Tengutana

I haven't played this game very much but I really don't need more than 5 minutes to determine that this game is really not for me. First off, you're probably wondering what the hell Tengutana is. You read the description and it sounds interesting. Well it's not really that interesting. You basically start out in the level with this floating Tengu head (a tengu is a type of long-nosed Japanese demon known for trickery). In front of you is a box with a glowing ball on it. next to the glowing box on the ground is a "put soul here" marker... or maybe it says spirit...I forget now. Either way, the glowing ball is the soul/spirit and you have to cut the box with your sword in such a way that the ball falls directly into the pad with the least number of cuts possible. If this still sounds interesting, you're weird. I mean, I'm all for puzzle games, and physics based puzzle games can be fun, but the problem is that how well you can solve the puzzle is tied directly to how good the physics engine is and how accurately you can manipulate things in that environment. So how is the physics engine? Not terribly good. Swinging swords feels hollow/empty with zero feedback to make you …

Wow how this game has improved! When I first played it it was a cool concept but the the mechanics were still being worked on I guess and the puzzles weren't as good. But now the game is really optimized, the controls feel right, and the puzzles are challenging and it uses physics well. Plus for a VR game that runs well for the price it's a steal. A thumbs up from a Rift user.

I'm quite torn on this one. There are quite a lot of 2D games like this and one of the things which make them so challenging is that a really small change in cut can have quite drastic changes in the final outcome so a lot of times you can understand what you need to do, but still need to repeat the level multiple times until things fall right. This game suffers the exact same problem but taken into 3d, the number of ways things can fractionally change are hugely increased. The upshot is that you can have level when you are trying over and over which can feel frustrating. This is further hampered by the fact that there are only two 'heights' you can stand at. Graphics are funcational but lack personality. The actual cutting mechanic feels nice but there is also a nudge mechanic which I found difficult to control and I'd often end up making extra cuts accidentally. Overall I really didn't do anything to make me want to keep playing.

6/10 Reasonably fun, but quite basic and not very consistent. I get the feeling that it would have worked better in 2D.

Low effort, but still kind of fun.

Mechanics were janky which mader it frustrating.