Review Category: Games

Above all else, Friaxis is a developer that uses DLC as an excuse to completely change the rules of their games. While Bethesda and others might offer full scale expansions and weapons upgrades, they often feel tacked on in comparison to the complete dynamic shift the likes of Gods and Kings offered to Civ V or Enemy Within did to the prior XCOM release. War of the Chosen accomplishes this once more, adding such a vast wealth of new enemies, factors and things to keep track of; you can never rely upon the same old tactics that won past campaigns.

The most prominent change present here is the fact your agents are now being hunted. With the arrival of three Sectoids on steroids known as the Chosen to harass your forces at every turn, every mission might see you facing off against a powerful new foe without warning. Having thankfully learned their lesson from the Alien Hunters DLC (and adding a very welcome nerf to that DLC’s abominations), the Chosen will arise multiple times throughout the campaign and while tough at the start, their main strength stems from how they learn from you. The more you use certain tactics against them, or even certain weapons, the greater their resistance will be to each one, bolstering an already impressive arsenal of skills. The Hunter in particular will have you grinding your teeth in frustration, with his capacity to not only ignore armour, but also nail targets from almost across the map.

What changes this from being a simple rehash of Alien Hunters is what the game offers atop of three new big-name foes. Rather than just encountering the Chosen enough times to pin down their stronghold, you instead accomplish your task by operating alongside new resistance cells. Each has to be convinced to assist your cause, and no single one offers the same benefits. While it would have been an easy task to simply rehash standard XCOM designs and give them a new paint job, you’re instead left with diverse groups of Reaper infiltrators, ADVENT defectors known as the Skirmishers and a mysterious order of Templar psychics to call upon for help. This naturally makes the balancing act of striking bases, recovering supplies and new attaining allies all the more difficult, but the DLC always allows the rewards to be all the sweeter.

New enemies and allies would be enough on their own – especially with zombie swarms known as the Lost showing up and attacking both sides – but the truly fascinating addition is what War of the Chosen does to your troops. While XCOM has always been famed for having aliens permanently bump off essential soldiers and forcing you to juggle finite resources, the soldiers themselves have always seemed oddly robotic. Even if someone is turned into near mincemeat, with enough rankings and some downtime they will barely register the effects. That isn’t quite the case anymore.

Now you have fatigue to worry about, as soldiers deployed over and over again can be driven to near breaking point. If pushed too far, they will panic much more easily and attain negative traits such as obsessively reloading their weapons or an unhealthy streak of paranoia. It’s enough to give them a bit more life, as is the relationships which can build between troops, with friendships and comradery between certain units offering bonuses in the field if deployed alongside one another enough times. Ones which can also backfire quite badly should one of them be killed, but that’s XCOM for you. The point is that this helps to give a sense that you’re commanding humans in the field, and encourages players to actually build a large force of soldiers over a single elite squad and their rookie cannon fodder.

Top all of this off with new bonuses such as the photo booth to commemorate the promotions, victories and losses of your soldiers, and War of the Chosen offers exactly what players want from this series. You have every tool possible to forge your own narrative within the game, and infinitely more reasons to revisit this world once more. Turn based strategy fans should mark this down as an essential purchase for this month.

XCOM 2 DLC – WAR OF THE CHOSEN / DEVELOPER: FIRAXIS / PUBLISHER: 2K GAMES / PLATFORM: PC, OS X, LINUX / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

What do you do when you’ve lost that special mojo in the eyes of your fans? For SEGA’s Sonic Team, after two decades of hit and miss (but mainly miss) releases, the answer was staring at them every time they saw how much more fun the fan ‘ports’ were than their own, official, Sonic product. But has handing the keys of the classic 2D hedgehog to developer Christian Whitehead and his indie crew made for a famous boss battle or just another tedious ring-drop? 

Aesthetically, the game is stunning. Both old and new levels are brought to life with a beautiful retro vibrancy. Everything is so animated; even the backgrounds are in perpetual movement. The music, always of great importance, is no let down either, consisting of excellent remixes of various classic Sonic themes, alongside completely new melodies that fit right at home with the originals. And if you miss that old tube TV look, no problem, there’s an option to put those 625 lines back onto your HD screen. Bliss.

This game was made by fans, so it’s no surprise that fan service is everywhere you look, even going back to reference the most obscure titbits. Long-time Sonic players will share the pure glee that comes from seeing these throwbacks and nods. While most of these will make little difference to non-fans, one sequence in particular may prove quite difficult and confusing, as the references are way too arcane for a newbie to solve the puzzle without help. 

Sonic Mania’s challenge-curve is very satisfying, starting off quite easy then progressing smoothly to more difficult levels that require that much more skill and concentration. This is reflected in the absolutely marvellous Bosses. All of them are wonderful fun to take on, with great gameplay design that demands smart thinking and quick reactions to prevent defeat. Be warned though: there is an overabundance of crush obstacles which means you’ll die a lot on your first play-through. It’s infuriating to build up momentum, gathering rings to protect yourself, only to be squished by a falling pillar or closing door. You’ll get used to it over time and learn to adapt, but it’s old-school 2D torture at its most brutal.

Although it’s nice to see many familiar zones given a fresh twist with new mechanics, the standout stages in the game are the brand-new ones. A shame, then, that there are so few of these. Special stages return in a SEGA Saturn-esque throwback to Sonic R design. These levels contain a certain low-poly charm and are often quite beautiful to look at. They are also great fun to play, requiring a devious balance between timing and speed.

Not just for old-school Sonic fans, but anyone who yearns for the pure excitement of 1990s gaming, Sonic Mania proves that the side-scrolling platform genre, especially this beloved, hi-octane breed of it, still holds up majestically well. A Sonic comeback worth celebrating. 

SONIC MANIA / DEVELOPERS: HEADCANNON, PAGODAWEST GAMES / PUBLISHER: SEGA / PLATFORMS: NINTENDO SWITCH, PS4, XBOX ONE, PC / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

The Fighting Fantasy series is a franchise that seems unable to die. Perhaps it’s the enduring appeal of the game’s world or the innate immersion of the choose-your-path style books. Or maybe, like those who play the games, it literally cheats death by flicking back to the previous page. Regardless, the series is 35 years old now, and sees no sign of stopping. The latest offering from the world of Alansia is Fighting Fantasy Legends, which is an action style video game approach to the setting.

Legends smashes together three of the classic books; Warlock of Firetop Mountain, City of Thieves and Citadel of Chaos.  All three adventures have a similar mission; some sort of evil wizard is making everybody’s lives miserable, and it’s up to you to find a way to beat them up. Rather than try and emulate the books themselves (which previous apps have done fairly readily), this offering feels more like an old-school ‘80s video game, along the lines of Planescape or Baldur’s Gate. As you wander around this fantasy land, causing justice to happen.

There’s some pretty simple character creation; Dwarf, Barbarian, Elf, all of which are the same, rules wise. Add some handy traits and the ability to adjust your starting stats and we are set. Game mechanics are handled by emulating dice and cards. You have three traits: Luck, Skill and Stamina. The latter are merely hit-points, but the first two are represented by nifty animations of dice. Skill is for physical things like hitting people and Luck covers everything else. If you have an ability score of three, the game rolls three dice every time you want to do something. The die is blank except for one swords icon. Get enough swords symbol and you succeed. Levelling up lets you add more swords icons to the dice.

Gameplay involves wandering around the map and interacting with things. You have a bunch of missions to succeed in, and for random encounters and treasure pulls, the game pulls a ‘digital card’, which is usually a monster or some sort, but it could be a greasy urchin or a lucky 4 leafed clover. Lose enough stamina and you leave the currently adventure and gain an injury; these are stamped on your dice and counter sword symbols, so it’s best to find a healer to get rid of them. A similar mechanic exists for luck.

The adventures themselves are pretty fun, though repetitive in the good sort of way (it’s quite addictive). The game wants you to explore everything and, yes, this can be frustrating. Some times you can’t find a thing because it’s in another dungeon and so on. This can be annoying, but it does mean you’re trying all the adventures at once (your inventory gets very full). Fans of the books will be pleased to learn that Warlock of Firetop Mountain is the toughest quest, and yes, those fights do get harder.

As a development of Fighting Fantasy into the world of computer games, it’s certainly a step up. It’s not Skyrim (or even Planescape), but it’s rather fun. Well worth an idle evening or two.

FIGHTING FANTASY LEGENDS / DEVELOPER: NOMAD GAMES / PLATFORM: PC, IPHONE, ANDROID / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Boardgames have become increasingly more complex and more evolved as they’ve become more popular. Modern technology has made it really easy to fund the production of staggeringly intricate and complex games that model everything from the growth of bacteria to terraforming planets. As entertaining as this can be, sometimes you need something simpler. Such as Woo-Hoo!

 

Woo-Hoo! Is not a complex game; the plot is simple. After a hard days playing, the children have left all their toys in the sand-pit. Four small garden gnomes have stirred to tidy up, but first things first, they’re going to play on the cool elephant slide first. That’s right; it’s a roll and move game with a great big wacking cardboard elephant as its centre piece. Move the meeple up the stairs and slide it down the elephant trunk, then pick up toy counters to track your ‘score’. Like in life, whomever has the toys wins.

 

Woo-Hoo! is from Brain Games, the same people who brought us penguin flicking game Ice Cool. It has a familiar design concept; the box you store the game in is part of the game itself. Set up is simple; slot together to cardboard elephant, stick in on the side of the box, add counters and you’re good to go.

 

This is a game firmly aimed at small children, but designed in such a way that adults aren’t incredibly bored when playing it (unlike most games for little kids). What’s surprising is how much fun adults have with it. The ‘advanced’ rules allow for pieces to shove each other down the steps of the slide, and this is where grown-ups find the most fun. Forget the ‘gnomes’ story for the game, this is a game that lets more mature gamers act like children for a short while.

 

Everytime we’ve played Woo-Hoo! the game has turned into one running gag about how amusing kids are when playing. Roll the dice, get shoved off the slide and declare ‘it’s unfair’ in the most petulant comedy voice you can. Or whine that another player has nabbed all the toys. It’s also pretty short; 10 minutes and you’re done. This is a great ‘appetiser’ or ‘winding-down’ game for a regular games night. Great with kids, excellent for parents and fun all round. Woo-Hoo! indeed.

 

WOO-HOO! / PUBLISHER: BRAIN GAMES / RELEASE DATE: AUGUST 2017

Psychology in video games can easily just become just another statistic. No matter how well executed, no matter how well developed, it’s easy just to boil it down to another health bar you need to maintain. Very few games have managed to escape this trap, and even then it can unfortunately be more amusing than truly terrifying. Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is the exception to this rule, as the protagonist’s constantly eroding sanity haunts the player’s every step.

Set amidst a Viking invasion, you play as the warrior Senua as she wanders through an underworld of her own making. Inhuman things crawl in her wake and terrifying constructs dominate the landscape, as her own psychosis begins to take over her world.

The imagery here is the sort that Berserk is often famed for – It’s incredibly detailed, extremely gory and incredibly disturbing. Even things you initially take for granted can quickly turn against you, as the animations and textures of seemingly humanoid beings quickly marks them as retaining a special kind of wrongness. From bizarre impossible jittering to malformed creatures of flesh and bone, the brilliant graphical fidelity has been used to constantly keep you on edge at every turn. This might have brought it up to par with a few other high-quality horror titles, but what pushes it over the edge is how it executes each scare. You can often turn back to see things have changed behind you, creatures watch you from afar only to flicker away the second you focus upon them, and then there are the voices.

Every manifested thought of Senua’s mind echoes through the speakers, taunting her, throwing you off and even addressing you directly. It’s the sort of up-close-and-personal experience that could have easily sunk the entire game, but it instead turns what could have been laughable into something truly chilling. The things it screeches at you add another layer onto both the narrative and the scares, and focuses its efforts onto how everything present is some inner demon or personal terror brought to life. Often the voices themselves are as helpful as they are critical, so you can never fully ignore them no matter how hard you try to do so.

Still, you’re probably wondering less about the presentation than you are its mechanical strengths. This is where some of that initial depth unfortunately bleeds away, as it’s competent but not outstanding. Often compared with Dark Souls’ methodical attacks and limited health pool, Hellblade’s system is notably simplistic. While it offers a decent number of combos, and the sheer weight of your attacks is constantly satisfying, it wins more points on drama than anything else. What was obviously intended for one-on-one combat suffers when you face six foes at a time, and it’s only during the spectacular boss fights where the mechanics truly shine.

Furthermore, the linear design proves to be a double-edged sword. It obviously allowed for greater dramatic effect and a fantastic execution of some of the bigger scares, but the later stages feel unfortunately quite constrained and limited. This makes the aforementioned multi-man fights more frustrating to cope with, and the puzzles which show up (while well executed and thought out) lack some of the variety you might want. Again, it wins points on writing and themes, but the underlying mechanical strength is comparatively weaker than you might expect. This by no means makes it a bad game nor does it undermine its concepts, but you might end up with that Bioshock feeling of “Huh, I thought there would be more to it…” by the end.

Still, when all is said and done, it’s only a few needling problems (and one or two awkwardly placed checkpoints) which holds this game back from a higher score. Between its story elements, presentation, creativity and fantastic bonus features, Hellblade remains a fascinating take on psychological and Celtic aesthetics which is more than worth your time. Any fan of Eternal Darkness or Spec Ops: The Line would do well to give this one a look.

Oh, and Ninja Theory? You’re officially forgiven for what you did to Dante.

HELLBLADE: SENUA’S SACRIFICE / DEVELOPER AND PUBLISHER: NINJA THEORY / PLATFORM: PC & PS4 / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

At a glance, Sundered is easy to pass off as a gimmick game. The sort which focuses upon recapturing nostalgia and the style of an older era – usually the ‘80s – and uses it as a platform to boost its own popularity. At first glance, beneath its spectacular hand-drawn designs – this does look exactly like an old Metroidvania release. At least until you scratch the surface, and realise just how this game has reworked so many basic genre concepts.

 

The story is only vaguely told, as you wake up playing as a nameless woman within an underground labyrinth. Two factions are at war down there, having unleashed horrific creatures into their environment and summoned twisted allies which are the antithesis of life on Earth. Your job now is to annihilate both sides, and the monstrosities which dwell there.

 

So, as you might imagine, this involves you slaughtering your way through hordes of foes and eventually bumping into the odd very big and very angry boss. It’s the same basic execution we know and love, but it differs thanks to the style of the enemies, upgrades and the design of the environment itself. Rather than sticking to the same generic mook types, Sundered instead offers the player a broad variety of interesting and ugly enemies. Some can shoot through walls, others phase through the environment and airborne enemies have no end of surprises to take you down. While this would make them a challenge unto themselves, it is backed by a very intelligent AI which is capable of using its hordes to flank you, trap you in and even force you to waste attacks in feints.

 

The bosses themselves are truly massive, ranging from a decaying corpse built into a spider-like exoskeleton to things which would give Mother-Brain nightmares, and the game reinforces it. The camera actually pans out to take them in, and some can be literal walls of attacks, blasting out volley after volley of projectiles in their opening shots. These are easily the highlight of the game, offering the tense insane moments which made the genre defining releases classics, but what helps it to stand out is how the actual levelling is handled. While you are given an upgrade as you might expect, you can choose to warp, corrupt or alter it into something entirely different to suit your needs. This allows you to more aptly tailor-make your character as you progress, and offers far more replay value than you typically find in these experiences.

 

I would also add that this game is beautiful in its own haunting way, but the screenshot should speak for itself.

 

Yet, as ever, there are a few definite problems which holds the game back in certain areas. For example, as fun as the combat might be, certain mini-bosses seem to rely much more upon being a damage sponge than a true threat. Something which drags out fights to no end as you quietly chip away at their HP bar, turning the whole conflict into a tedious sheer battle of attrition.

 

On the other extreme, Sundered has this habit of favouring throwing random hordes of foes at you with little to no pattern or warning. There’s no obvious indication as to just what might set them off, as you can be wandering up an empty corridor at one moment, only to be beset by fifty enemies in the next second. If you’re limping back from a boss fight, with only a fraction of your health left, the last thing you want to bump into are sixty archers with near pinpoint accuracy who can fire through walls. Neither problem truly kills any enjoyment you might have, but it might leave you repeatedly swearing as it stops you in your tracks yet again.

 

The problems present here are notable, but there’s no denying the sheer joy of playing Sundered. Even in its worst moments, the combat remains spectacularly engaging and with an incredibly rewarding levelling system and fantastic boss battles, it’s still a fantastic purchase. Any fan looking to sink a few dozen hours into a Lovecraftian game of absolute violence should take a look at this one.

 

SUNDERED / DEVELOPER AND PUBLISHER: THUNDER LOTUS GAMES / PLATFORM: PC / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

The idea of an isometric Dark Souls experience is something we have seen before with the likes of Joten. Yet, with this said, Immortal Planet looks to twist things with its own take on the genre in both setting and style. Rather than utilising existing mythologies, the game instead builds its own half-seen narrative.

 

The world here captures how even the most bleak environment can tell a story through its features and foes, backed by only glimpses of lore. It’s a quality which gives them character, but always throws in the odd entertaining twist. Enemies can shift-tactics mid fight, with only subtle foreshadowing alluding to this, but it always leaves you with a few methods a smart player can use to counter them. This extends beyond simply learning a pattern of attacks to rapidly switching between various weapons and employing the right skills.

 

Unlike the clunkier slow moving engagements you might expect, the game places a major emphasis upon using its dash abilities to cut through enemies; something which often turns slow occasional exchanges of attacks into high speed duels. It’s an incredibly satisfying break from the usual mechanics games of this style favour, and it is further broken up by the ability to much more viably use ranged attacks to stay ahead in fights.

 

Unfortunately, while Immortal Planet is a great game, a couple of failings build up to hold it back from being a truly outstanding one. One of the big ones is how many enemies seem to be tweaked or worked that bit too far until you’re frustrated at the mechanics more than losing. For example, early on you will bump into foes with ranged acidic attacks which stun-lock you in place, rarely offering a real opportunity to recover or break free. This is a problem with enemies, as they seem to have an innate edge against you which goes beyond their sheer strength.

 

Equally, you have a spawn system here as Dark Souls, where death or resting will respawn foes and you can regain the points you lost. The problem is, rather than their version of estus flasks containing the same amount of “estus” from when you were alive, you can only store one per flask. This makes rebuilding from your losses incredibly tedious during some of the game’s worst moments.

 

Is Immortal Planet worth playing despite all of that? Definitely. This is still a fantastic experience and anyone who has enjoyed the sort of tooth-grinding difficulty we usually get out of FromSoftware will have a blast with this one. It’s simply that with a few definite tweaks, updates and modifications this could have been Game of the Year material.

IMMORTAL PLANET / DEVELOPER AND PUBLISHER: TEEDOUBLEUGAMES / PLATFORM: PC / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Cybermen leaders have always lacked something when it comes to charisma. Cybermen are, after all, cold emotionless killing machines and aren’t that well known for cracking jokes. This means that Doctor Who tends to cast monsters with some sort of mouth-piece, and it’s not unusual to see the Master in charge of the silver killing machines.

The Missy and the Cybermen set from Warlord Games is an expansion for the Doctor Who Into The Time Vortex game. It adds 12 plastic ‘Cyber-Legion’ Cybermen and a model of Missy, the most recent incarnation of the master.

The Cybermen are exactly the same snap together plastic pieces that you get in the ‘Exterminate’ starter set. They’re quite easy to put together and it’s silver plastic so if you can’t be bothered to paint them they look okay just as. You also get 14 cybermats; these adorable little horrors come in two types; with their own integral base or as a ‘swarm’ (which will need gluing to base). These are perfectly cromulent and work well for the game. They can’t be easily posed, but then when you’re building a faceless army of cyborg zombies, uniformity is a good thing.

Missy, on the other hand, is full of character. With a hat, umbrella and severe looking outfit, the sculpt defines Missy perfectly. It looks good unpainted and springs to life when a dab of colour is applied. Warlord provide all their pieces unpainted, which is great for model hobbyists and a temptation for even the most ham-fisted of artists. It doesn’t need gluing so you can use it straight away if you want.
 

The element that excites most gamers though are the expansion cards. We get 10 Recruitment cards and 8 Adventure cards in the box. So they are enough cards to field Missy and various variations of the cyber army in a standard game, including a load of cybermats if you fancy it. The recruitment cards give you enough options to mix up your cyberman game, and Missy herself is rather formidable.

Of the 8 adventure cards, several of these are automatic buffs for Missy. Her most interesting ability is the power to stop time; or in others words make a unit miss a go. As this is an objective based battle game, a lack of mobility is rather deadly. The other options are equally charming and appropriate to the setting. Overall, another great expansion from Warlord.

 

INTO THE VORTEX: DOCTOR WHO EXTERMINATE! THE MINIATURES GAME – MISSY AND THE CYBERMEN EXPANSION SET / PUBLISHER: WARLORD GAMES / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Super Meat Boy has always stood as one of the most famed of indie icons. The mere mention of the name brings to mind boundless frustration and the sort of macabre cartoony gore which manages to be as hilarious as it is disturbing. It seemed to be a lightning in a bottle experience, but one half of the creative team behind it (Hello again, Mr. McMillen) has returned to refine the mechanics with this latest release: The End is Nigh.

 

Anyone who has played Super Meat Boy will feel immediately at home. As before, you’re left racing towards the end, hurling your character over serrated obstacles and trying desperately to make that one perfect jump. Yet what separates these games is how The End is Nigh proves to add a deeper connection to its core gameplay, and offers more of an addictive edge.

 

Compared to the world-by-world set-up you might expect, every level present here flows from one to the next, giving more of a sense of continuity and exploration. You’ll often find yourself looping around and backtracking Metroidvania style, with many previous environments retaining hidden passages and secrets needed to help you progress. While this could have easily piled busywork atop of an otherwise streamlined experience, it instead enhances it. The extremely rich designs of the dystopian wastes around you means you’re always keeping one eye open for secrets, and it encourages you to revisit older environments. As a result, it reduces the feeling that you’re simply bashing your head against a brick wall, and instead gives a real sense of progressing forwards even while repeating the same area time and again.

 

The story – what little there is of it – is also tied much, much closer to the mechanics this time; notably in how a few late-game twists only come about. With this said, a few very entertaining elements are notably absent. While the world itself is fun, there’s no denying a disappointing lack of challenges via boss battles to keep your heart pounding or to break up the levels. Creative as they are, one or two would have massively enhanced the game. Furthermore, the dreary Binding of Isaac level of hopelessness can understandably put off a few fans. Without any moments of true joy to reward you, your constant failures can be that much harder to push past.

 

While it’s clear this will have no happy ending, there’s no denying the mechanical strength behind The End is Nigh and the incredible creativity on display. Give it a look if you’re after a fantastic adventure platformer, but just be sure to watch the trailer first.

 

THE END IS NIGH / DEVELOPER AND PUBLISHER: ED MCMILLEN AND TYLER GLAIEL / PLATFORM: PC / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Often a visual theme can only carry a game so far. It’s enough to catch your attention, or even to build an atmosphere to keep you invested as you gradually delve into the mechanics, and The Automatician is no exception in this regard. However, what makes it stand out is how DreamPunks takes the semi-stitchpunk Victorian look as far as it can possibly go, working it into everything from the lore to the basic mechanics. It becomes far more than merely a skin layered over a few tried and true mechanics, and gives the The Automatician infinitely more personality than much of its competition.

The game has you stepping into the shoes of Emma – someone given the opportunity to resolve a number of bizarre puzzles a Victorian manor known as the Absolon Estate. Populated by bizarre cloth creatures – Whodos – your task is to open up more of the rooms as life goes on about you, and uncover the secrets to the place in order to become the Automatician.

So what you have here is a first-person puzzle game with a distinct narrative and hyping its beautiful environments. Those who played Dear Esther likely have a chill running down their spine for all the wrong reasons at that sentence, but worry not, the game isn’t afraid of actually letting you take control. Besides the variety of odd and interesting characters to converse with, the environments themselves feature a fair number of surprisingly interactive elements and clever moments of foreshadowing the future.

 

The actual puzzles themselves are divided between rooms and are critical to opening up more of the house. Each is as much an engineering task as a puzzle, as you build a Rube Goldberg machine out of various bits and pieces to accomplish its role. These bits can range from miniature cannons to Ferris wheels and motors, and your task is as much about fitting them in the right order as the right place, angle, position and power. The game reworks its basic format several times over in order to add layers of complexity, and as a result it avoids the sort of complacency or repetition which can hinder other game.

However, there are definite problems here, especially in regards to the puzzles themselves. While there’s no denying the satisfaction in watching a finished machine rumbling into life, actually getting there can often be infuriating. Because you cannot zoom in with the camera on the puzzles it can be very difficult to pick out what exactly each piece is, and you can spend minutes at a time scratching your head over a basic mistake. Besides this, the content itself is also relatively light. You have a few general puzzles of the same overall design to help you move from room to room, but little to break up the experience outside the lore. As such, anyone more mechanically inclined might be disappointed by this outing.

 

Furthermore, there is no denying that the experience The Automatician offers is a very short one with little in the way of replay value. While it has a price tag to match this, it lacks the sort of staying power you might desire from a puzzle game, and by the end it seems as if it’s more of a test run for a much bigger experience.

Still, while The Automatician might lack the complexity or greater substance of other puzzle games, the themes, execution and simple charm of the experience makes it well worth a look. This is a fleeting if charming and very engaging experience, and even when the puzzles fall short the mystery and scenery is enough to keep you going.

THE AUTOMATICIAN / DEVELOPER & PUBLISHER: DREAMPUNKS / PLATFORMS: PC / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW