Escape First Alchemist

REJECT ESCAPE; BECOME THE JAILER

An escape room for two. I played this one with my bud @CompChris, whose own write-up can be found right here.

I really liked this one. While it doesn't do anything exceptional in the genre, it was consistently high-quality all the way through.

There were probably 30-40 puzzles in total, of varying sizes and scopes. Each felt fair, and I rarely found myself rolling my eyes afterwards. At worst, a few missed proper telegraphing to indicate if you had all of the pieces.

The style of puzzles were mostly visual and logic-based. They didn't rely on pixel hunting, as with some escape rooms, nor communication-based challenges, ala the We Were Here series. Many were colour-based, but the devs thoughtfully added unique symbols for colour blind players.

The game was cultic-themed, and included a potion brewing system which aided in (and sometimes distracted from) puzzle solving. I can applaud any game that allows you to throw a shrink potion at your friends to miniaturize them.

It took us just over three hours to finish the game. A bit over the HLTB estimate, but apparently the developers have added puzzles over time, which may have skewed this number. This is what I tell myself.

I enjoyed the game, and would recommend it for escape room fans. It's playable with one to four players, though I imagine that many would be quite a full house.

The Ball

ROLL THROUGH ALL THAT RESIST YOU

So this is a classic. I traded for it back in 2011, making it one of my earliest backlogged titles. Better late than never, right?

It definitely feels like an older title now. It has a max resolution of 1080p, and includes some very strange default keys like Shift to crouch, and Ctrl to jump. It thankfully allows rebinding, but insisted on setting all of my keybinds to Num Lock until I toggled that off. Eventually, I got things rolling.

The game features a series of underground, Mayan-inspired ruins. These act as puzzle rooms for you and the titular ball to solve together. Push buttons, raise and lower water levels, and ride minecarts to find an escape.

Other than moving, the only real input you have is controlling the ball with repulsion and attraction. You can do a lot with this though, and new concepts are introduced throughout the story. For example, the ball can be pulled by magnets, spread oil around, and power various contraptions.

The physics actually feel pretty good for a 2010 game. The ball will dutifully roll around corners and up slopes at your beck and call. It never felt a chore to "escort it" around.

The game does introduce some combat, which I found mostly detracted from the puzzle experience. It's also a little off tonally. At one point, you find your way to a village of alien hominids, and proceed to slaughter them with your newfound roly poly. This seemed a little unnecessary, even if they are hostile.

Because you're so dependent on the ball for solving puzzles and dealing with combat, you develop a bit of an attachment to it. Not unlike the companion cube in Portal. So when you're forced to step away for a time, it can almost produce a little separation anxiety. The developers use this intentionally to add tension in some levels.

The game feels a bit funny to me with its focus on such a singular concept. In my head, I'm imagining a developer coding up a physics demo they've hurriedly named "The Ball", showing it off at a company meeting, and everyone being enthusiastic about turning it into a full fledged game. I mean, "The Ball" -- a game about a ball? It's weird, right?

Apparently, the same developers went on to make a semi-spiritual successor, The Solus Project. I remember this one mainly because it came out when I ran Solus Linux, and people kept accidentally posting to the Linux subreddit about the game.

Crash Time - Undercover

DO A PIT MANEUVER, BECAUSE THEY'RE NOT COMING PEACEFULLY

This one jumps right in. You're a cop. You're undercover. Infiltrate the bad guys and climb their criminal ladder to take them down.

This game largely chains together different racing missions into a loose story. Most missions have you trying to take someone out, reach checkpoints in time, perform a circuit race, or compete in an elimination race. The latter two feel a bit out of place in this criminal underworld, but then again maybe they do it differently in Germany.

Some races give you combat tools: EMPs, grappling hooks, spike strips, and the ability to deploy roadblocks ahead (which seem to do nothing). The grappling hooks are actually rather fun, as you can slam the breaks to pull over an opponent, or use them to slingshot ahead.

The voice acting is subpar, and the story really doesn't have much going for it.

The physics are fairly arcadey, but not bad. You can switch between automatic and manual transmissions, and it simulates a few things like your wheels locking up. I doubt anyone would calling it too realistic though. At one point, I took a wrong turn off the autobahn, and ended up driving down a ski hill jump. How does that happen?

The enemy AI is worse. They try really hard to stick to predefined racing lines, which means they often collide with you or other racers instead of adapting to the situation. In combat situations, they're also pretty cheaty. They'll instantly drop a spike strip behind them if you get even close to their tailgate.

There's a good selection of cars, and seemingly a fair few tracks. I dropped off after only two and a half hours, though, so I didn't see the full selection.

I was going to say this game looks surprisingly good being for an older title, but apparently it only released in 2024. So erm, I guess it doesn't.

theBlu

THE PRECESSION OF THE TIDES ERODES ALL

One of the earlier VR showcases, this cinematic experience places you under the ocean to view the strange creatures that inhabit the depths.

theBlu was originally a paid experience, but released for free on Steam a few years ago. I was glad to have an excuse to finally check it out. However, the content included in the base package is extremely limited. Once you get past the rather-unintuitive menu, there's only one scene available with roughly two minutes of content. Beyond that, they ask you to buy the (admittedly cheap) content DLCs.

Despite its length, the short scene was impressive. From a sunken ship, you view schools of fish and curious manta rays while a massive whale looms from behind. It performs a drive-by swimming, coming eye-to-eye with you. This sense of scale can only really be understood in VR, as looking up with your head is just a different experience than shifting a mouse.

I was left wanting for more, but after watching the scene unfold twice, I opted to move on from this one.

Dreadhalls

FEAR IS BUT AN EMOTION; FEEBLE AND WEAK

After theBlu was so short, I decided to try out another VR experience. This time it's Dreadhalls, another early VR title that became known for showing off what VR can do.

Instead of gaping at majestic creatures though, you're experiencing previously-unknown levels of fear as your slowly dwindling lantern trembles in your hand, a mirror image of your own evaporating sanity.

In VR, the darkness envelops you. No ambient light can greet you from the other room. The soundscape overwhelms your senses, and you're keyed in to every footstep and breath. Wait, was a scratching sound... or a whisper?

People seem to have a really hard time with horror in VR, and I can understand why. While scary games have never been a major problem for me, I also don't really enjoy the feeling of prolonged tension. After 40 minutes, I almost embraced my first death in Dreadhalls. Finally, the waiting was over.

Dreadhalls is a very early VR game though, so the scale is not that of a modern AAA game. There's no real story, the rooms lack clutter or interesting detail, and the hallways give that distinctive "procedurally generated" feeling.

You are essentially exploring a maze. You have a map in hand, lit only by the lantern in your offhand. It burns oil, and much like in Amnesia: The Dark Descent, is a limited resource. Darkness seems to bring insanity, and insanity brings the whispers.

There's a handful of different monsters in the dungeons, and how you respond to them is the difference between life and death. Some will flay your mind for looking at them. Others are attracted by motion. One monster seemed akin to the Weeping Angel in behaviour. Their frequency increases greatly as you progress. By the fifth dungeon I entered, they seemed to be around every corner.

The audio design in this game is superb. While much of the sound is ambient, it also acts as an early warning sign before approaching dangers. How you react to a growling is very different than a scraping. Learning these cues seems paramount to survival.

I played through about half the game so far, having collected "5 eyes", and I'm quite comfortable with that. I feel no motus to continue. It's not exactly the fear holding me back, but horror experiences are almost unpleasant by design, and other than the "You win" screen, I think I've seen all the content there is to see at this point.

Haimrik

FOR WORDS ARE SHARPER THAN THE SWORD

I'm going to dock this one points upfront for using a custom launcher when booting the game. The "Fulqrum Games Launcher", which seems to only exist to provide purchase links to other games from this publisher. Very unnecessary!

Anyway, Haimrik is an interesting game that seems to have fallen under the radar. It's an adventure/puzzle game with hand-drawn art. Mechanically, it might be described as a less free-form version Scribblenauts, though with a greater emphasis on the overarching story.

The titular Haimrik discovers a magical book which seems to feed on blood. By sating it with a quick cut of the hand, he can enter the book, using it to create objects through careful storytelling.

Each story involves a brief puzzle or two, usually based on the problem he's experiencing in the "real world". For example, Haimrik needed a draught, but didn't have the ingredients to brew one. So into the book he goes.

The puzzles are laid out as a series of pages as rooms. Haimrik walks along the lines of words, and is able to interact with them to realize the objects, or interact with them in some way. For the problem above, we tell this story:

In Spring, Haimrik had the scythe ready, he knew the seeds would sprout in fertile soil and wait for the rain. He could use fertilizer or poisonous fungus to make them grow. Being careful all the same, the swarm of locust would eat all of them while Jelena watched.

It's not the most poetic writing, but it does the job. The puzzle here is that the locusts will pop out of that word as he crosses it, so Haimrik need to brew a poisonous concoction first to eliminate them. Then, by interacting with hop seeds, rain, and fertilizer, he can grow the hops and harvest it with the scythe. Finally, he can return to the real world with the hops to brew a draught.

The puzzle designs are mostly fair, but I did find myself getting frustrated at times. Your character moves quite slowly, and the occasional trial-by-error approach often means resetting and redoing a screen. The boss fights could also feel unfair at times, as they move so much faster than you do.

Despite being a "word game", keyboard controls are not recommended. I had to switch to a controller after fumbling with the awkward projectile controls for a while.

The art is stylized, being largely drawn in sepia tones, and can be a bit gruesome at times. There's heavy gore, with eyeballs popping out and limbs being dismembered.

I finished the game in about 4.5 hours. I give it a lukewarm recommendation, but it didn't overall wow me.

Infinite Air with Mark McMorris

NEVER USE THE SAFETY BAR ON SKI LIFTS

This game is delisted on Steam now, and understandably so: it completely crashes when you launch it. My thanks to PCGamingWiki for pointing out that one must have a disconnected network to bypass the broken server check.

Once you get in, the game drops you into a rather extensive tutorial, starting with the basics. You learn to carve smooth lines to maintain speed, work up to ollies and grabs, and move on to understanding the deeper physics engine with torque and body compression.

See, this is a completely physics based game. You're not just pressing a button to trigger a trick, but controlling your body and board to get there. If you want to spin in the air, you queue it up by twisting your body in advance, just as a real boarder would. To land safely after a spin, you tuck in to compress your body, learning the timings to have your board land safely. This gets even trickier if you're rotating on multiple axes.

This system is incredibly cool, and feels great when it works. Unfortunately for me, it often did not work. I found that my attempts at pulling off tricks were extremely inconsistent, and eventually realized that I wasn't just being a noob, but something was wrong. I repeated the same jump a dozen times, and found that in half of them, my inputs were simply dropped. Even for simple ollies or grabs, my character didn't respond.

Besides that issue, the graphics looked fine, and the music choices were good. While there's no campaign, I do like the event structure. It includes various modes trick attack and races, with optional objectives for cosmetic unlocks.

I found that I really wanted to like this one. It was just the technical issues that got me.

Immortals Fenyx Rising

EVEN GODS CAN BE DESTROYED

I've already submitted Hades, so this is my second game taking on Greek mythology.

Immortals (as I guess "Fenyx Rising" is the subtitle) is an action RPG with a bright, casual atmosphere. It's light-hearted, often flippant, and isn't afraid of fourth wall breaks. It's a little unusual to see out of Ubisoft, but don't worry, you still climb tall stuff to fill out your map.

The combat feels good. It's arcadey, but not unskilled. With dodges and parries, I found it quite satisfying, especially as you unlock new weapons and abilities.

I wish I could say more, but this one was sadly cut short by technical problems. It crashed for me, frequently. Despite my settings, every 10-15 minutes the game would lock up hard, threatening to take my system with it. I could usually progress past the past crash point when I resumed, but then it'd trigger some place else. It's maddening, because I want to play this game!

I may try again through a different launcher/wrapper in the future, but for now I'm throwing in the towel. This one might have convinced me that it is better to just buy games on Steam in the future, and skip the technical workarounds.

Hive Jump

THE ONLY GOOD BUG IS A DEAD BUG

A curious game. All of the screenshots give you the impression of a platform-shooter with constant carnage. Yet when you start the campaign, you're unexpectedly thrust into a turn-based strategy game instead. Huh?

It seems like there's two game modes to this one. The outer strategy game is the main campaign, where you work to seize back territorial control from the enemy. The inner game is the run n' gun, where you shoot bad bugs and collect their goop.

Goop is indeed the main goal. It's used not just to upgrade your weapons and equipment, but also as the currency to progress in the strategy mode. This means you need to decide where to allocate your resources (on the guns, obviously).

The tutorial only covered the shooty bits, so I honestly have no idea how the strategy mode works. You start off with a small number of nodes under your control. You can choose to reinforce these, or take the offense and try to weaken the enemy's defenses. It's turn-based, and I ended up losing most skirmishes I attempted.

The shooter mode is thematically somewhere between Metroid and Starship Trooper. You progress through two regular stages and then do a boss fight. There's roguelike upgrades found along the way, though they're relatively short-lived as they only last these few stages.

I do enjoy genre mashups, but this one felt rather disjointed to me. I think focusing on the bug smushing would've been the better way to go, or at least find ways to bridge the gameplay beyond just updating a resource counter.

Cat Quest 2

BRING OUT THE CLAWS

I played through Cat Quest 1 on mobile, so it seemed only fitting I'd do the same for the sequel. The only problem is that Cat Quest 2 was an Apple Arcade exclusive, and that exclusivity lasted for yeaars. Finally though, it's released on Android, and I'm ready to go on my cat-themed adventure.

It seems evil has once again come to the lands of catkind. A hero is needed, or in this case, two. You play as an outrageous duo: a cat and dog. You can play solo or pawtner up with a friend.

So it's the usual RPG affair. You get XP by killing baddies, find and upgrade armour with stat buffs, and can unlock magical spells. If you're playing solo, then your teammate is AI-controlled and will use what you equip them with.

I decided to make one character a magic caster, and the other melee, to deal with a variety of enemy types. I primarily played the mage since I could focus on defense, and let my ally get some hits in. I'd heal us both up when things got a little too spicy.

The game features some metroidvania-style unlocks, though they're tightly integrated into the story so it's not that exploration heavy. It is always fun to get new movement abilities, though.

I'm still reasonably early into the game, but I'm enjoying it as a simple time waster. It controls well on mobile, but has ports on other platforms if that's more your thing.

It's cute, it's fun, you might already own it. Cat Quest!

I'll tack this one on here since I also played it on Android, but I finally finished Lumino City from two years ago with all my newfound motivation. Apparently I was right at the end, and just needed to go through two more screens to reach the credits. So, hooray!

Quern - Undying Thoughts

NO LOCK UNOPENED. NO PUZZLE PIECE UNTURNED.

So, Quern. I finally played it! And it was good!

I purchased this one in 2022, but I've been eyeing it for far longer. I'm a big fan of Myst-likes (which I consider a progenitor to the modern escape room genre), and Quern is a genuine love letter to Cyan's classic puzzler.

The environmental design is stellar. The world is carefully laid out to shape the isolated island into separate, unlockable sections, yet the twisting paths form a cohesive whole. Much is communicated without written instructions, and you learn to intuit the meanings behind symbols, shapes, and colours.

Everything has a very physical presence, so placing items feels satisfying and real. Gears groan and shudder when you unlock large contraptions. You can see the dramatic impact of your changes across the island as you progress further.

The story is subdued, but present. It's complimentary to the gameplay, and gives you some motivation and intrigue without ever getting in the way.

The puzzles - the main draw - are by and large well designed. There was a healthy mix of logic, deduction, discovery, and experimentation. A few of the later puzzles fell on well-known designs (Simon Says, Mastermind, logic grid puzzles), but most still felt original and clever.

One thing that impressed me was how often an existing item or piece of equipment would be reused in a new way, often hours after last interacting with it. I learned to never discount anything that still operated after seemingly finishing a puzzle.

The difficulty was just right. Some puzzles had me scratching my head, but with enough guessing perseverance, they were all solvable without hints or looking anything up. They never felt cheap or unfair to me.

That said, I did have some assistance in the form of people heckling me over a Discord stream. Yet suggestions were made, and some of them even turned out to be good. Teamwork makes the dream work.

One nitpick: I did feel like some of the collectable items were easy to miss. Multiple times I'd pass right over an important puzzle piece, and if I didn't notice the subtle cursor change, I wouldn't know to pick it up. The puzzle areas were generally large and cluttered, so I feel they could have been telegraphed a little more clearly.

The game includes a very cool sketching system where you can frame a screenshot, then write notes over it. I used this mostly to track previous puzzles that I didn't yet have solutions for. It wasn't as ideal for quickly referencing images, so I still threw those over to a second monitor. eg. This stone tablet guide was awful to reference in-game, so I copied it over and drew all over it. Much clearer now!

Quern proved to be far longer than I was expecting. It took me 16 hours to complete across three sessions. I had a great time solving this island's mysteries though, and I'd highly recommend it to fans of the genre.

I love the self-reflection. This is the kind of navel gazing I can get behind.

I sometimes ask myself: "Why did I do that?". Not in a disparaging way, but just because I want to know what motivations influence me to perform actions, without any post-hoc justifications. Why did I walk to the kitchen and grab a snack? I don't remember actively deciding to do it. I just did it. Why? Was there a momentary delay in other stimulus? Was it habit? Was a biological process involved?

All of that is to say, I relate to your thought exercise and can introspect with the best of them.

Great selection of games, and really interesting thoughts on each of them. I can only imagine the experience of diving the corals. And while I spent a few minutes with theBlu, I ultimately found myself wanting more.

Now don't think I'm going to overlook your unmotivated faux pas. The Mellows have been sitting around and letting their bingo cards go to waste. The nerve of it! I should be mad, and yet I can see the true motivation within you. Even now, as you stand headstrong in the face of adversity, you reveal your true self. Your true... motivation.

Come, join us. We have fireworks.