Puzzle Chambers

Review

Freddy (our hero) awakens on the floor of a strange room, alone and not sure what is happening. There are only 2 doors in the room, one open, one closed. We walk through the open door into the next room, where we find another person who is also a captive here. He has been here for a while and explains what is going on to the best of his knowledge. You decide to work together and start solving puzzles so you may reach the next break area. After a couple of levels, you will go to the next room and find more people who are held prisoner here with you. We now have 4 people in our group and we continue solving puzzles. Soon we run into a hostile group of survivors who want to rob us of our food, but we have nothing for them to take, so they make a hasty retreat. Soon after this, one more survivor joins our group, making a total of 5 people. We discover that each of us has a special superpower; how these play out in your game I shall leave you to discover. During the game, you will occasionally play as other characters during flashback scenes. Via a story told by one of the survivors, we learn more about those who have detained us in the place, as we continue with our journey we have a run in with our capturers, who take one member of the group and threaten those of us who are left. We must fight and escape from this place and find who or what is doing this.

Released on Dec 1, 2017, by the developer Entertainment Forge, and published by GrabTheGames, this indie title is an escape room, number puzzler with casual to moderate difficulty. It is one of the most unusual puzzle games I have ever had the pleasure of playing. I am not really sure what to call the genre of puzzles we are presented with; they use simple addition and subtraction in a grid, and you must match the numbers that correspond with the puzzles to advance to the next level. With 67 levels to master, it will tell its story as you progress through the levels. The story is quite unique and an interesting play as the game unfolds, featuring some interesting mechanics. Periodically, another mechanic will be tossed into the game that makes it more challenging, such as direction, color change, numerical value changes, blank tiles and more! There’s a built-in hint system in case you get stuck on a level, where you are able to take a partial answer that will place just a few tiles on the board, or even give the solution if you have any free ones left to use. This is a life saver! Not all the levels are overly difficult, but in some, the solution may elude you and you will you need at least a hint to put yourself in the right direction.

There isn't a lot for Options; there are master and music volumes, full-screen or windowed mode and resolution, high-end graphics setting for high-end PCs, along with a few quality of life settings you can change to your play-style. These include unlimited solutions, automatically skip scenes, instant dialog and disable player movement, which is a nice touch - if the game is too difficult, you can alter your settings to help you. There are 10 achievements to earn; to 100% the title, you will need to beat the game without using any hints at all during your gameplay.

I did have a couple of things that I believe could improve the game. There is no way to tell what level you're on, as the levels are not numbered, nor is there a map of the levels you can view, so you are unable to revisit previously played levels. We don't really even know how many levels we may have used hints on or played for that matter. The ability to replay levels really would help to increase the game's replayability.  Then, we could also go back and try to replay levels we couldn't get without hints. The game mechanics as it continues incorporates colors into the equation, as I am quite color-blind and there is no color-blind mode, the game has become quite a bit more difficult for me now. The addition of a color-blind mode for the many people like myself with vision issues for color could benefit from its addition to the title.

Quite a fun game! I was worried when I started playing as I do not play a lot of math puzzles, but I found this title to be quite intuitive and was able to smash through level after level for a while. Once the new mechanics start being added in it took a while to figure out some of the new changes to the mechanics. The hint system is perfect. Should you find yourself stuck, just use a hint, and if you're still unable to solve it, you can use a complete solution to complete the puzzle for you. These you get in limited amounts as you progress through the levels. I have used the full solutions a couple of times now, as I am nearing the end of the game. Sometimes a partial solution is helpful enough to get you through the puzzles. I have really enjoyed these puzzles – a shout out to the developer for their devious designs. It’s also a lot of fun watching the story reveal itself. I really did not expect the story to be in-depth, being for a puzzle game of this type, but I was pleasantly surprised.  Now is your time to decide if this little gem should reserve a spot in your library.

Review written by DamageInc.for Zeepond.com!