Puzzle Park 2

Puzzle Park 2 is the newest puzzler from SVGames. Their previous titles include Puzzle Park, Logicality, and Syllogism, all of which I have played and enjoyed. SVGames uses a similar format for their puzzle games. Like The Witness or The Trials, you arrive in a beautiful, unpopulated landscape that is filled with puzzles. There are no instructions and no hints. Your first task is to figure out puzzle mechanics and begin interpreting clues to solve one puzzle at a time. While Logicality had buttons to push and Syllogism had columns to rotate, both Puzzle Park games use a 4x5 grid. Your job is to highlight cells within the grid to match a pattern that you see or to meet conditions given by explicit clues. Patterns or clues are always very close to the puzzle itself. Puzzle Park 2 is an extension of the original Puzzle Park. The landscape is more “pink” and the puzzles are new, but the premise is the same. Solving a puzzle opens a gate so that you can collect a star. It takes a set number of stars (8) to open a gate to a new area. The game includes 46 puzzles plus a bonus zone for an additional set of “divine” stars. Perhaps I am slowing down in my old age, but it seems harder …

2 hours in and it's a typical SVGames game. A nice blend of observation and logic with heavy inspiration from The Witness. If you enjoy this game, try more games from them, especially, the first Puzzle Park, Doors3, Cubic, Logicality and Syllogism. I'm always waiting for their latest game.

So, its' simple; this game is hard. Some of the clues require brain melting effort to solve. If you like tough puzzles that test you, this is the game for you. I enjoyed most of it, but had "losing the will to live" moments. I solved all but three of the puzzles in around 29 hours of play time. I'm not even going back for them! The graphics are lovely, it is open World so you can traverse between unlocked areas at will, which is great because if the game play was linear I would have failed after about the first five or so puzzles. Is it worth the price? definitely. And it has feel good moments when a particularly tough puzzle is cracked.

The whole game consists of what I would call environmental puzzles. Every puzzle so far requires one to guess which blocks one should push on 5 by 4 "glass" screen. The clues are in whatever you can see in the area that suggests a pattern. This can be rocks, vases, water lilies, etc. Well, at least in the first bunch of puzzles, all of them are the same type, and one's interest correspondingly flags as one puzzle leads to another and another and another. I can't solve the puzzles in a reasonable amount of time, although some people might do better. As it has become rather tedious, I have uninstalled the game.