Havsala: Into the Soul Palace

If I could give a neutral rating, I think I would. I like puzzles; this is a puzzle game. I don't mind reading lots of text; this game has lots of text. I like mythology and history; this game has lots of both. But this game is unrewardingly obscure in places. I finally gave in and followed a walkthrough. There were lots of steps that were "yes, that's obvious" but also quite a few steps that were "How did you get that instead of a dozen other equally plausible things?" Toward the end of the game, you need to use a couple of book publishing dates. It's not obvious that this is a point in the game where dates will be useful. It's not obvious that out of all the dates in all the text, it's book publishing dates that are needed. And even given that, it's a two- or three-step deduction to figure out these two particular books are the ones of interest. And a few trial-and-error puzzles, the archers in particular, which just drove me mad. Even with a clue about targets and with an observation about archer order, it took me well over 10 minutes to painstakingly position all four archers so they actually hit their targets. It was frankly a relief to be presented with a complex Eu…

This game first lost me at the abysmal opening narration. "I am the sexiest sexy woman and I love being sexy for men, but I'm also a supergenius who has studied everything and I will now list for you every -ology word the writers know, and also I'm going to keep repeating these facts over and over and over." It was bad fanfic. It reminded me of Phantom of Manhattan actually, in that way that a character can't just be special by virtue of being the protagonist, they have to be the specialest special to ever special. (Also, there's this weird vibe that like, they felt like they had to justify a woman protagonist being smart by emphasizing that don't worry, she's also super hot and sexually available? It was kind of weird.) The second and third time it lost me was the bigger problem: the game is full of grammatical errors, misspellings, and broken English. It was at times incomprehensible, and what of it I saw I saw largely because I know how these games are supposed to work and could suss out puzzles and gameplay mechanics. I progressed in spite of the fact that the text was nigh incomprehensible, against the game's worst efforts. I tried to play this game on three separate occasio…

I really loved the story, the visuals, and the music. I never got bored while solving the puzzles.

Wonderful art, a short little game but absolutely worth it for the lovers of puzzles.

Well made. Quite hard. Not for the simple soul.

I absolutely loved the story, the visuals and the music.