Escape from Hadrian's Wall

[h2]What is this game[/h2] Escape from Hadrian's Wall is a story-based linear puzzle-adventure game in Virtual Reality where you start locked in a prison cell (reminding me of Oblivion) and the witness a dialogue of a soldier with a woman and her child in the cell in front of you. It just happens that this prison/castle is being attacked and you will be tasked by a wizard to find and save this woman and her child. You then start wandering through the castle and doing whatever is needed to progress through the rooms. [h2]Gameplay[/h2] The gameplay is inside that castle, composed of two parts: [list] [*] Environmental puzzles. You get objects and add them to your inventory, and use them, or the environment (e.g. levers, pools, torches, panels), to unlock doors / exits to the next section. [*] Turn-based card battles, which are still puzzles. You are given a predetermined deck of cards and a predetermined set of enemies. You have to find out the way to apply these cards to overcome the enemies. To be able to kill the enemies, you should just have a higher score than they have and then attack. For example, if you add one of your water units in a square with water, you get it on its …

Unique puzzle game that's a mix of smart puzzles and a fully-fleshed out deckbuilder strategy game designed as a puzzle mini-game. At times it almost feels like you're getting two games in one with the different styles, which actually helps the pacing a lot since mixing it up keeps either side from too much repetition. The puzzles are challenging without much of modern hand holding, but they're also not too obtuse. The deck-builder is great and feels good enough to stand on its own. In the sea of puzzle VR games, Escape from Hadrian's Wall brings a uniqueness that feels fresh and makes it worth taking a look.

Very enjoyable game, if a bit short. Be sure to pick it up on special.

About 4.5 hours of play time for me. It was a very enjoyable VR experience but a bit short. The card mechanics worked well and were easy to understand. The puzzles were fun and not too frustrating. The graphics are a typical VR fair and feel immersive enough. The music is appropriate to the genre. The are enough VR settings for the typical user. The story was fairly standard and straight forward. I just wished it was a bit longer as I was finally getting used to the card mechanics at the end. I did get a few hints from a walkthrough when I had a hard time figuring out the card battle steps but for the most part the game isn't too difficult. Get it on a good sale (price/hour matters here) and enjoy a pretty good VR game.

I have a hard time giving this game a negative review, because it's clear that the developer put a lot of care into it. BUT. This game needed some more playtesting. Not for its technical issues(it had very few) but for its gameplay. The puzzles in this get extremely obtuse, and rely on the player having information which the game just simply does not give to you. The card game portions are also just puzzles. This isn't bad in and of itself. But it is kind of silly to make an entire minigame where you can't actually 'play' the game. You can't get 'good' at the card game. You can only win these battles by doing an exact preordained sequence of moves. If you do anything else, you lose. That's not a card game. It's a puzzle box. And as the game introduces you to new mechanics which make the card game more complex as time goes on, I eventually reached a point where I had lost my patience with the lack of genuine strategy. I'm not quick to assume that there's no one clever enough to beat this game, but it is very telling that one of the only walkthroughs of the game you can find online(at the time of writing) is from the head developer himself. This game is not bad, it just needs t…

Really enjoyed this game. The puzzles are clever, and unraveling the story through the puzzles had me hooked from beginning to end. It's short, but it's definitely worth the time and purchase.