Relicta

A very innovative and interesting puzzle game. It is similar to Valve's Portal and Portal 2 games, where you really need to use your brain to progress. The puzzles mostly involve gravity and magnetization, which is a nice twist. The use of momentum and physics makes it interactive. The level design is beautiful and the scenery is stunning. The levels are nearly dummy-proof, so accidental softlocks are rare. However, there are also some (minor) negatives. The story is not that interesting in my opinion, the textures have a tendency to pop in, the objective (where to go or what to do) is often vague pr missing entirely, the blocks often get stuck on a thin piece of concrete on the wall, and the game occasionally has micro stutters. At the Beach section, the game gets really complicated. Apart from these minor (skill) issues, I do still recommend to give it a try. I have not experienced any launching or crashing issues.

The boss verbally abusing me hit too close to home, almost stopped me dead in my tracks. I played a bit after that but it just did not feel right. Someone can be tough/menacing/disrespectful without being abusive. And the other characters' reaction after that was super casual, like, what is this writing? After a long break I went back to the game, but in later dialogues, same aggressive behaviour towards others still felt off. Because verbal harassment can also affect witnesses, not just receivers. I am very fine with cursing btw, I myself curse quite often. Just not at work. Plus there's friggin harassment trainings at work. Regular/recurring ones, at that. Hello?! Which begs the question, has the writer ever worked a day in their life? Because some jobs start you off with such a training on your very first day at work. And this has been a thing, years before the release of this game. The implementation of some puzzles are wonky to say the least, it should be an 80%/20% ratio for figuring out a puzzle vs implementing the solution. One puzzle had an extra bit that felt like busy work which was confusing at first cus its purpose in the big picture was unclear, but in the end its pur…

Solid first person puzzler. The gravity and magnetism-based mechanics were interesting, and the puzzles are generally well-constructed enough to make good use of them. Including the two free DLCs, there are also somewhere in the range of 90-100 total puzzles in the game (with an appropriate difficulty spread), and, considering the game goes on sale for $2 now, is a good value proposition. The graphics/visuals generally look solid, and changing between biomes during story progression keeps the environment from feeling overly monotonous. Also did not experience any bugs, crashes or issues with the physics engine that could have affected the ability to solve a puzzle. The most glaring negative for this game is the story. The dialogue writing feels amateurish, to the point it breaks immersion because it feels like a bad parody of a sci-fi drama, and the plot itself is forgettable at best. The voice acting is serviceable but not doing anything to save the script. Overall would give it a 7-7.5/10, a good option if you like the genre already and want more (especially on sale), but is a noticeable tier below the bar set by the Portal and Talos Principle games in this genre.

I like some of the ideas in how the puzzles are made but I found it frustrating that I solved the puzzle in my head and then the execution kept failing clumsily and I kinda have to blame the physics mechanics. Like you want to bounce a cube off another cube and then stand on a platform to lower a wall and yeet a cube over to attach magnetically - great idea. Issue became that one cube had way more attraction then the other and in 4 attempts of doing virtually the same thing, they landed on the wrong side of the wall. I didn't change what I was doing, the game just worked a bit different between tries and it felt random. 14-20 hours of that? Rather excessive. Rather quit now than spend hours frustrated when the puzzles become longer and maybe time becomes a factor.

10/10 Puzzles & Gameplay - The puzzles are amazing and well built. I really enjoyed solving them, especially the more difficult ones in the Extras tab in game which felt like totally new games (a prequel and sequel) of their own. 7/10 Graphics & Worldbuilding - It has decent enough graphics and felt immersive, but there is quite a lot of copy and paste objects making some places feel exactly the same. 5/10 Story & Plot - Interesting story and concept overall, but it felt disconnected from the puzzles. I felt it was diminished by the unrealistic characters and some plot holes. 0/10 Characters & Dialog - Every character had the exact same personality which sounded like an insufferable narcissist with nearly constant swearing, sarcasm, and degrading language. Maybe some people like this, but its not for me and consequently I never want to replay this game. I still recommend this game primarily to those who love puzzle games and can tolerate the characters I described above. In my opinion the dialog is horrible, but the puzzles are genuinely a great and fun challenge.

A very solid puzzle game combined with a damn good sci-fi story that will keep you on the edge of your seat for how much more you want to know what happens next. There's also a fair number of humorous moments that got me smiling or laughing hard. 20 Dollars for all that is a steal.