My (lengthy) Review

[HugoBDesigner]

The Entropy Centre is a great first person puzzle game that involves spacial and temporal awareness, lateral thinking, and a lot of logic. It is right there on the sweet spot of games I like most, such as Portal 2, The Talos Principle, QUBE 2, etc. But ultimately, it lacked some polish and playtesting that would have placed it in the same category as those. This review might contain some small spoilers, but anything significant will be spoiler-tagged.

Gameplay: The gameplay is fluid and easy to get, and the controls are intuitive, and everything runs smoothly. I did miss a crouch feature, but that's mainly from me being used to it. The jump specifically felt rather short (I can't get on top of regular cubes, for example), but that might've been due to puzzle limitations. One thing that severely bothered me, however, was how often I'd get stuck on weird geometry, or how some boxes would clip through platforms, etc. Some more intensive work on playtesting would've been nice on that front, especially in areas where I could get physically stuck, or have a difficult time moving around in. I have also managed to very trivially access some areas the game clearly didn't want me getting close to, such as dead end corridors and little crevices in natural landscape. One other thing that became apparent as the game progressed was how often the game would use broken catwalks for navigation, to the point where any time the room would shake, I'd immediately go scavenge-hunting for the next catwalk to rewind.

Visuals: On the visuals side of the game, everything looked spectacular! Given the small team and budget, the game looks very polished and well thought out, with high quality assets and interesting level geometry and decoration. Some assets could have used some subtle texture variation, just so they wouldn't look so obviously copy-pasted (like all the lockers in the game being labeled "C4"). The early areas of the game look very believable and lived in, but as you progress through the campaign, you start to see more places where the visuals and level design were cut short. Near the end of the game, there were several, easily accessible offices (so not those far away ones you can barely see) that were completely empty, just a box with lights on the ceiling. There were also bizarre choices for prop placements at times, such as having those bulky tube monitors with logs sitting on top of a very modern flatscreen control panel (with a perfectly good office desk nearby where it could've been). Some puzzles had very, very extreme lighting and fog, to the point where everything looked white and opaque and difficult to comprehend and navigate.

Puzzles: The puzzles were amazing! Many of them had me thinking and planning for several minutes at a time, and the puzzle elements were very inventive! I especially like the departure from Portal 2 in that puzzle elements are primarily attached to puzzles, which meshes really well with the game's mechanic. Unlike in Portal 2, where you bend space to access fixed elements, in here you bend time to access mobile elements. Brilliant! Most of the puzzles were also very logical and easy to execute. As a puzzle designer and level designer myself, however, the main issue I had was readability. The early puzzles were fine in that regard, but late puzzles had the exit tucked away in hidden corners, had (mild spoiler for a late puzzle element)launch pads completely invisible in the equally grayscale floor surrounded by foliage, and later yet puzzles completely forewent having tracks for moving platforms to ride on (they would just float from point A to point B, clipping through anything in the path). Another major gripe for me was the time limit in the gun's time recording ability. A lot of puzzles - especially the late ones - involved a lot of steps, and having only 38.1 seconds at our disposal meant that, in some puzzles, I had to be extremely efficient with how I handled objects. I'd reset them at the start of their path, then make the most straightforward and linear moves towards their next destination, and would rewind them to correct for any idling in-between. And even then, in one particular puzzle, I had to solve it all over again twice because, despite all the optimization in timing, I still lost time!

Difficulty: This is where I'll probably disagree with most players. I'm already pretty accustomed to first person puzzle games, so the game was probably overall significantly easier for me than it was for most players. Especially up to chapter 6, I genuinely felt like I was solving the same puzzle over and over, with some very small variations. Once you inherently understand the way the time mechanic works, you can easily figure out those puzzles by playing them in reverse in your head. And since most of them are just about the order of execution, then the challenge became less about finding the catch and more about memorizing the actions you gotta do. I wish there were more elements like (mild spoiler for a late puzzle element)the folding cube, which is immune to time reversal in where it is in space. The late late puzzles, especially past chapter 10, significantly improved the challenge of the puzzles, and some of them really had me stumped for a while, but still, some of them just felt like "advanced" versions of the early puzzles, in that it was easy to solve but difficult to execute. I was also not very fond of the (mild story spoiler for late game)robot combat sections, as I felt like they completely detracted from puzzle solving and didn't fit the gameplay style at all.

Storytelling: I will be frank, the story isn't the strong suit of this game. It's an interesting premise, and has some compelling characters, but it overall wasn't too inventive or captivating. There wasn't much of a deeper meaning, or theme to explore, outside of the superficial ramifications of the setting itself. But, in all honesty, that didn't matter too much to me, since the story didn't really seem to be intended to be the main focus, but rather served as a platform to keep the game going and to justify the puzzles. I encountered several seeming loopholes and contradictions in the narrative - but I guess that's what happens when time travel shenanigans are involved - and at times it felt like the game tried to overexplain some details to its detriment (for example, when one email chain tried to explain déjà-vus with technobabble, when it could've given it an air of mystery and given more room for the player's imagination to fill in the blanks). But by far, the thing that bothered me the most was the way that reading emails and logs didn't really mean anything in the game. It just served as a "collectible" of sort, and while it did provide some funny jokes and gags, the exposition it gave didn't really seem to influence the gameplay. For example, prior to getting the entropy gun, I read an email that described it (even explaining what the "PEA" acronym meant). But when I did get the gun, my player character still questioned it like I hadn't literally just read about it less than a minute prior. I also wished that more of the story was told via audio logs, paper logs or just environmental storytelling. I don't want to just read about The Entropy Centre, show me more about it! Immerse me in the story! For example (mild spoilers for a late game area): the emergency evacuation bay just looked like a disjointed, disconnected mess of hanging pillars with a lot of debris. I would've loved to see a boarding queue with the separator lines tipped over and some luggage strewn around, indicating a rush to evacuate, or a security checkpoint of sorts. Maybe scorch marks where the vehicles would depart from? Anything to indicate that a serious evacuation took place, rather than just a large, empty area with some computers around. Ultimately, I did enjoy the gun and the main character's banter, and some interactions with the E bot were quite cute. The ending was a serious letdown for me, though.

Sound & Music: The game had some really good songs to accompany the atmosphere! They were, for the most part, subtle enough to not distract from puzzle solving, but also well developed enough to not be completely imperceptible. There were a couple moments where the music felt a little too intense, but that was never a major issue. Sound design was excellent overall, and really sold the whole environment, but having some more "characteristic" sounds for certain elements and features would've been a nice extra touch (they were recognizable and distinct enough, but not too unique or appealing).

Other nitpicks: Most of the game tried imposing a sense of urgency in the player. I can't help but draw parallels from the Portal 2 mod campaign "Portal Stories: Mel", and anyone who's played both knows why. At any rate (spoilers for the game's narrative): the first half of the game has us running because otherwise the Earth will explode, but then when it does explode, it has us running because of the Entropy Core. Once that is "fixed", it has us running because of the facility's structural integrity, and so on and so forth. The water keeps rising, the Earth keeps sending shockwaves, and everything is urgent. While that doesn't actually affect the gameplay, it is a bit annoying that all the time the game's narrative is trying to rush you, while the actual gameplay expects you to stop and think about puzzles, or stop and read logs. Some puzzle elements were also very difficult to work with. For example (mild spoilers for late puzzle elements): one section had me soaring through the air by reversing some fans, but unless I stood still at the center of the fan's range and reverted, I would always, always land on the water, whether I approached the fan and then reversed it, or approached it while it was reversed. The collapsible box had similar issues in that, sometimes, I could lift myself and another object with it, but sometimes one of us would fall behind. The conveyor + jump cube combo, albeit very clever and creative, was extraordinarily difficult to pull off correctly. But for me, the worst offender was the jump cube. Landing in one was always difficult, as the area of effect was quite narrow and the game constantly expected me to jump multiple large consecutive gaps with it. And a major issue that is fundamental to this game's core mechanics is that, once you fail to execute something, you have no option but to start over. A lot of technical issues made the game quite frustrating, like sliding into deadly water, or touching a fizzler while atop a bridge, or having things phase through walls, or have moving platforms completely glitch out on you or objects.

In summary, my rating for this game would be a 7.5/10. Solid puzzle game, really enjoyable for the most part, and excellent overall production quality! Could have used some more playtesting and feedback. I would really like to be able to make puzzles for it myself, there is a lot of untapped potential here! I still recommend this game because, despite the nitpicks and issues, it's still a very enjoyable, very fun puzzling experience. If you can, buy it on a sale.