - Diary of a Prisoner is a mobile app that's been dumped on Steam as if it was a real PC game (it's not)... it's a cash grab from greedy mobile devs. The game is a simple low poly "adventure" game where you tap on your iPhone screen to look around various environments, finding inventory items and using them to solve simple puzzles designed for mobile gamers to be able to understand. Ugh.

From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.

The game features lazy low-polygon "retro" assets, making this look like a barely functional 3D game from the 1990s. It's unclear why the developers weren't able to arrange high quality, high polygon count contemporary assets for the game, and also irrelevant... what matters is that this looks bad as a result of their decisions, a compromise PC gamers shouldn't have to put up with.

The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers.

Because this is a mobile app, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the iPhones that the game was designed for. These are unfortunate handicaps and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was an afterthought for the iPhone developers who are to blame for this. The game is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for mobile phones forces upon a game. Once more, mobile devs have made gaming worse for everyone. I didn't spend thousands on building a gaming rig just so I could pretend it's an iPhone.

These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.

The poor quality of this game is reflected in the general public reception. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the game only ever reached a peak player count of only 4 players. That's right, only 4. This is a pitiful enough number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam, the overwhelming lack of interest in the game is remarkable, but also to be expected. This complete and utter rejection of the game from gamers should be a keen information point for anyone considering buying shovelware like this. Gamers just didn't take this seriously, and for good reason, PC gamers don't like mobile trash.

Once more we see greedy mobile devs trying to scam PC gamers. On Steam, this is $10 USD, on app stores, it's free. Mobile devs must learn PC gamers are not here to be gouged, and can't be expected to pay a whopping TEN DOLLAR premium for a free mobile game just because it's been lazily dumped on Steam. This is unacceptable disrespect for PC gamers. Because this can be played free elsewhere, and because of the other defects, it's impossible to recommend. Who do they think we are?

Enjoyable except for the origami puzzles. I had to quit playing altogether. Tedious despite the hint videos.

Puzzle after puzzle and then more puzzles. A puzzllrr's dreamscape. Some unique puzzles incorporated. (e.g. Origami). Recommend to puzzle lovers. I liked this game alot. Also has good length of game play. HELPFUL HINT: Be sure to find the small papers and subsequent mirror shards as you go along.