Resident puzzle game addict here. Two weeks ago there was another steam event with demos for puzzle games, so I may as well list three I liked here:
<Memory's Reach
This is what you get when you take someone who really likes Metroid Prime, and have them make a pure puzzle game. It's still a metroidvania, as in you collect powerups that enable new puzzle mechanics and backtrack through an open world, but with zero combat. I know, some anons don't like the term metroidvania, but it's an apt description. What's worse is they've lately been pushing the term "metroidbrainia" for puzzle ones, but it doesn't fit here because you're not gated by knowledge at all, just actual powerups.
The puzzles in the demo are okay, certainly not ground- or brain-breaking but that might be to its benefit, since exploring the world is a major draw. It's a large world of natural locales with twisty buildings very much like the game series it clearly tries to copy, with scannable lore sprinkled around, so being able to move through it at a reasonable pace is a good thing. I might be enjoying it more because of a sense of nostalgia than anything else, honestly, but it has to be at least good enough to allow that sense instead of breaking me out of it.
I will say that the symbol-making puzzles are the weakest to me, while environmental ones are a lot neater. Hope later powerups keep adding more intersting shit and maybe combine in interesting ways. There's also apparently more content released now for NextFest so I'm probably gonna play more tomorrow.
(Also holy fucking shit the way you interact with the map is garbage, at least on M+KB. They better fix that.)
<Theta and Paralldox on Worldlines
Or 茜塔和世界线悖论, so it's presumably made by nips. Sure seems like it, because it's got a cute little witch girl protag and a fuckton of spelling errors.
The least interesting looking out of the three games I liked, its "just another 2D sokoban with unique twists." I feel like sokoban games are getting pretty overdone at this point, but at least this one properly fucks with my brain.
The main twist here is you get consumables that let you split into two copies of yourself, which move at the same time. Multiple copies of your character isn't the most original mechanic in a sokoban though, but here when you move into a wall, unlike in most of those games, the blocked character moves to its left instead of staying put. This makes controlling the relative position between copies a lot harder and it's not really intuitive to me yet, but that's why it's interesting.
Puzzles are pretty brain-busty, but the demo allows you to skip pretty liberally aside from a few mechanic introducing levels. It also seems to have copied the hint system from A Can Of Wormholes, where instead of telling you a hint it puts you in a very simplified level where you're pretty much forced to figure out the mechanic that the real level requires an advanced version of. I like that system, allows the progression to be almost entirely interesting hard puzzles instead of forcing you to sit through braindead introduction levels every time something new is available. The first two new mechanics introduced are levels looping at the edges and boxes being able to break you into multiple separate worlds where turn timing is more important which both fit with its quantum mechanics theme. Looking forward to what else they come up with.
<Looking for Fael
While I said Memory's Reach not being Myst-like was a good thing, this is more for those who do want Myst. You go to an appartment looking for your roommate, and after the first puzzle which may be broken because it involves reading a French postcard? Or maybe they're just crazy enough to assume you'll find a way to read it you get a gameboy-SP-like item. That thing allows you to activate little power terminals with some of the less interesting puzzles, shooting tetrominoes to cover certain tiles on a grid.
The real meat however is environmental puzzles. There's practically only two in the demo:
-Breaking into a lockbox by figuring out the code, which actually requires thinking what this guy would use as a code and bad password practices instead of being some numbers on a wall.
-A puzzle involving pausing projectors scattered about an appartment
But they're both very non-trivial, and make you experiment and figure shit out yourself instead of sprinkling some hints about that tell you exactly what to do. Or maybe I'm just dumb, someone else would have to try it and tell me they breezed through it. Took me a little under an hour to get through.
I'd also like to congratulate the dev for, despite the game being about getting lost in endless multiverse appartments, not going for a backrooms meme theme. That shit can't die fast enough.
I may write some more like this if there's any new puzzle demos. I occasionally thought about doing a puzzle game collum in Sleepy Station, but I don't feel like I'm good enough at writing articles. I was always garbage at writing essays in school. Throwaway posts on an anonymous imageboard are at least temporary.
>>282431
>As for the third one I'll try out Kaizen: A Factory Story, basically a Zachtronics game in all but studio game.
Oh shit there's a demo for it now? Nice. I've been waiting for that one since the day it was announced, I'm glad Zach is back doing what he's best at.
>>282451
He became a teacher for a year, found out that being a teacher is shit, and quit. He then formed Coincidence, which supposedly has a really laid back "work on whatever you want" work ethic a-la Valve, with a bunch of the old employees. So yeah, it's pretty much just the same thing as Zachtronics, except now they use external publishers I think plus they make physical games now too. I actually got my copies of Chemistry Set and The Lucky Seven last weekend. Fun little solo cardgames, but need to find someone to play Chemistry Set's actually intended versus mode with.