Qasir al-Wasat: International Edition

Solid, enjoyable puzzles. Simple stealth mechanics. Beautiful aesthetic. If you like demonology, djinn, and alchemy type stuff, and the style in the screenshots appeals to you (and if you, unlike some of the people leaving reviews, have the foresight required to look at the "How to Play" screen in the menu before playing), then it's a solid use of 5 dollars and 6-7 hours.

Timers. For 3 hours, and because the mystery is engaging, I endured the terrible controls that are unfit for stealth, the gormless corporate checkpoints that are unfit for a PC save system, the italicised semi-cursive typeface that is unfit for comfortable reading... I won't be enduring timed races with these same lousy controls. Especially not when death (by traps) closes gates that were opened earlier and that are not timer-dependent. Seriously, not only do the controls ignore traditional schemes, for example with Sneak mapped to a trigger, the latter requires a permanent trigger press (no toggle; way to kill a gamepad,) it confusingly acts like a zoom out when figuring out empirically what buttons do (the 'help' is incorrect,) you lacerate air like a buffoon when you want to open a door (because both actions use the same key; meanwhile most keys remain unused,) you get stuck when walking along walls, and a basic doorstep crossing is tedious more often than not. Then you must distract/attract guards. Without tools. Not breaking anything. Only by walking overtly for a fraction of a second at the right distance. Have fun with that. If detected, you die, redo everything between h…

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I really like this game for being a stealth game where things are not incredibly tense all of the time. I also really like seeing a story of demons and the occult through the lens of medieval Islam. It's an older game but it still holds up and I think it is criminally underrated and also far too obscure for how much quality is on display.

Awesome game, I enjoyed it a lot. It's like those stealth sessions of the good old Al-Qadim. I loved how you started unlocking the map in a metrovania style, loved the story and different endings, some parts were a bit hard or annoying but overall the game and the story were a lot of fun!

Thoroughly enjoyed this game. The stealth and puzzle mechanics are well thought-out and engaging, but the main draw for me was the story and the whole atmosphere. This game is a small masterpiece with all the dedicated artworks, bits of lore, painted backgrounds, poems and the arabic typographic glyphs everywhere. I've never played a game like this one. You can see a lot of love went into it. Yes the gameplay can feel a bit "dated" or janky at points, but if you look past that and can get into the atmosphere I'm sure you'll enjoy it. The game has a few endings and is generally worth exploring through the numerous achievements created by the devs. Basically the only thing that really annoyed me in this game was [spoiler]the blood gate (🩸🩸🩸) bug. I really wish they'd fix that. It's not a deal breaker though, as (luckily) it's an extra area, and you can get basically every achievement even with this bug. It is annoying though and makes progression more difficult, as you cannot make use of the shortcut it provides.[/spoiler] So it's not a big thing, just annoying. Other than that great game that you can sit down to for 30 mins, an hour, or however long you like. It doesn't oversti…