Trans Neuronica

It was good up until the point when puzzles had to be solved under time pressure

I'm a big puzzle game enthusiast, but unfortunately, this one wasn't for me. I think the puzzle concept was pretty fun, and I liked the art style, but at the same time, I wasn't a huge fan of a couple of things in this game: - The scenario where the user is chatting with an AI on the fritz - How puzzles unlock in stages and changing your paths sometimes require undoing connections, which resets parts of the stage and undoing progress. - I got to the boss stage with the "power nexus" and just didn't like not knowing what I was supposed to do and having a time pressure component. I made a bunch of progress in that "boss" level, but I really didn't understand what I was supposed to be doing at all. Being confused by a puzzle and punished for failing to complete it on time was enough to make me stop playing.

Unique take on the connection puzzle, the one mechanic twist that really makes it stand out for me is a level shifting or opening up more as you connect the nodes. Trying to carefully rearrange the wires in such a way that they allow for connecting a new node and no connection is broken in the process expands the mechanical depth of every other rule nicely, though it does become a problem in the "boss levels" of Trans Neuronica. Those require you to solve the level with a time constraint as it goes through many iterations, getting bigger and bigger. The later boss levels can have 10+ iterations and i would suggest either slowing the timer or turning it off through the accessibility options because these levels become huge difficulty spikes when they have a timer: you have very little room for error and any misplaced wire might make you take damage and reduce the time you have. If you realize you made a mistake in the first wire before drawing several more around it you will be forced to undo all of them, which is a big problem when every second matters. Besides that, the puzzle design is tight and the difficulty curve feels good with few exceptions. Many little satisfying revelat…

classic idea with some fun twists and a story to follow. there are some timed levels, but nothing I couldn't tackle so far nice coffee-break game!

EDIT: Found the option, was already implemented. Very good - i'm still old, bnut now i can spend as much time as i want! Why the holy f*ck are there time limits on the boss levels?! To explain the problem on this: You're starting small in a boss level with a tiny and mostly easy problem you need to solve (of course!). After solving it, the game state enhanced and offers a second puzzle, slightly harder than the puzzle before. This goes on for about 5 to 10 puzzles. Every tiny puzzle has an own time limit. If you connect something right, you gain some time, if you make mistakes, you lose some of your remaining time. The last one (in the second world) is really hard to solve, because you cannot draw the energy lines as you want. You need to think about it, how to change them to get the puzzle solved. This takes time you simply don't have at that moment. If you break the limit, you are doomed to make alle the puzzles again, since start of the game. I found a guide in the steam community, but even with the solution, i don't get the level done, because i don't know how to change the wires to get the two green fields connected above the the lower red one. Again, you cannot discon…

Later Levels are so hard Fun puzzle game tho, the music, the way everything clicked when you get it right, the sound design are so good (for a pure puzzle game, and a bit of story)