CHR$(143)

It's Boulder Dash / Lode Runner with engineering. If that doesn't entice you, I don't know what else to tell you. Jokes aside, I do have quite a few more things to say. First of all, if you're going to play this, be prepared to stock up on some patience. The tutorial part of the game is quite lengthy. It goes over some concepts and interactions multiple times, making triple extra sure you understand what it's trying to tell you, while also expecting you to figure out other important concepts and interactions on your own, often through dying repeatedly. It will be a while before the game lets you into the meat of things and allows you to create your own ingenious contraptions. There's this charmingly amateurish lack of structure to the whole thing -- one level you'll be exploring an alien planet, next level you're tasked with filling a bathtub with hot water. You certainly can't blame the game for not having variety. The 72 levels can be divided into four categories: tutorials, arcade levels, adventure levels, and engineering levels. The engineering levels are by far the best in my IMHO: you get given a task and some tools, and you gotta construct a system that fulfils the task. S…

IIII

Remember those games you played as a kind back in the early 90s in computer class? This game is the grown up version and incredibly fun. As always simple rules chained together can form complex behavior and learning those rules is enjoyable. Couple the fact that there are no guides to instantly solve the puzzles gives it that early 2000s feeling of solving the challenge on your own.

It may or may not look like much, but make no mistake; this game is not for the faint of mind, and it covers some seriously complicated topics! In the event you aren't a fan of the default artstyle.. well, notice how I said the word 'default'? That's right, you can change it with one press of a key. (no, really!)

I was initially hoping to get further into this and have more to base my review impressions on, but I seem to have moved on because I can't focus on anything anymore and I don't want to just let it go unreviewed when it's such a criminally overlooked game. I can guarantee this up front: if you manage to get anywhere in it, it's one of those games that you'll never forget. I'm not even sure how to categorize it, as it seems to shift almost between entire genres on a level-by-level basis while retaining the same simple tile-based presentation. You gradually unlock more and more mechanics to keep track of -- which then may or may not be relevant on any given level, and seemingly every time you think the bag of tricks [i]must[/i] have run dry by now, no, it really hasn't. It vaguely conjures memories of old games like Boulderdash, Chip's Challenge, DROD, or even Widget Workshop, while also being not really like any of those. It almost feels like a spoiler to even discuss half of the game's mechanics because of how far out of left field they are, but in the broadest terms I can possibly use, there will be levels focused around exploration, physics puzzles, movement puzzles, logistical…

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