• Add Review
  • Subscribe
  • Nominate
  • Submit Media
  • RSS

Very neat game.

This game is nice puzzle game. It is told entirely without dialog: the characters just display images like ":)" ":\", checkmark, "X", etc...

In fact, the puzzling starts on the intro screen ;)

Hint: X is not new game.

The end goal is to obtain
4 orblike things that will create the galaxy anew with the help of your friends.


Graphics

I must say, the terrain and art was extremely well done here. I think it depends on your personal taste whether you like it or not, but it surely fits its theme well: barren, unnerving landscape.


Your starting house.


There are very few people in the game: this screenshot shows one of the two NPCs (yes, you are standing on top of a giant gear here.)

Most things in the environment can be either 1) entered, 2) killed, or 3) examined. Examining something will yield a ":)" if you've already completed it or need it, or ":\" if you're not ready to do that part yet/there is no use, or "?" if its a strange object that you don't know what it does.


Yes, those are eyes in the walls looking at you.

At first I thought the environment here was a bit strange, but it did grow on me as I went through the game. This is actually quite an enjoyable part of the game!

Gameplay
You start in your house and soon venture out, encountering enemies and several strange objects. As time goes on, you find items and the such.

The menu can be viewed with Escape. The menu isn't so much a menu as it is another screen. It displays your name and gender: "Mitch, male" which is good because you can't otherwise tell, allows you to Save your game (click the flash drive icon), and to view your acquired items.

The mazing is simple enough. Collect items, kill enemies (not a battle, just interact with them and they die if you have the proper item), explore, etc...

One important note about the gameplay is that you can enter things you wouldn't normally think you can enter. You can enter trees, you can enter random domes in the ground, you can enter X marks. Fail to notice this and you will be stuck quite early.

Also you should keep your eyes open for things in the background
Like a window in the underground area

as they are easy to miss.

I have only one complaint about the gameplay. The two NPCs ask you to get them certain items, however the pictures scroll by quite quickly; you hardly have time to see which item they want, and there's no hint to where these items could be (the placement seems to not fit at all times)

Story
As the story is mainly your interactions with certain things/people, this serves as a story summary and a guide if you get stuck.

The protaganist takes a key from its closet and finds a portal; he finds a bat and uses it to kill ghosts and enters an abandoned area. There is a magic lamp there. We go underground and find the first signs of civilization: a dead person on the floor, and a person who asks us for.. some kind of item inside.

We exit the underground and enter some kind of dome, where there is a lever and a person walking on a giant gear. She asks for another kind of item which we don't have, and we can't press the lever yet, so we leave the dome.

We enter a tree and go up. We find a small card-like thing which cheers up our protaganist. We think that one of the remaining people asked for this before, so we return to the underground. He gives us a green orb in return.

We collect a yellow orb and a lamp from the tree, after killing 3 ghosts blocking the way.

We return to underground and take an elevator up. We pick up a keycard and return to the big Gear. The person there hands us a hammer, which we promptly use to pound in the wall switch. We enter the wall switch area which turns out to be a path: there we find the Red Orb.

Next time we exit, the Blue Orb is flying around rapidly. We catch it.

We return to our house and use the magic lamp on the the heart-shaped rock. We enter and use the 4 orbs and the lamp on the odd floating thing, remaking the universe without the demons/ghosts. The 3 living characters celebrate outside the house.


The cool thing is that the maker told a somewhat-understandable story with no dialog, which is not easy to do.

Complaints
The game all in all seemed too easy for me. I was never stuck for more than a minute or two, and getting stuck was nothing wandering around and looking for new stuff to do didn't solve. Any person who frequently plays maze games shouldn't have a problem with this.

The gameplay time is quite short, only taking me about 20 minutes to finish.

Some of the paths didn't make much sense. How can you enter a tree? This may be counter-intuitive for players.

Why can you kill the ghosts in the first two rooms, but not the ghosts in any of the other regions around the map? It seemed a bit odd to me.

Summary
The problems are small in comparison to the good aspects: very nice and fitting artwork, glitch-free gameplay, and a fun little mazing game.

This is a good maze to take a few minutes to play through: you shouldn't be disappointed!