Secrets of Rætikon

Several years later and still poor game mechanics.

Secrets of Rætikon is an unconventional indie action-adventure developed and published by Broken Rules that places exploration, movement, and atmosphere far above traditional goals such as combat mastery or narrative exposition. Set in a stylized alpine wilderness inspired by the real Rätikon mountain range, the game casts the player as a bird navigating an open environment filled with ancient machines, wildlife, and environmental mysteries. Rather than guiding players with explicit objectives or scripted storytelling, the game encourages curiosity and experimentation, asking players to learn its systems organically and piece together meaning through observation and interaction. The defining feature of Secrets of Rætikon is its flight system. Movement is not abstracted into simple controls; instead, flight is governed by momentum, gravity, and physics-based interactions. Flapping consumes stamina, gliding preserves energy, and mastering the balance between the two becomes essential for traversal. This system gives flight a tangible sense of weight and effort, making movement itself a core challenge. Soaring across valleys, skimming lakes, or weaving between trees feels expressive …

I played it for a while and found the gameplay annoying and frustrating. This is the same team that made "And Yet It Moves" so I wanted to see what else they created. After looking up the ending, I am flabbergasted. That the team would make the player endure hours and hours of frustrating gameplay just to see a fakeout ending makes me happy I didn't finish.

I know I didn't give Secrets of Rætikon a 'proper' go, but I just found the mechanics and gameplay so uninteresting and forgettable. I played for a short-while, put it down, tried to come back to it a couple days later and completely forgot everything. The idea of restarting to refresh felt like a total slog I wasn't willing to do. After getting stuck in a wall, I decided Secrets of Rætikon is just not going to be for me...

Secrets of Rætikon is one of the most visually striking games I've played — its geometric, origami-like art style and haunting ambient soundtrack create a genuinely magical atmosphere as you soar through an alpine wilderness. The flying controls take some getting used to but eventually click into a satisfying flow, and watching the wildlife interact organically around you makes the world feel alive in a way that's hard to describe. Unfortunately, the core gameplay loop devolves into a repetitive fetch quest where you haul shards back and forth to a central hub with no map, while enemy animals constantly swipe your hard-won items from your grasp, and the backtracking through the same screens grows genuinely exhausting. Worst of all, the ending undercuts everything the game seemed to be building toward — it's jarring, cruel in a way that feels unearned, and left me feeling tricked rather than moved. It's a gorgeous shell around a frustrating experience with a conclusion that poisons the whole journey retroactively, so despite the real beauty here, I can't recommend it.

(game not complete at .2 hours of gameplay at time of review, part of my review all games effort) (short version) Not for me, I wasn't really feeling it when I took a break for lunch and read other reviews that mirror my own feelings, the controls are no easy and the background often looks like the foreground. $10 is too much for what you get. (no long version needed)