Welcome to Puzzle Lovers! - Play Hard. Think Harder.

(continued from part 1)

• ☹️ 3 Sheep Puzzle (sokoban): Bring 3 sheep to the barn. You are a dog, and you push and pull the sheep in the same row or column as you, no matter how far. Bushes stop you and the sheep. Simple but neat idea, but the implementation is very unpolished, and the very few levels in the demo don't show a lot of puzzle ideas. (my playthrough)
  
  
• 😐 BUBBLE BOI (puzzle platformer, precision platformer): A puzzle platformer that looks like a movie from the 1910s, in which you play as a bubble that can’t move directly, but can shoot bubbles and teleport to where the bubble is. But you can only do that a few times, blow too many bubbles, and you pop. The counter resets every time you change screens, and while you do have to go back to the last save point if you die, these are usually frequent enough, just one or two rooms back. It’s mostly good, though I had to stop when it started requiring very precise inputs, shooting a bubble in a pixel-perfect, narrow tube while falling. Or maybe I missed the puzzly way of doing that? (my partial playthrough)
  
  
• 😐 Concussive Maintenance (test chambers, physics, knowledge discovery): What if Portal had only orange portals? Just like in Portal, you can place portals on white walls, except that you can only exit through a portal, you enter only after gaining enough velocity, and as a “safety” measure, instead of smashing yourself into the ground, you get ejected through the portal. It’s a bit of knowledge discovery, but you’ll get the mechanics quickly. The demo is very rough, feels like an early alpha technology demo, with barebones graphics and UI, and only a few levels, but it shows a promising concept. (my playthrough)
  
  
• 👎👎👎👎👎 Dali’s Discovery (first-personn puzzle adventure, minigames, action): This is the worst game I've ever played. So many things went wrong, and I can’t think of one positive aspect. It looks and behaves like a mobile keep-paying-to-play game, with the game downloading more and more data packs off the internet while running, and lots of intricate AI-generated graphics, and sparkly effects that encourage you after every little move. But it’s all AI-slop, terribly generated movies that seem hyperrealistic at a glance, but they don’t make any sense at all. The “story” makes no sense. The gameplay is terrible. And it’s so buggy! I could rant about it for 5 pages, just based on less than 10 minutes of gameplay that I could stomach. Don’t play this, but you should check my hilarious playthrough for some laughs. On a scale from 1 to 10, this would require negative numbers.
  
  
• 👍 Divider Dave (puzzle platformer, clones): Help Dave and his many clones escape the clone factory. It’s a platformer; get to the exit, but you have the power to create and control clones of yourself. Jump on them or carry them on your shoulders, throw them around, sacrifice them, turn them into cubes… It’s fun, the levels are interesting, and each clone has a distinctive look. The one thing I disliked was the real-time aspect; some things move automatically, and you have to be careful about timing things right. Other than that, it focuses on thinky puzzles, not on speed and precision. (my playthrough)
  
  
• 👎 Don't Push TOO Hard (sokoban): A basic Sokoban with many flaws. Most of the levels are just basic, classic Sokoban, push boxes around a warehouse, with very small and very samey levels, two boxes in slightly different configurations. But some levels have an extra mechanic, red and blue crates that push or pull any box that gets in front of them, an interesting mechanic that could make for some interesting levels, but this too is underused, with only a handful of levels using it, and in uninteresting levels. The rest of the game also lacks polish, with bad 3D graphics, a cluttered UI, move and time limits, and limited undo… And after all the tiny boring levels, the demo ends with a huge level that’s also uninteresting, a lot of busy work getting several boxes one by one around the level, following the same long path. (my playthrough)
  
  
• 👍 Escape the Baby Alarm (point&click, surreal, cozy, lateral thinking, minipuzzles): A cute and cozy game about a mother being abducted by aliens and forced to solve baby problems. The first thing that stands out is the presentation, the graphical style resembling a very colorful and fluid comic panel. The puzzles are interesting, not too hard once you figure out what you need to do, but mimicking the real “puzzle” of figuring out what a baby needs, so the game does not tell you what a puzzle is, and how it needs to be solved. But if you look around, you might spot a clue, or a pattern, sometimes obvious but sometimes as a detail in a background image. I would say it feels a bit like A Little to the Left. I liked it. (my playthrough)
  
  
• ☹️ Float Your Goat (physics, construction): Build stable-enough rafts to get a goat safe and dry to the next island. It’s one of those unstable construction games, like Bridge Constructor, in which you can put together a few sticks that barely float for a few seconds, long enough to reach the next island. There are more mechanics like rain (also build a roof), leaky planks (don't put them at the bottom), friends (build a bigger raft)... I don't like realistic physics simulators, because they usually produce unpredictable results: the same build may or may not work depending on luck. But it’s funny, and with a little bit of story. (my playthrough)
  
  
• 👍 HeartWeaver (3D puzzle platformer, stealth, story-rich, surreal): Explore your twisted mind, hiding from bad emotions and recovering lost memories. The game takes place in a dream-like world, full of broken memories you must find, bad emotions you must hide from, floating, incomplete terrain you must jump across, illogical geometry that has you walking on walls and ceilings, and a dark corruption you must cleanse. Each memory you recover offers a story, and little by little you discover what happened. The game is set up as an overworld with more challenging individual puzzles that you can open. Overall, this is interesting; it feels a bit like Psychonauts, but with more focus on puzzles than on action. This is likely my own problem, but the one thing I don’t like is the 3D platforming; too often I jump towards an island but instead fall beside it; I feel that the camera doesn’t help with visualising the 3D structure of the world. (my playthrough)
  
  
• 👍 MASUKU (strategy, math): On a grid with colorful dots and shapes, you must place tiles with holes in them so that the dots peeking through the holes add up to a nice score. The rules for computing the score keep changing: sometimes blue adds points, sometimes stars multiply instead of adding, sometimes red means you get no points at all. You must always keep track of the current rules on the right side. So, given the available tiles and the scoring rules, you must find the perfect spot that gives you a nice score. You keep playing until you get 50 points, and your score is how many turns you needed. The demo only includes the daily challenge mode, in which every day you get the same board and tiles as everybody else, and compete in a global leaderboard for the smallest score. It’s mostly about scanning the board, mathy, but not very puzzly. (my playthrough)
  
  
• 👍 Puzzle ATLAS (logic): A collection of varied logic puzzles and riddles, like crossing the bridge, pouring the right amount of liquid in several cups, combining weights to add up to a target, Simon Says… It’s decent, though it doesn’t work very well on small screens; the text is almost impossible to read on the Steam Deck. (my playthrough)
  
  
• 👍 Rivage (first-person escape room, story-rich, puzzle adventure, time loops): I played this about a year ago, when it was known as STRAND, and while there have been some changes, much of it is the same. It’s an escape-room puzzle set aboard a spaceship, with a time-loop mechanic on top. The environment and the story are very detailed. For example, there’s a kitchen in which you can pick up and look at every spoon, knife, and plate, but none of those objects have any usefulness. With this many objects to investigate, the truly useful ones are easy to miss. I initially felt that there was too much story, but now I think that’s fine; most players who aren’t just looking for challenging puzzles will appreciate a deep and mysterious story. I don’t remember why last year I didn’t finish the demo, but this time I pushed through and actually reached the end of the demo, and I liked it. (my playthrough)
  
  
• ☹️ Stinky Cat (action sokoban): A mix of Sokoban and Bomberman, you have to selectively destroy some boxes, while still keeping enough boxes to block off the deadly guns and push down buttons. But one of the boxes hides the tasty fish, though eating it will cause a bit of flatulence. Oh no, is this another Stinky Game? Yes, it is, joining the prestigious club of just a handful of good thinky but stinky games. However, this doesn’t feel as smooth as So Fart Away, mainly because it mixes real-time non-grid movement and a discrete grid structure. That fish snack-induced fart has the benefit of giving you a short boost in running speed, which is often needed to solve levels, but running freely in a grid with joystick controls means that quite often I get stopped by a corner when I overshoot or undershoot a turn by a few pixels while running on a nitro-boost. Plus, the levels are a little too big, the bouncy balls shot by guns overclutter the screen, making it hard to see, and the timing of the dash to the exit is a bit too tight. It’s a nice idea, but the current implementation is a bit too flaky. (my playthrough)
  
  
• 👍 Timefract (clones, sokoban, logic, mazes): A Sokoban with clones, time travel, and logic. This one has an interesting take on clones and time loops: instead of everything rewinding, the main character stays in place while the rest of the level runs backwards, so it’s like moving yourself into the future while your past actions replay. You can float while platforms move back in time under your feet, deadly lasers can pass through you, boxes return to their original positions, and you effectively restart the level from a different spot. You don’t have to rewind all the way to the start, either; you can roll back just part of the timeline if that’s better. This rewind mechanic isn’t solely used for the clones' assistance. Many levels don’t require rewinding at all, and many use the rewind without involving clones. Other clever mechanics include logic gates, where you must figure out which buttons to press to get the desired output, and lasers you can redirect with mirrors. It’s quite good, but it suffers from the usual downsides: of clone games, the need to time actions precisely; of real-time games, the need to react quickly to moving objects; and of non-grid layouts, the need to carefully position elements in levels that really want to be grid-based. (my playthrough)
  
  
• ☹️ Video Editor (puzzle platformer, speed and precision): Become a YouTube gaming star by faking your platforming skills with clever video editing. You record clips and combine them in short videos that show you reaching the goal in record time. It’s a bit tricky; you have to combine in parallel the actions of multiple characters recorded in sequence, and it's not always obvious where the steps are needed. But it's mostly about speed, since your “success” depends on how short the final movie is, and how short each clip is. You can't waste film! It’s an interesting idea, but the focus on speed is not for me. (my playthrough)
  
  
• 👍 Vroomity Loops (driving, precision, logic): Practice driving through dangerous roundabouts, merging in and out around cars to get to your desired exit. Don’t worry, it’s not a 3D driving simulator; it’s an abstract puzzle game about finding the right “orbit” that lets you reach the exit without hitting other cars. You start in a given place and must avoid other cars until you can safely exit to the right road. Other cars drive at a constant speed in their own lane, some faster, some slower. You also drive at a constant speed, but you can change lanes, which allows you to overtake or stay behind other cars. It’s fun and puzzly, though I would welcome a speed toggle since it can require some fast reflexes in the more challenging levels. (my playthrough)
  
  
• 🎉 WOIM (type): A very puzzly Snake in which you have to reach the exit. Eat apples to grow, use scissors to cut yourself in two, push buttons to open gates, and carefully carry eggs to the nests. Nice mechanics, good and varied puzzles, lovely graphical style. (my playthrough)

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