Deception (2020)

It's pretty good. Nice atmosphere. Very puzzle-oriented. Good exploration. No combat. I had made good progress on the game, having poured about 19 hours into it and was really enjoying it. Unfortunately my hard drive died and since this game has no cloud saves, when I replaced the dead hard drive, I was faced with starting Deception from scratch or abandoning it. I chose the latter - I couldn't face wasting 20 hours just to get back to where I was. Such a shame when devs don't put in Steam Cloud support to long games. I really would have liked to continue.

[h2]This underappreciated gem has flown under too many people's radars[/h2] Deception is an aptly named 3D Sokoban Metroidbrania puzzle game in which you use a limited number of 'tools' to traverse your way through (and hopefully out of) a seemingly endless claustrophobic dungeon. [list] [*]The first third of the game isn't anything massively special but after this, progressing further and further introduces exciting twists whilst also tightening up the actual puzzle design. The last third culminates in some really really cool levels, and the finale will stick with me as one of the most intricate and delightful puzzles I've solved in recent memory. [*]There is an awesome puzzle rating system that I would love to see more games doing - showing the average difficulty rating of a room on entry, and allowing the player to vote themselves. I felt smart when I found high rated puzzles easy, stupid when I found low rated rooms hard. Just a nice little extra layer of engagement. [*]In terms of bang for your buck; it's less than £10 - but it's well worth at least £25 as it is deceptively large. Even for fast players, there is at least 12 hours of content here. [*]There is unfortunately a …

I appreciate a good puzzle game, but the controls really get in the way of themselves and can make it hard to execute on what you want to do (eg putting blocks down in the wrong place, an extremely short interaction distance, and so on and so forth). The puzzles themselves are all right, but the controls make them a lot more frustrating than they need to be. Note for anyone who gets stuck on the Grandstands: you can take barrels through the door in the previous level. I don't believe the game ever actually tells you this.