What Has Come Before

Unfortunately, I can't recommend this. It looks great with its black and white brutalesque aesthetic and starts out well enough while the levels are still small enough to not get annoying. Then, the longer "The Door" level comes and brings everything down. One mistake and you have to play through the whole level again. If you quit, you will also have to play through the same level again. I got stuck at some point kicking a poor cardboard box around, hoping to get up on a tall platform and maybe move on from there. Even after being able to place the poor box with millimetre precision, I still couldn't jump up on that platform. I quit the game for a break, then came back, replayed the whole level again, no luck, quit for a couple of days, replayed the whole level again (with my eyes blind-folded or whatever), kicked that poor cardboard box around some more, but still no luck. If only the box could either kick back or be carried, that would make things a little less annoying (or at least make me laugh a bit in my misery, considering a box with the legs of a… kickboxer or a… boxkicker?). It was great until it wasn't. I don't care much for annoying tedium.

This outstanding miniature explores brutalist aesthetics in a very intense and unique way. It is full of monumental forms that have been stripped of their function, care, and liveliness, evoking both claustrophobic feelings and nostalgic curiosity. It features impressive visual effects! In terms of game mechanics, I see the game in the tradition of Antichamber and Outer Wilds: exploring, trying things out, understanding, and applying. The puzzles are really innovative though. There isn't really an open world that can be freely explored. Instead, there are several small levels and one very large level that combines all kinds of obscure rules. Don't expect a story like in Outer Wilds; the story is the path of your realization. I would love to see a New Game Plus where you are immortal and can freely choose which shaders/visual effects are active.

It's hard to describe this game without spoiling it, but I definitely enjoyed it.

Puzzles are decent. Hard to really spoil. There's a section where you need to stack two boxes and push them to get up to a platform. The only problem is the physics engine makes this twitchy and janky as hell. It took me more time to get through that one section than the rest of the game combined. Also a bit short for that price point.

Sadly this is a broken game. Beginning with "Nature" (which you'll encounter within the first 5 minutes or so of playing) is just a white screen. I encountered this issue in the demo and still purchased the full version with the hopes that it was fixed there. Unfortunately it wasn't so I'll need to refund the game.

An interesting game! If you're looking for something unique and different than your typical puzzle games, this is it.