Pixel Puzzles: Japan (Game Review)

At least you can stop that stupid bamboo thing with the fish now. Just stick it right on in there.

Find a picture that seems somewhat Japanese, turn it into a jigsaw puzzle of between 60 to 200 pieces, put all the pieces in a pond with a fish, take relaxing music and put it on a short repeat, get one of those bamboo water features that clunks every few minutes as it fills with water and finally a mouse that does not click where you want it to. That’s Pixel Puzzles: Japan!

As a digital jigsaw puzzle game, it offers 19 puzzles for you to complete. The puzzles are decent pictures of varying difficulty. They scale between 60 to over 200 pieces in varying styles and shapes and can take anywhere from 20 minutes to a few hours depending on the number of pieces and how difficult the picture is (especially the ‘Cherry blossom over water’ puzzle, OMG!).

 

'Cherry Blossom Over Water' - I want to burn this puzzle till the end of time.

That’s where I run out of anything good I want to/can say about this game. The puzzle pieces float around in a pond on the edge of puzzle. I think this was a good idea as it simulates digging in a box to find the pieces, but it was horribly executed. In the higher piece puzzles, the pieces are so small and numerous that it becomes exceedingly difficult to find the piece you want as they float around and behind other pieces. On top of that, the game is insistent on grabbing every piece but the one you want. The game doesn’t seem to know how the mouse works. If you pick up a wrong piece and drop it back in, it always reappears in the same spot in the pond, regardless of where you dropped it. This is bad for two reasons: the first is that the spawn spot gets horribly overcrowded with pieces fast; the second is when you drop a piece, it takes any other pieces it falls on with it. I don’t even know why this is a thing! You can keep pieces on the board as you need them, but without enough space it gets clogged up fast. This is single-handedly one of the most frustrating games I have ever played.

Aside from that, it’s a jigsaw puzzle game, there is nothing else to it. The music wears thin after a while and I ended up muting it and playing my own music instead. Everything it does, it does either ‘ok’ or horribly. I do not recommend this game unless you find real jigsaw puzzles too easy. There are plenty of other jigsaw puzzle programs online that are FAR better than this. Use the Google.

P.S. I have now resorted to doing an actual jigsaw puzzle on my table. I do have to say thanks to this game for driving me away from the computer for a bit.

Among the Sleep (Game Review)

Because what could make you feel more vulnerable than playing as a defenceless toddler? Next time we’ll be playing as a fetus.

Among the Sleep is a linear puzzle platformer with a touch of survival horror. Let’s get one thing straight though: this is more an interactive story than a game. It plays on a story that pieces itself together as you progress, dropping hints along the way if you pay attention enough. Puzzles are simple at best, usually simple physic based puzzles or finding an item or items to proceed to the next area. I did not find it challenging and puzzles were not particularly unique or interesting.

Among the Sleep describes itself as “a first person horror adventure” game. I don’t completely disagree, but it is more of a dark fantasy adventure game with adult themes. It reminds me more of the original Alice in Wonderland books with their dark, twisted fantasy. I liked that it aimed less for jump-scares and provided more psychological horror; being a small two year old gives you a real sense of helplessness. The survival parts were mostly you avoiding monsters by hiding under or in objects, but these encounters were easy and few. The screen distortion when looking at monsters was a good accompanying effect that kept monsters from being simply looked at, which I find reduces their horror effects.

Despite the simplicity, the puzzles and levels were well designed and thought out. Each chapter was unique and interesting; I can definitely say I never got bored of playing it. It did lose strength towards the end, but the story picks up when the level design begins to wear itself out. The story itself is well written and implemented into the game. It provides an interesting perspective at domestic and substance abuse, though this is not a unique idea (see Papo and Yo).

The free DLC is a short bonus level that is supposed to be a prologue, but doesn’t really contribute much to the story. Overall, I got two hours of play out of $20, which to me is a little overpriced. Among the Sleep is an interesting game that is unique to play, but won’t really leave a lasting impression.

Just a Quickie - Floating Point

Between shooting people in Counter-Strike and crawling your way through the nightmare that is Binding of Issac, sometimes you just need something to bring the nerves back to earth. Floating Point gives you a dot and a grapple and the goal of collecting as many points as possible.

Half the level is above the water and half below, switching physics on each side. Get points by hitting the red bars with as much speed as possible and avoid hitting the blocks. Once you've collected enough, you can progress to the next level, each becoming busier than the last.

Floating Point can be picked up and dropped in seconds, making it the perfect game when you've got a few minutes to kill. It’s simple and it becomes a skill to play in itself. I've clocked up a bit of time in it already, but that comes from many two minute sessions. It’s also free, so why aren't you downloading it already?

Review: Waking Mars

There have been many movies and games that have depicted life on mars. Some perhaps less alive and some from another dimension, but they all took place on mars nonetheless. I suppose when it comes to alien life, Mars is our next port of call, at least in our solar system. Since we’ve already looked on the moon, the Red Planet is the next most habitable planet that we can hope to find anything on. We’re still decades away from the technology to get there in any reasonable time, but Waking Mars depicts a ‘what-if’ scenario of the possible not-to-distant future of 2097 (but when haven't we said that before?).

With evidence of alien life discovered, a team is dispatched to venture into the depths of a massive cave system to make first contact. Deep inside, the explorers discover a developing alien ecosystem that has lain dormant for countless millennia. With the aid of a nifty jetpack you must navigate to the depths of the caves to find out the source of the alien growth.

Originally designed as an iOS game, Waking Mars received a PC release late last year. The side-scrolling puzzle platformer makes navigating the rocky caverns easier with a jetpack and requires that you carefully develop the alien ecosystem to your own needs to increase the biomass and open plant barricades. While you won’t be blasting everything in sight, that doesn’t mean you’re safe from danger. Some of the local flora is not as safe as you might expect and environmental hazards are your biggest threats. You’ll collect seeds and manipulate the growth of the environment by planting them in particular spots of fertile soil. The game slowly introduces additional plant-life that you can breed and further increase biomass. By the end, you learn the secrets of the ecosystem and why it’s here in the first place.

I don’t play very many space gardening simulators these days, my green thumb has been itching for some extra-terrestrial agriculture. The premise itself is simple enough, but requires some deep thought to actually master, which was quite enjoyable. The slow introduction of various new tools to solve those deeper problems was perfectly paced, though it would have been better to not introduce you to rooms that you couldn’t solve easily without said tools. I spent a good portion of my time fighting an uphill battle in a room I thought I was supposed to have passed to continue the game. The problem with an ecosystem simulator, is that it does just what a good ecosystem should, operate without you, sometimes to its own detriment. I had several rooms that would actually start killing off the ecosystem I had very carefully and painstakingly developed.

The progression of the story also became very confused at some point, with the first half of the game being a linear journey; it suddenly throws branching paths and optional quests into the mix. At that point, you can just head straight towards the exit, but miss out on some of the most important aspects of the story, which seemed a shame. It relies on you to have a genuine curiosity to find out the truth and with it having built a decent story up until that point it feels like the game is giving up on itself. A real shame, because the game does so well up to that point. The characters are well voiced, though their dialogue occasionally breaks the mood. The AI character ART was also an interesting addition to provide support during your exploration, but after a while it was grating and annoying and seemed to grow worse as the game went on. Occasionally the characters begin talking in scientific terms, and in the early game they do well to simplify it so you can understand, but by end game you’d need to be a space alien botanist to understand what they are talking about. Does that job even exist yet?

I definitely applaud the game for its unique idea and implementation, but the rest of the game pales in comparison. Considering the game was developed for mobile, the graphics are smart, but simple in design. It reminds me of paper cut-outs, similar to ‘And Yet It Moves’, but just trying much harder to not look that way. I got seven hours out of Waking Mars, which is pretty decent for a $10 game and although the rest of the game is pretty lackluster, the concept was new and enjoyable to experience.

Review: Antichamber

If there was ever a case of a game hating you for playing it, it would be Antichamber. It does a great many things to confuse, confound and twist your perspective, all the while presenting itself in the form of a very accessible and simple-looking puzzle game.

The goal is simple, escape the Antichamber. Overcome its blockades, looping corridors and psychological torments to find the tools you'll need to solve the puzzles. Despite its simplicity, it is one of the most confusing and difficult puzzle games I have played in a very long time. The puzzles themselves are difficult enough, but the game is out to throw you off at every turn. Hallways change when you're not looking at them, doors move, stairs loop back on themselves; not everything is as it first appears to be; but sometimes it is.

The main element of this game is the way you interact with the key element, the cubes. You'll obtain a tool that can pick up and place cubes, then it upgrades as you progress to grant you new abilities, which are essential to complete specific puzzles. The game starts of frustratingly difficult at first and is very intimidating. I stopped playing for a while after the first session because of just how mind-numbing it was; it's like an explorable M.C. Escher world.

When I returned, it became easier to comprehend, but no easier to complete. With so many red herrings and multiple paths to a specific point, much of this game is spent retracing your steps to find the paths you missed. Not that that's a bad thing, there a few little Easter eggs hidden around for you to discover.

This game is not for the faint-hearted nor the queasy stomachs, but the trill of actually making progress is truly fantastic. Antichamber puts the puzzle back into insanity.