Recent reviews by Vitlöksbjörn

The 80s. What comes to mind when you hear this? Purple backdrop, shiny lines, grids, mullets and other weird hairstyles... you know the drill. But here's the thing: that's just American 80s. This might come as a shock, but there actually is a world outside of 'Murica, which even has (gasp!) places that have independent culture! I know imagining this is probably as hard as imagining the amount of atoms in the universe, but bear with me here.

Turns out more and more games are starting to explore this world-shattering revelation. In particular, the post-Soviet countries who had their culture enforced by the Russian state during the 80s are happily discovering that they share a lot of... baggage? Quirks? Imagery? Something like that. And we're not talking idealised vision of the Soviet Union as it exists in the mind of a middle class young adult who grew up in American Suburbia - we're talking how it actually was, as remembered by people who either lived through it, or grew up in the ruins of that order.

Such as myself.

"Czechoslovakian Quake". Or rather, that's what it starts out as, and then it really blazes its own trail and just blazes it in general. And the only reason why all this fun Soviet stuff matters is because it actually plays damn well. The level design is varied in spite of everything looking grey, the weaponry walks the fine line between weird and classic, and oh boy are there a lot of enemies. Including bosses (some of which have multiple forms) there are a whopping 50 different types. To put this number into perspective, DUSK has 33 (including bosses), out of which 9 are a size/colour/stat variant of an otherwise identical another one. In HROT, this number is, uh, 0. Every enemy is completely unique.

Actually, the variety kinda reminds me of Northern Journey, although its nowhere near at that level. Still, the fact that I even had this thought while playing it should give you a good idea of what to expect (provided you played Northern Journey).

There's more variety than just enemy variety - and it stems from the dev's inexplicable willingness to cram in a lot of nostalgic junk. It's gratuitous as f*ck and I love it. Maybe this is why the Murites love their 80s so much, because of this feeling?

In HROT you'll find things I forgot even existed. There's this weird 3-chamber container for... "lunch" would be the best translation, but it's not quite that. There's a spinning top toy, and it mesmerised me just the same as when I got one for Christmas roughly 30 years ago. There's the foughken COMMUNAL DRYING ROOM. And much, much more; but since I didn't grow up in what used to be Czechoslovakia, there's probably a lot I didn't catch.

There's also drugs.

The further you progress in the game, the more unhinged things become. But not in a psychological horror style. It's more like, you're hanging out with the bois, hitting the cheap wine mixed with off-brand cola, and suddenly Paweł suggests going out for a midnight stroll. Two hours later, you find yourself helping him climb the power pole because he needs to look out for the neighbour's flying car, because he's definitely a Russian sleeper agent.

It's like that.

And HROT doesn't make you question whether things are real or not. You do eat magic mushrooms at some point, but otherwise who cares? It's real, just roll with it, details be damned. Just enjoy the ride. And boy, is the ride enjoyable, especially the final boss. I hope you'll enjoy blasting his face off as much as I did - using the BRNO Super Shotgun (I call him "Bruno", he's me mate) and the Hussite Hand Cannon which is totally not a rocket launcher, of course!

If you understood what I just said, then this game might be for you. It's probably wrong anyway.

What's that, you want a conclusion? Fine. 20% of all players have beaten the final boss. At the same time, 57% of players have the achievement for killing all mobs in a level, which I think is relatively easy. Does this mean some 40% of players lose interest instantly, or that they haven't launched the game? In any case, there's a 30% chance of you finishing the game if you actually get into it. Is that good? I'd say its pretty decent. But I'm clearly the target audience here, so I might be biased.

Also, Paweł, you were a good friend, once. That power pole idea was stupid but I'm glad we did it.

Lofi beats for post-gopnik pseudo-intellectuals ONLY

When I write negative reviews for generally beloved games, I usually underline what's good about the game, what I believe drove so many people to like it - in the end, it's all a matter of opinion. But in DAVE's case, I actually might have a problem with that.

The pixel art is beautiful, detailed, and has lots of variety.

There. That's all I got. No, really. I disagree with the classic way of reviewing games where people rate graphics and story etc as if they were separate things; they're not, games are holistic experiences. Would you, after going on a date, say "Yea, they looked attractive, but they were so boring to talk to"? No, you'd probably say "I had a bad date with a pretty person".

DAVE is a bad date with a pretty person.

And ironically, to describe why is it bad, I'm going to have to talk about how it plays and something related to the story.

So it's a little like Cult of the Lamb. You have two separate gameplay modes and they both feed each other, while also providing variety. This sounds good in theory but in practice I find it never works as well as one'd like. Here, there's the diving and the restaurant management.

The restaurant management is incredibly simple - you just walk left to right, carrying orders, filling coffee, refilling wasabi. It sure feels hectic, but after a while you'll see it for what it is, and it becomes a chore; it did for me, at the very least. You can hire people to help you out, but it just makes you do even less.

Note, I -think- there are multiple restaurants you can eventually get, but I only unlocked one. So maybe it gets better later? I think 10 hours is enough time to decide I don't like something, though.

After some time I unlocked a fish breeding facility, and I thought "oh, goodie, more game to actually do something" but that turned out incredibly shallow too, and more pointless busywork. In fact, I'd argue that everything is shallow here, except perhaps the ocean and yes, that includes the diving.

Actually, let's talk about the diving.

The layout is randomised, but not really. It's made out of recognisable chunks, which generally stay in their parts of the map. This is so weird, at first I was confused as to whether this game even has random generation. Of course, your dives are limited by your oxygen (which is also your health, I like that) and by your inventory space. You are supposed to catch fish for the sushi restaurant, after all.

And catching the fish is... eh. You have a harpoon which you can upgrade during the dive, and depending on which harpoon type you have, you have to do a different QTE to "finish" the fish. This is awful in of itself, but some harpoons are more annoying to use than others because of this. What would you rather do, tap a button or spin the control stick around? Spinning the stick has been known to be not only annoying but actually hurtful since 1998 (Mario Party), then again, this might as well be ancient history now for some people.

There is a "pokedex" system for the game - it incentivises you to try catching every fish at least once - but oh wait, the fish have stars. So you caught that rare fish... but it's only 1 star. You have to catch a 3 star one. This is absolutely infuriating; I think "catch fish at least once" is a nice thing, but this ruins it. Incidentally, you're bombarded with notification markers during the entire game, but here you get a notification every time you catch a fish of higher stars. I think my blood pressure is rising from writing about this, so I'll stop here.

After a while, catching fish really starts to feel like a chore. That's probably why the fish farm is there. There is a story, and you want to explore the ocean for the hell of it (why would you play this otherwise?), but you'll still think "oh, I should catch this, it makes decent cash". I'm starting to come to the conclusion that "dungeon delving to bring back loads of resources" is actually a boring formula; then again, Darkest Dungeon did it well, so whatever.

So that sucks. You play a boring game to fuel playing the next boring game. But let's say that you actually enjoy some of the gameplay parts. You do this because of in-world reasons. The sushi bar, the characters, Dave himself, maybe some kind of environmental reason...

Actually, you don't. Because pretty much all the characters come off as obnoxious or boring. I think I liked Bancho (the sushi chef) the most, he had some kind of reasonable drive (make good food) - but even he struck me as judgmental and stuck-up. Dave himself might as well have been a water balloon with a face painted on it, just gets pushed around by others, and nothing else.

And there are many others, but they all safely fall under the umbrella of "awful".

Finally, the pacing. The game seemingly tries to justify itself by constantly throwing new ♥♥♥♥ at you early on. In a good game, this is exciting, but here it's more like a way to stave off boredom for a minute longer. Also, you're BOMBARDED with unlocks early on, to the point of being overwhelmed. Eventually, as will all things, the pace of unlocks slows down and then you're able to see the game for what it is.

And that's when I realised I can't play this anymore.

Achievements say 25% of people finished the game - not a bad number. Perhaps playing it as a background activity - something you do while your real attention lies elsewhere, such as with a podcast - maybe wouldn't be so bad. But to me, that doesn't make a good game. The decision is yours alone, dear reader.

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It's good, yes, but in a strange way. The production values, the general juiceness of it all, the simple yet fresh and satisfying battle design are so great, it's easy to forget this is a small 2€ game; not only it embraces its minimalism, it celebrates it.

In other words, there isn't much here, and it's seemingly by design. There are only a few weapons and abilities, there's like 7 enemy types (plus the final boss) and a run will probably be over in 10-15 minutes max.

But what IS there is done incredibly well. It's crazy fun. And that's why I can't help but wish there was more. The groundwork is insanely good. And maybe that's why it's so good, because of the limited scope.

After a while, you'll exhaust all build options that feel viable to you - and while there is a hard mode which you unlock after beating the final boss, I found it not as fun as the main mode. And this isn't Risk of Rain 2 where you constantly unlock new stuff for your future run, there's a pretty limited pool of unlocks.

Still - there are games that are good, there are games that are good and yet feel too short, and then there are games that are SO good that even if they do feel too short, what you got is amazing enough that it doesn't matter. Froggy is definitely of the third kind.

Grab a controller, kick back, and give these damn frog invaders hell while showing off your SICK skate moves.

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Think about it: Abrahamic God is the OG union buster. People got together, started building a tower, he didn't like it so he gimped their ability to communicate. Therefore, either union busting is biblical (and... ethical? If you're into that), or he's the proto Evil CEO.

The friend that recommended this game to me called it "Unmaking the sins of God" and that just about sums it up perfectly. The Tower of Babel is built (sort of) but its inhabitants can't communicate, don't understand each other and as such are in conflict, which isolates them even more.

So, who's a better mediator than you, who doesn't understand any of them?

For the record, even though the concept of the game is based on a biblical story, and the game's aesthetic can probably be described as "neo-mesopotamian", that's pretty much where the connections end. The story and the world are their own things.

You start the game knowing literally nothing. Luckily, you get eased into your first language by a mixture of machinery labels and gesticulation from a helpful local - but that's merely a tiny foothold. There's still going to be a lot of guessing, inferring, mistakes - with words and grammar both. This one time, I understood a man thanking me as "Are you stupid?". I was, as you can guess, pretty confused...

The game allows you to freely annotate glyphs you've found. Unlike in Heaven's Vault, you don't get any guesses from the protagonist (who's completely silent), so the pleasant process of deduction is that much more satisfying.

After you've encountered a few glyphs, the game opens up a "test sheet". It contains drawings of concepts, and it's up to you to assign a glyph to each of them. If you get them all right, you'll get them locked in, and the definitive meaning of the glyph will be revealed. In other words, it's the time-tested Obra Dinn method. And sometimes the revealed meaning might differ slightly from your guess...

See, the language is always informed by the culture - and vice versa. The different peoples have drastically different ways of life and value different things. A glyph might resemble another glyph of a different language, but its meaning can be drastically different. Even better, some words which have the same "absolute" meaning (as in, they refer to the same concept) have different tones, hinting at the culture's relationship to the concept.

An example (which is not in the game) would be: you have a group of scientifically minded people in a generally conservative and religious society. They would probably call themselves "academics" or something, while others could call them "deceivers". Both words refer to the same group, and yet the undertone is completely different.

Even the grammar can be informed by the culture. How concise is the language? What is the structure of the sentence? Which parts are given extra attention, and which are an afterthought? Yes, this is also something that's in there.

And yet, since the game contains a few languages, by definition they'll have to be limited. All of them have maybe 40 words each (that you encounter). While this is enough for the purposes of the game - requests, history, chatter - it feels a bit stifled. At the same time, the words that each language consists of also show which concepts the culture in question considers relevant.

They might have words for complicated numbers, but they lack the word for "music". What does this tell you about them?

Also, this is a pet peeve of mine: the game's statement is that communication is a tool for peace and unity. I respectfully disagree; and I present the insane levels of hatred made possible by the advent of the internet to back up my argument.

Then again, some amazing things have been made possible by that too, so eh, maybe I'm wrong. I hope so, at least.

All in all, it's a pretty sweet game. Figuring out one culture and moving on to the next without knowing anything at all is a great feeling. And the ending in particular is incredibly powerful, delivered in a quite unique manner.

I don't think you need to be particularly smart to play this, either - the difficulty is pretty low, but not so low that it becomes boring. It's enough to tickle your brain, get it going a bit, but not overheat it. And that's perfect if you ask me.

Oh, and an insane 54% of players have gotten to the end of the game. Considering it's not that short - 10 hours for me - that is one hell of a number. Should give you an idea of just how fun this game is to play.

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Well damn.

I loved it, and then I didn't. I remember the exact moment when I became bored and playing started feeling like a chore, but I'm not completely sure why. It feels like nothing really has changed, but... maybe that's the reason? Let's just start at the beginning. Because the beginning is amazing.

Yeah, the game's early hours are a hodgepodge of your stereotypical isolated village with a dark secret tropes and I'm here for that. Weird dungeons hidden under barns, farmer dudes with chainsaws, klansmen-style cultists; and you get to blast those sonnuvas with an arsenal of familiar weapons with a twist. A pistol? Why not two pistols? A shotgun? Why not two shotguns? A super shotgun? Okay, that's already perfect.

The level design's pretty tight at first. It flows, has secrets of varying complexity to find, and it invites you to delve deeper. What's going on here? How far does this go? And who's the mysterious voice that keeps talking to you?

New weapons here, a boss or two there, slow descend into the heart of madness makes you breeze through the first episode. At this point, the game is pretty hard to put down.

This is probably where I should mention that this game was in Early Access for a while, and was released one episode at a time. Nothing wrong with that by itself; but it's pretty clear that the episodes were meant to be fun experiences in their own scope. So the pacing is made to fit individual episodes.

What this means is - for example - once you reach the end of Episode 1, you'll have found every single weapon there is. The Sword, a weapon you get naturally in Episode 3, can only be found in a secret - but it's there, and I found it. You'll be at your most powerful relatively early on, and the game needs to make sure the challenge remains consistent; but it also (rightfully) wants to add new enemies in latter episodes. What should be their strength level?

As you enter Episode 2, you notice that all your weapons are gone. That's alright, you'll just have to build up your again. This time, you're entering some kind of strange military themed installation, and the weird demonic stuff takes a bit of a back seat.

...and it's just not as interesting, unfortunately.

A few enemies get swapped out for new, more thematically-appropriate ones; but the variety remains somewhat low. On average, you'll probably encounter 3-4 types of enemies in a given level, with an occasional surprise.

When I reached the 8th level of Episode 2 - the Erebus Reactor - I realised I'm really forcing myself to play. The level is a bit of a mess - involves climbing, collecting keycards, opening a chain of doors, all in a large, open area - with an annoying lava pool that's relatively easy to fall into. So I had to redo this part a little too often for my liking, even with quicksaving.

And unfortunately, the game failed to reignite my interest afterwards. It did get better, but eventually I just had to shelve it. Even reaching and beating half of the final episode didn't do much for me, even if it was somewhat better then the second one.

Since the game was in Early Access, the achievement data probably isn't very reliable (some might've played when the game was "IN" but then forgot about it) - but if we assume that it's somewhat truthful, then other players had a similar experience. 46% of players beat the first episode, and 26% beat the second. Most of these players beat the third too, at 22%. Those are pretty decent numbers, considering the game has 20k reviews, so hey, lots of people clearly enjoy it.

It's a shame. I loved the beginning, but then I got bored. That doesn't usually happen for me when it comes to boomer shooters. The only one I can recall that had this effect was... Amid Evil? Oh, that's by the same developer? I guess our styles don't match. I respect the work, though.

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Uhm, it's good I guess

It's incremental, but it's not idle and it's not really a clicker either. The gameplay is pretty unusual; I don't think I can compare it to anything, really. What I can say, though, is that the game is addicting like crack and is really hard to put down.

The details of the gameplay are up to you to discover. More, more, more. New mechanics, new nodes, all that jazz; but unfortunately it's not all good. There was a moment in the progression that made no sense to me and I had to grind for a bit, but then once I broke through it was actually a bit too easy. I don't know, maybe I picked the upgrades in the wrong order or something. Also, the final stretch of the game feels a bit mind-numbing. There's nothing new, just trivial repetition; grinding. It's not very long, luckily, but that was not very cash money of the game.

I'd say getting the game is a no-brainer, considering the price. The experience is fresh and intense enough that it's difficult not to recommend.

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Ughh my head. I can't say if it hurts from having just beat this or the fact that I haven't ventilated my flat in a while, but does the method matter if the result is the same?

...don't answer that, it's rhetorical. Anyway.

I don't remember how I found this game. What I do remember is thinking, "wow, this looks... uhh...". Weird art style, bunch of wacky characters. A somewhat intriguing premise. This is probably going to suck.

Luckily, I will hate myself forever for having thought about Wuppo like this, so I took my idiotic evaluation as proof that I need to play it. There's security in knowing for a fact that you can't trust yourself.

I was, of course, right about that. Does this make me less of an idiot?

The most natural point of comparison would be Danganronpa. Bunch of vibrant characters, a set of murder mysteries, and an overarching meta-mystery. Ironically, putting Methods next to Danganronpa actually showcases how much better Methods is in certain aspects... but more on that later.

There isn't a single protagonist. You're going to play as over 10 characters in total, and that doesn't mean you'll just follow them - playing as a character makes you also privy to their thoughts, the way they perceive the world and other characters, and, of course, their investigation methods.

And that's what the game is really about. It's in the title...?

See, this isn't entirely true. This isn't Danganronpa, where the characters have some weird nigh-supernatural abilities. Their methods just provide clues, but it's still up to their very mundane intellects to connect the dots. And the way they think and talk to each other...

Okay, you know how BBC's Sherlock is considered bad because the protagonist is written like a stupid person's idea of a smart person? Essentially a wizard? This isn't the case here. I've seen smart people argue about high concept ideas. And so has the author, evidently.

The detectives make mistakes, forget things, miss stuff, reconsider, and make excellent deductions (which you participate in, partially) in ways that are very believable. They feel human. Flawed. Real. Wait, did I say detectives?

No, that's- look. What even is a detective. If you deal with mysteries, are you a detective? Yes? No? It doesn't matter. There's more to this competition than meets the eye, and then there's even more.

I don't want to say anything here, because learning about what's even the scope of what's going on is part of the buildup. You know, the way good mysteries are crafted, there's a certain flow to them?

Well, Methods takes this flow and twists it into a Moebius strip which it then uses as toilet paper. It is almost awesomely disrespectful to the classic rules of mystery storytelling. But make no mistake: whatever order it builds out of this anarchy is an excellent one. Unfamiliar, but it will still leave you hooked.

If you don't know what Knox' Decalogue is, go and read Umineko already let's say that this is like outsider art of mystery fiction. Breaking established rules is bad, unless it's good. And in this case, it's good, even if a little strange at times.

And that works, because the characters themselves are strange; but at the same time, they're just "normal" enough to be relatable and easy to understand, and their methods are something that feels possible to replicate. My favourite is Detective 772, who acts like a clown, and his methods involve cracking jokes and doing headstands... but who's also incredibly smart, and deeply philosophical - to the point of incomprehensibly.

The one detective who seems inhuman is Red July, who claims to solve crimes by "osmosis". She takes in the scene and... everything just kinda pops into place for her. And even this seemingly ridiculous method feels human, especially once you learn its costs and limitations.

If it feels like this review went off the deep end at some point, that's because it has, and that's because the game does the same thing. But it doesn't stop anyone from pressing on. Watching the characters grow and try to outsmart each other is honestly fantastic in a way I didn't know I wanted.

In particular, one detective who's established as a bit of a slow and boring fellow ends up pulling off an amazing gambit that... you know what, just read it yourself.

Yes. It's really good. It's almost definitely better than you think. And if the visuals are giving you pause, let me just tell you that there's a lot of scene pictures, and these display a lot of cool emotion. It works. And that's all there is to it.

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Imagine, if you will: you're playing a new 3D Mario game. You're having a lot of fun exploring the levels, taking in the aesthetic, enjoying the simplistic low stakes plot about getting a cake or something. You reach the midpoint of the game and...

Suddenly, Bowser is explaining to you that it's imperative you fix the castle's plumbing system, or else entire Mushroom Kingdom will be without drinking water. He's telling you the social implications of different approaches; you can't disagree. You think it's just going to be one event, or some kind of cutscene - but no. And then you find yourself playing a game about complex pipe construction, with realistic engineering, limited resources and a completely, completely different vibe.

Ok, from some kind of conceptual viewpoint it makes sense, Mario is a plumber and a hero. But that's not the game you wanted to play. That's not what you've been enjoying so far. Would you be disappointed? Or would you actually love it?

That's pretty much what my Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood experience was like. I was playing an amazing game about divination, art, relationships, womanhood, isolation, and then I found myself playing Suzerain; or some kind of prequel to it.

What I'm about to tell you isn't much of a spoiler - it's written right in the game description: "shape the fate of the cosmic Witch society". What do you think this means? Some kind of epic struggle perhaps?

Well, no. You participate in an incredibly realistic, detailed and mundane election campaign. Slogans, digging up dirt on your opponents, careful consideration of your program, and day-to-day power struggles to undermine your opposition. It's mundane enough that it actually makes you completely forget that you're a group of immortal celestial beings.

I can kinda see why this is the case. The game's about witches, so its leftism is part of its DNA - after all, being a witch is one of the oldest ways of challenging the status quo for a woman. Many things which the "modern gamers" decry as the worst thing in the world are - correctly - presented as commonplace here. It's very queer, sexually liberated and female-centric; in this world, femininity is a prerequisite to ascending as a witch - not necessarily "biological" femininity, mind.

As such, since almost all characters are women, you are treated with a wide variety of body types. You know how often in games you have essentially two female body types, big booba momma and fresh teenag-ish girl, both perfectly slim and shapely? Well, let's just say it's not like this here. You have bigger girls, taller girls, muscular girls, petite girls, and distinctly non-human girls. If you expect oversexualised eye candy, I suggest you look elsewhere.

I brought this up because, unfortunately, the only ways to make any visible change as a leftist seem to be: either go into politics, or f*ck sh*t up. If you're particularly disadvantaged, you need to do both. And I'm guessing this is this game's way of communicating this sad truth.

Yes, it's a thing in the game. Anyway, this is why I have such strong feelings about the game. It's fantastic. And then it becomes this. There's a lot to love about it, although there are some ironic limitations which I'll leave you to find out for yourself. Because even though I don't recommend this game, I also kind of do, as the first part is just excellent.

And this excellence is what makes the crash into this election nonsense so painful. I honestly was willing to power through it, thinking it's just going to be a short episode, but then when the next chapter started and I saw "32 cycles left" in the corner... I gave up. That's how much I hated it.

I hope that there are people out there for which this review will actually be something that makes them play it. There's clearly an idea, a vision here. A meticulously crafted one, to boot; but a vision that is unfortunately not my vibe. In spite of everything else.

So if you're the kinda witch that does tarot and brews exotic teas... but also helps out at your local leftist party's office and occasionally throws a brick at a policeman, then this game might actually be your idea of perfection. We certainly could use more witches like those in our world, anyway.

As for me, I will continue my increasingly more hopeless search for a good witchy game.

My journey so far

What an excruciating experience.

Games often have a problem: they make you do something by trying to translate individual steps of the action into gameplay, often literally. Move this switch. Swing that axe. And so on. But you're not swinging the axe, you're just pressing a button, or moving the mouse. It doesn't feel like you're swinging the axe (unless it does, of course). So the experience of your character and of you, the player, aren't exactly aligned. Immersion fades.

A Forgetful Loop - pardon the title, I promise the game is better - has you control a group of scientists as they scramble to modify a machine that's got them stuck in a time loop from within the confines of that loop. What makes this problematic is the fact that the loop is roughly 30 seconds long. If that sounds like an absolute existential nightmare to you, congrats - you'll probably find it easy to tune in on the vibes.

Oh, and if that's not messy enough for you, not everyone is aware of the loop, and other weird shenanigans occur, such as... ah, no, I won't spoil.

And what the game does perfectly is make you FEEL like you're in that lab with them, scrambling as they go, trying to repeat tasks on muscle memory, all the while planning ahead, hoping that it will maybe work this time, trying to make the slightest bit of difference. And that's what makes the game so excruciating.

It's a good thing, by the way. Every now and then you're treated to a story bit - the scientists talk, work, scream, cry, make out, get hurt. You really start caring about these guys who otherwise would be just icons in your HUD - hell, even as the game fleshes out the characters, their tooltips expand and add more little facts about them. You empathise with them. You, as you play, are stuck in the loop with them, scrambling as they do.

And of course this is saying nothing of the reason why this infernal machine was even built. There is quite a reason, let me tell you.

So the game is essentially a timed puzzle. Luckily, it's not just a speedrun; the time loop is not exactly a time loop, some things either stay done or are much easier to do in the next loop. So many loops will be less about solving the given problem and more about exploration and preparation. And even then, there was a whole total of ONE level where I felt like I need to scramble for these tenths of a second, executing a complex at a speed I thought impossible. Luckily, this level is pretty late in the game, and even though it was quite difficult, I still managed to nail it after some 5-10 tries, max.

The puzzle develops nicely. Each chapter brings a new mechanic, gives you a few tutorial missions where you can play with it without the complexity of a whole level, and of course uses all the mechanics found in previous levels. So the game never gets dull; the puzzle design is excellent.

What is not so excellent is the UI. At first its not so bad, but as the puzzles reach higher levels of complexity you're really starting to notice all its shortcomings. After all, if things must be done quickly, you'll end up relying on hotkeys almost exclusively - and you can't rebind them. The default (and only) bindings are okay, but there were moments I wish I could mix them up a bit.

But the more annoying thing is only becoming visible in the last two chapters. The puzzles are getting huge, far bigger than the screen. Normally, you deal with it with either zooming out or panning. But here, there's a limit to how much you can zoom out. It's impossible to see everything. Which, in turn, sometimes made me forget that there's a time-sensitive piece on the other side of the screen which I forgot about. That was insanely frustrating. As for panning - you can drag everything around, but panning is FAR too slow and the only hotkeys to do it are the arrow keys. You will not be using the arrow keys unless you have three arms.

Oh, and what's wrong with dragging, you probably are wondering. For the most part it works fine, but it's possible to click on an assigned worker by mistake, and one click like this can ruin your carefully constructed machine, and you won't even know what exactly happened. Now that I think about it, that's actually pretty immersive.

Two final minor complaints: the writing. The story is good, but it reads like a light novel. It's stale like that piece of bread that's still in your bag. Flat like your gf from back in middle school. That makes it concise, sure, but it's not pleasant to read. At least until the characters start talking, because somehow the dialogue is human and vibrant.

Sadly, it's a little difficult to visualise who exactly is talking. Characters are colour-coded, but there's a lot of them. Fourteen in total, out of which eight are the focus of the story; In the game, they're marked by little symbols representing what they do - this guy manages electricity, this woman is responsible for the timey stuff, and so on. But I barely could put a name to the symbol. If the story pieces had portraits - or hell, the symbols were replaced with even a simplest representation of a person - I think I would've found it much easier.

Still, it's excellent. It hits you very, very hard, and is a blast to play - even if it is a kind of suffering. It's the good kind, though. Just pretend the game is called "The Chronon Hypothesis" or something like that, and you're golden.

Oh, the music's great, too.

Curator page

you forgot. it's been too long. what was your name even? was it jeon gyeong? yes, you used to be a police officer. a detective. and from all your cases, all of them you've solved.

except one.

and now, the angel of death has come to collect, and is asking you to think about it one last time.

you forgot. you remember the faces. the conversations. maybe even the names. but when did this happen? who did i even talk to? you forgot. but the angel is relentless. you must remember. don't you want to know what happened to Seowon?

you do. but it turns out that working with a fragmented mind isn't easy.

a thing you've remembered doesn't just contain pieces of the truth. it can also contain a way to connect to another thought you half-remember. follow the thread. more pieces will be woven into the tapestry.

but its not that simple. just following ariadne's red string will not get you out of the maze. some memories... you'll only unlock them if you determine a specific truth. where was this person at this time, what was the date of this person's birth.

some other pieces will only reveal themselves once you determine with certainty who did you talk to in a particular memory, and in what order. many locks, many keys, no single universal solution.

you forgot. but maybe that's for the best.

maybe not every truth is meant to be known. but that doesn't sit right with you. after all this time, you must find Seowon. sift through the lies. collect your thoughts. find her.

no case should remain unsolved.

more thoughts for your consideration