Recent reviews by *blink*blink*

Played Inside yesterday. (Playdead's next game after Limbo) ... It's gorgeous. The art-style is just wonderful--again, a fairly minimal color pallet, with clean simple lines, yet the use of light and shadow (particularly in combination with layers and parallax) creates a really rich environment. ... This is not a sequel to Limbo, so forgive the comparison here, but it's helpful: Inside is definitely more of a story than a game. The puzzles are fewer and farther between than Limbo, and also not as challenging/intriguing. There is less wit, but also fewer fsck-you death moments. The overall world is more developed, and there is a bit of a story that unfolds throughout the game (the ending gets weird). Inside is definitely darker in tone. And still visually beautiful.

I have another pretty puzzle-filled dream game to recommend--Niko: Through The Dream (by Studio Paint). This game has a really lovely minimal art style, that still manages to create really rich environments for each stage of the dream. The soundtrack is really effective here, too, setting the character and mood of each island. I was really pleased to find that this game has a miryad of different puzzle types (as opposed to some puzzle games which find a formula and just manipulate that level to level). The every changing puzzle types definitely kept me curious and invested in the game. Check it out; I really enjoed it.

So, to be clear: I played the ♥♥♥♥ out of this game and had fun doing it, but I'm not sure if I'd actually recommend it as a "good game." The puzzles are a lot of fun (esp. in the DLC), but that's basically all the game--just puzzle "room" after puzzle room. Now, if buttons and lasers and exit-door objectives are your thing, then go for it; you'll have a lot of fun. But don't look for much more. … Oh, and be warned: it's a philosophical clusterfsck, which sheepdogs you into a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't conversation, forcing you to "choose" from no good options in the dialogue tree. … But again, the puzzles are super fun, they scale in difficulty well (again, esp. in the DLC), plus it's a damn pretty world to hang out in.

Okay, this game is pretty neat. :) ... In Dark Echo, you navigate a world of darkness by bouncing sound off your surroundings. It's impressive how rich of an environment is created (in such a minimalist art style) through the array of noises. The changing sound of your footsteps gain you awareness--where walls and pathways are, when you're approaching a large open cavern, changes in walk speed through the type of ground you're walking on, where water is, etc. ... But tread carefully, or the monsters will hear you ...

From one dream to another. .... Another game recomendation: Dream the Game [by HyperSloth]. This one is definitely more narrative; each night when you fall asleep, you enter the dream world, full of rich immersive worlds/vignettes drawn from your real-world memories and desires. It's a fairly typical puzzle-adventure-exploration game, in which the puzzles you solve help you piece together the storyline of the real-world. (Definitely made me nostalgic for Myst, even though these puzzles are not nearly as complex.) I really appreciated the self-referential allusions the dream world had: bits and pieces from other dreams kept showing up in that fluid way dreams do that. Another neat element: sometimes things you alter in the real-world affect how the dreams present themselves. There are main dreams (obligatory storyline), side dreams (optional additional puzzles), and nightmares (twisted non-puzzles). And finally, there are multiple endings, depending on how you play the game.

It's a first-person puzzle game, in which you are exploring a dream-world, full of surealism and fleeting thoughts. There's no plot, per se, but in each vingette you are searching for a seemingly out-of-reach goal. Most of the time the path is non-fixed, and every time you turn back around the landscape and pieces have changed--both to your frustration and to your advantage as a gameplay mechanic. As you can see, the art design is mostly black and white with a few splashes of colors that flicker in and out. It's really quite beautiful.

I finished up Portal Stories: Mel last night. It's hands-down one of the best community created mods I've seen. … It starts off at Aperture Science c. 1952, where you are instructed to enter into a stasis pod. *ahem* "Stuff happens" and when you wake up, it's to modern testing chambers. (Most of the game takes place in the time period between Portal and Portal 2.) … Overall, it runs really smooth, made me nostalgic for Portal, and never felt blasphemous. The testing chambers are a bit inconsistent in difficulty level. And sometimes things are not quite as "lined-up"/clear as Portal. It also made me really appreciate some of the subtle game design elements of Valve: like the almost subliminal guiding through lighting, points of intrigue, and other visual cues. … All in all, I'd definitely recommend checking this game out. I thoroughly enjoyed it. :)

Continuing on the paper theme … This is Tengami, a world inside a paper pop-up book, in which you fold down parts of the environment to create new pathways and solve puzzles. It's a *very* short game (I clocked in at about an hour), and again "atmospheric" also means "slow-paced" here. But the art design is beautiful, and I definitely folded and unfolded pages *way* longer than I should have just because watching the way the world reconstructs and folds in on itself is so damn pretty. … Worth picking up on a Steam sale.

Lumino City is a super cute little game of the point-and-click puzzle variety. It's a pretty familiar story, in that you are trying to find your grandfather [the Handyman] who has disappeared, and figure out why the power has gone out of the city. Puzzle are kind of what you'd expect--lots of dials and gears, blinky lights, rotating platforms, decoding cyphers, circuits, and mostly just trying to figure out how to get power flowing in each particular section of the city. I definitely wished they'd been more challenging or thought-provoking; they were mostly linear, with lots of finding a clue/code in one place and using/replacing it in a different place. [note: overall definitely slow-paced] However, the thing that makes this game unique is the art style, particularly in the way it was crafted: They actually built a 10 foot tall model city, made out of cardboard and glue, and then filmed the scenes stop-motion-like. The lighting, transitions, and shifting depth of field, as the world rotates is absolutely stunning. It's whimsical and fun, and I enjoyed my time climbing around this miniature world.

It's a fun little game. The gameplay mechanic is nothing new--but then, who doesn't like flying through the air, flinging yourself between floating rocks with an electric beam grappling hook? The physics-driven puzzles are solid. And it's just so damn pretty. Unfortunately, the animation/concept on the NPCs makes it feel a bit like a kid's game. Otherwise, the archipelago of worlds in this game is so intriguing and immersive, and the use of scale and light is just breathtaking.