Elementalist

I've played many indie platformers, so it takes a lot to hook me these days, but Elementalist actually pulled it off. It looks like your standard retro pixel-art game at first, but the core mechanic is what sells it: you collect elements, and the exact order you grab them changes how their powers work. The puzzles get really smart. They start simple to teach you the ropes, but soon enough, I was completely hooked. It constantly gives you that 'just one more screen' feeling because you want to see what crazy combinations are coming next. Figuring out how the mechanics stack is super satisfying. It’s the kind of game that completely sucks you in while you try to solve the next room. If you like puzzle platformers that actually make you think, grab this one. Definitely a hidden gem that needs more eyes on it.

I really enjoyed the puzzles, but I had to stop playing because of progress-losing bugs. There's no autosave - the game only saves when you use the "save and exit" button - so if the game freezes and you have to force quit (which happened to me twice) you lose a lot of progress. On top of that, when I started the game after force quitting, the "continue" button was disabled on the main menu, even though the save file is visible on the new game slot select. I would have had to start a new game and lose all my progress if I wanted to keep playing. Without these issues, this game would have my unreserved recommendation, so it's a shame.

i enjoyed figuring out the puzzles, and with some of the hardest ones it was nice having the hint system to help when i felt lost

It's one of the best puzzle games I've played. Every challenge puzzle/S-puzzle requires lateral thinking. Only one of them has been kinda lame so far, but all the rest have been great. Not finished with the game yet, but I'm always looking forward to what trick I'll have to figure out for the next challenge puzzle. This is really one of the only puzzle games I've played where thinking outside the box is, by design, a requirement for finding the solutions. The normal puzzles are fun as well: They're on the easier side early in the game and get harder as you progress. My only real complaint is that the world is a bit maze-like. Yeah, meta puzzles are fine or whatever, but a lot of navigating the overarching world which connects all the puzzles is just trying to figure out where to go next, and that doesn't really provide any meaningful stimulation in my opinion. Oh, also, the demo is kind of set up a bit differently to let you experience certain things earlier on I assume, and as such your progress in the demo doesn't transfer over to the main game which is quite annoying. Gripes aside, the game is really good and you should get it. I was gonna try to win the whole thing in under 2…

Elementalist is a very worthwhile platforming-centric entry to the "sequencing" puzzle subgenre. The central idea of each puzzle is to deduce the correct way to collect and use a variety of platforming powerups in order to retrieve a sun fragment and then return it to the level entry portal. More often than not, the most obvious sequence is a fail state for one reason or another. The puzzles are fine-tuned, interesting, and tractable. It's clear a lot of thoughtful work went into making Elementalist's levels, which present decent challenge while still strongly grippy. With few exceptions, there is a strong feeling of groundedness in each level. It would be quite easy to make sequence puzzles that are hard solely due to convoluted setups that lack an interesting underlying idea. The developer of Elementalist, however, wisely avoids this trap and chooses to focus on elegance and readability. Exactly what I love to see. To nitpick, perhaps the final level could still use a bit of readability work, or maybe I was just wearing puzzle blinders, as I often do. If you get stuck on it like me, the hints should get you through. The ending of the game arguably is a little abrupt too, but t…

Platforming here is not used as a challenge, but rather as a set of obstacles that require you to stack elemental abilities in the correct order. But often the solution is not what it first appears, and you need to identify where your assumptions are mistaken. Very good puzzle design and reasonable difficulty curve. It demonstrates the expressiveness of platforming as a medium for puzzles.