G30 4+

This is the rare game that truly takes you into its world with all of your mind. Often, a puzzle game will claim to have an underlying plot, when in reality the plot is totally unrelated to the game and serves only as a distraction. This game is not like that. The puzzles *are* the plot, and they tell the story without the need for the player to ever take their mind away from the puzzle. The story itself is incredible, eschewing the traditional Western narrative structure in favor of a looping, ambient format which largely original, at least in my own experience, and which fits the tone of the game as if they were made for each other, which of course they were.
The gameplay is just as incredible, playing out in multiple layers simultaneously, with levels looping back on themselves, and a perfect difficulty gradient which kept me from ever feeling as if it was either too easy or too hard.
This is the needle in a haystack. This is a truly amazing game and a truly amazing journey, and I am so glad I discovered it.

How do you replicate the fractured world of someone with memory loss in puzzle form? Well, like this. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a better marriage of game mechanics and subject matter. As you work through the puzzles, watching words appear and disappear, you search for meaning; yet, as soon as you think you have grasped the story, it becomes a different story altogether. It’s incredibly empathetic, and I defy anyone with a soul to not experience a sense of the frustration and anxiety of not...quite...knowing who you are, and whether the pieces of your memory are even real. I get that doesn’t make it sound very appealing as a game, but it is, and a very positive experience overall.

The art, the sound, and the haptic feedback are what make this game four stars for me. It’s short the one star because I don’t entirely understand the game. I get the premise, but the blurbs are disjointed and nonsensical in places. It took me FOREVER to figure out that I was supposed to be clicking on words throughout the puzzles. I still don’t understand what it is that makes a word clickable in the first place...

So, it’s a puzzle in the truest sense: I can’t even solve the puzzle of what the puzzle is! But I have always struggled with puzzle games (including games like Zelda that incorporate puzzles into the core gameplay) so I strongly suspect the disconnect is just me. More than likely, any person who loves puzzles will love this game.

And if you’re high-sensory like I am, you’ll enjoy the art, the sound, and the haptic feedback. 😉