Sorry, James focuses on 2 things; puzzles and story. However I was left wanting more of the latter and I don’t think the puzzles made up for it.
There’s nothing wrong with the puzzles by themselves. They’re simple enough; there are blocks with a number on them and you must surround or connect that amount of blocks to them. There are 5 parts to these puzzles and as you go along other variants are introduced, such as black and white blocks and rotating blocks. They’re easy enough and shouldn’t pose much of a challenge until the 5th part at least.
The story is what I was most intrigued by going into this game, however it felt like a case of wasted potential. The potential is there alright. You are tasked by Mariia to decrypt certain files (hence the puzzles), and inside these files is a one-sided conversation with someone called Elisa. She talks about all sorts of things, from personal experiences to sex to the meaning of life. The overall story leaves a lot up to interpretation and the conversations you see are out of order and you only get what Elisa’s saying, not what Tom’s saying (the person she’s talking with). This isn’t my problem with the story however. I don’t need everything handed to me on a plate. My problem comes from what’s really a lack of substance as well as feeling zero connection with any of the few characters. Sure, it seems like something is going on in the background but all of that is left too vague for its own good.
On top of all of this, outside of the puzzles in the Switch version at least, the controls are terribly unresponsive which makes it a chore to just navigate the menu. Granted, this is a cheaper game on a smaller scale but it still felt like it didn’t live up to its potential.
Occasional Video Game Reviews 