Tag: First Person Puzzle Game

12 Days of Epic Games 2024 Round Up

My 12 Days of Epic Games series is complete!

In this second season of my 12 Days series we took a look at 12 different games that I have received for free during Epic Games giveaways, trying them out for an hour or two, or a chapter or two, whichever came first. I then decided whether to continue them online as content, continue them offline for myself or to drop them, content that they are no longer part of my backlog.

Now that the challenge is over, I thought it would be nice to do a wrap up post. I recorded the videos in advance so in the time between recording and the series finishing, I managed to secretly play through a few of the games to completion.

Day 1 – Recipe for Disaster (2022)

Recipe for Disaster is a management sim that captures the fast-paced, drama-filled environment of a professional kitchen and dining room. Build your dream restaurant, create recipes, design menus and manage your staff, all while contending with demanding customers and disastrous situations!

While I thought that Recipe for Disaster was doing something interesting with its menu creator, it turned out to be a very forgettable experience for me. Despite being one of the longer videos, I did move on from it completely once the video was done. I am always on the look out for the management games that scratch the itch that I have, but unfortunately this wasn’t the one for me.

Ranking – That’s enough for me.
Current Status – Dropped.

Day 2 – Frostpunk (2018)

Frostpunk is the first society survival game. As the ruler of the last city on Earth, it is your duty to manage both its citizens and infrastructure. What decisions will you make to ensure your society’s survival? What will you do when pushed to breaking point? Who will you become in the process?

Oh man.. Frostpunk. Les than one week after I finished recording, I had completed the entire scenario. By then, it felt like a shame not to show how it ended so I managed to find a way to add it in to the video.

This was my favourite game in the entire 12 days and I think that is for good reason. The tension kept me on my toes throughout, every decision made me question whether I had made the correct choice. The desperation was palpable and the stress had me sweating, despite the bitter cold my colony were trying so hard to survive.

An extremely memorable experience and I am really glad I have it on video for memories sake even if it isn’t a full Let’s Play.

Ranking – Continue playing offline.
Current Status – Completed the scenario and moved on. May try other scenarios in the future if I ever run out of new games to play and get the itch.

Day 3 – Transistor (2014)

Discover the world of Transistor, a sci-fi-themed action RPG from the creators of Bastion.

I am a little sad that Transistor didn’t hit for me the way it seems to have for a lot of others. I found the combat difficult to navigate and the story even more so.

I respect a game that doesn’t drown you in exposition. Naturally, when a story is set in its own world like this it will take time to learn about, but I have discovered that I like at least a little more handholding than Transistor offers. Having said all of that, since playing I have enjoyed what I heard about the story while listening to podcasts and will look forward to seeing the full game vicariously as a Let’s Play with this new context.

Ranking – That’s enough for me/watch someone else.
Current Status – Have listened to a podcast, looking for a Let’s Play to watch.

Day 4 – The Spectrum Retreat (2018)

Check-in to The Spectrum Retreat for a stay you won’t forget. Manipulate your way to the truth in this captivating narrative-driven puzzler.

I really liked The Spectrum Retreat as a first person puzzler. I went on to finish the game and I think it was the perfect length, never overstaying it’s welcome while regularly revealing more of the story as you go (it evolved after the video ended and I like where it went). The puzzle difficulty never got too much, adding in fun new mechanics each chapter to keep it fresh.

A pleasant surprise and an easy recommendation.

Ranking – Continue playing offline.
Current Status – Completed.

Day 5 – The First Tree (2017)

A beautiful, 3rd-person exploration game centered around two parallel stories: a fox trying to find her missing family, and a son reconnecting with his estranged father in Alaska. Uncover artifacts from the son’s life as he becomes intertwined in the fox’s journey towards The First Tree.

It is never a good feeling to not gel with a game, especially an indie and especially during recording. But there were a lot of reasons The First Tree fell flat for me. Rather than get into a critique of the game, I will report that I did finish it, and that unfortunately did not fix my issues.

Ranking – Continue playing offline/That’s enough for me.
Current Status – Completed.

Day 6 – Death Coming (2017)

‘Death Coming’ is a non-linear puzzle game where you must harvest human souls ‘Final Destination’ style. However, pesky mortals are not your only problem, as the Agents of Light will do everything they can to stop you.

I liked Death Coming for what it was, but after some time away I didn’t find myself desperate to play anymore. I booted it up one more time just to be sure, and as I got back into the swing of it, I enjoyed seeing what the remaining chapters had to offer. More than anything, I feel like the developers must have had a blast pooling together their ideas, and I am glad to have played through this game.

Ranking – Continue playing offline.
Current Status – Completed.

Day 7 – 20 Minutes till Dawn (2023)

20 Minutes Till Dawn is a survival roguelite where endless hordes of creatures lurk from the dark. Craft an array of overpowering builds and eradicate waves of Lovecraftian nightmares. Will you be able to survive the night?

20 Minutes till Dawn made me feel very similar to Vampire Survivors. I enjoyed trying it out but there is no magnetism for me to get back in there to try to master it. I was going to replace Vampire Survivors with 20 Minutes till Dawn on my PC, but I realized it is fine enough to keep them both installed as they take up next to no space. I think one day the genre will either click with me, or I will drop it completely, but for now, I keep trying.

Ranking – Continue playing offline.
Current Status – Still installed.

Day 8 – Loop Hero (2021)

The Lich has thrown the world into a timeless loop and plunged its inhabitants into never ending chaos. Wield an expanding deck of mystical cards to place enemies, buildings, and terrain along each unique expedition loop for the brave hero.

Considering how much I enjoyed this one, it is shocking how little I remember about how it played. I shelved it immediately as I knew that I could sink a lot of hours into it, but in the few weeks that have passed, I can barely remember the gameplay loop.

That doesn’t put me off continuing though, I know that it will all come back to me when the time comes and I look forward to seeing how it escalates.

Ranking – Continue playing offline.
Current Status – Still installed.

Day 9 – Breathedge (2021)

Survive in outer space! Together with your immortal chicken, discover the truth behind your sudden spaceship crash. Craft tools, pilot vehicles, and even control space stations to survive and explore the wreckage.

Breathedge is a game I enjoyed as I was playing it, but am hesitant to say that I will definitely play the full thing through. Going out on little expeditions and gradually upgrading my equipment is fun, but I do wonder how long that fun will last.

I am so thoroughly confused as to how I am remembering this as a chill game that I could perhaps listen to a podcast to, yet we were in such a precarious situation in the most dangerous setting there is. I will find out whether the podcast idea works out when I pick it back up soon enough.

Ranking – Continue playing offline.
Current Status – Still installed.

Day 10 – Beyond Blue (2020)

Beyond Blue is a single-player narrative adventure that takes you deep into our planet’s beating blue heart. Explore the awesome wonder and unbounded mystery that exists within the world’s ocean.

Beyond Blue is the game that I always wanted. It isn’t a huge game, but the focus on the ocean and what lives within, having an ongoing story while giving you the freedom to take your time, educating you while entertaining you, all create a Noob tailored combo that I would love to see more of. I, predictably, ended up spending a lot of time in photo mode, the results of which will be shared on the blog soon enough.

While I am most interested in the life below, I was grateful that the game took the time to acknowledge the people that work in the field. I had no idea the sacrifices they make, but their passion is clear and it is a good thing we have people like them in the world, striving to not only understand, but do so in an ethical way.

Ranking – Continue playing offline.
Current Status – Completed.

Day 11 – Kingdom Come: Deliverance (2018)

Story-driven open-world RPG that immerses you in an epic adventure in the Holy Roman Empire. Avenge your parents’ death as you battle invading forces, go on game-changing quests, and make influential choices. Explore castles, forests, villages and other realistic settings in medieval Bohemia!

Kingdom Come: Deliverance was more difficult than I expected, but also so much more engaging. I love a dramatic story like this and I am curious to see the twists and turns that may be presented as the narrative unfolds.

I am still intimidated by the gameplay. Research has told me that you can get quite strong to make the game easier, however that is my biggest worry about continuing online. Either way, I had loads of fun and would love to see how the story continues one day, despite the game not making it to my 2025 backlog list.

Ranking – Continue playing online/Continue playing offline.
Current Status – Not on my immediate backlog but would like to play fully in the future.

Day 12 – Wilmot’s Warehouse (2019)

Wilmot’s Warehouse is a puzzle game about keeping a warehouse running in tip-top shape. Just remember where you put everything, because when the service hatch opens, you’ll need to find the things people want quickly, in order to earn the coveted Performance Stars.

Wilmot’s Warehouse is even more niche than I expected. I didn’t know 100% what to expect going in, but it is literally exactly as the description says. It is the kind of game that is satisfying when it goes well, and makes my brain itch in all of the wrong ways when it doesn’t.

I have played more since the video and appear to be exactly half way through. I am enjoying it but almost feel as though I have had my fill. I will continue as I have a feeling it is going to become absolute chaos, but I have to admit, the game running slightly long for what it is for me.

Ranking – Continue playing offline.
Current Status – Half way through. I don’t know how I am going to do the rest 😂

Playing new games always feels nice. Even if I don’t like the game, removing it from my backlog list is satisfying in itself. Playing so many in a short space of time doesn’t really reflect a natural way of consuming games, but I think I will always enjoy it.

We had some very different results when compared to Season 1. It has been great to play through some of the ‘continue offline’ games during my holiday, and I am going to strive to finish them all up throughout the year, as well as Tunic which is the only game that remains from the Game Pass season.

Continuing online

  • Kingdom Come: Deliverance (very unlikely though)

Continuing offline

  • Frostpunk
  • The Spectrum Retreat
  • The First Tree
  • Death Coming
  • 20 Minutes till Dawn
  • Loop Hero
  • Breathedge
  • Beyond Blue
  • Kingdom Come: Deliverance
  • Wilmot’s Warehouse

Thats enough for me

  • Recipe for Disaster
  • Transistor

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Blue Prince – Demo Impressions

Schrödinger’s Mansion.

Blue Prince

Developer: Dogubomb

Release Date: To be announced

Welcome to Mt. Holly, where every dawn unveils a new mystery. Navigate through shifting corridors and ever-changing chambers in this genre-defying strategy puzzle adventure. But will your unpredictable path lead you to the rumored Room 46?

Blue Prince is a first person, exploration puzzle game where you will be using RNG and resource management to make your way through an ever changing mansion. Almost all of what you find is temporary, but some lessons will stay with you as you reset each day, making another attempt at traversing this bemusing abode.

The gameplay is very decision focused. The house you are exploring is made up of Schrödinger’s rooms – every room simultaneously existing and not until you open the door. What I mean by that is, every door that you open will grant you a choice. Three different types of rooms are presented to you and you can pick which one you want to walk into, adding it into the bluprint map that you carry around with you. Layout, benefits and resources within all need to be carefully considered as you attempt to make your way towards the north of the house. 

I am going to make a potentially strange comparison so bare with me here, but I can’t help but feel a lot of very similar feelings that I get when I play The Binding of Isaac. Blue Prince doesn’t have combat and is an entirely different tone, but RNG and resource management are two stand out mechanics of Isaac, ensuring every run is entirely different and causing difficult decisions. Where Isaac has it’s keys, bombs, coins and health, Blue Prince has keys, gems, coins and steps. You are going to want them all but whether you get them is another question. Movement itself being a currency adds another complication, as your keys aren’t worth anything if you pass out as you open the door.

Continuing with the Isaac theme, you are not going to be able to do everything in one go. The items that you draw in TBoI inform how you play your run – for better or worse. A similar thing happens here, except it isn’t only the items that you have found, it is also the rooms that go with them. For example, you may find a room with dig spots but never make it to a shovel. This coulddd be considered annoying and even cruel, but if you are anything like me, it will trigger the synergy hunting and experimentation part of your brain. No run is wasted when you have a goal to try something new, and even if you don’t succeed, you are likely to run into something else.

The last thing that I want to bring up about my first impressions are how I enjoyed the whole concept of the puzzle solving, from the micro to the macro. Every type of room that you draw may or may not contain something relevent to the overarching mystery. This makes it extremely tempting to use new rooms immediatly, even when there is a chance that they will mess up your route or lead to a dead end. In doing this I managed to find some neat things that I will need to write down on paper for the full game. There are also individual puzzle rooms, containing bite sized puzzles that serve their purpose well. They take less than a minute to solve, you get your reward and then are back to the rest of the problems at hand.

I was impressed that by the end of the demo I had found so many loose ends that I had not found the answer to, and sad that I couldn’t continue on. I have never played a puzzle game like this, it is very unorthodox but it is exactly my flavour of dopamine and I really hope the rest of the game lives up to the first couple of hours.

Demo Length – 1-2 hours
At a glance
+ Overarching macro puzzles.
+ Smaller puzzles within.
+ Tough decisions.
+ Short runs.
+ Time to think.
+ So unique.
+/- Doesn’t hold your hand.
+/- Resource scarcity.
+/- RNG – was fun for the demo but has chance to get frustrating.

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A Noob’s Review – SUPERHOT

SUPERHOT broke me. It tried to break its way into my mind, but instead, it just broke it. Let me explain.

In case you don’t know, Superhot is a first person shooter. Anyone that knows me will be thinking ‘Noob? Playing a first person shooter? Wut?’. As it turns out, there is a little more to it than that. In this game, time only moves as you move. As a consequence, every move you make has to be deliberate and precise. Stay still and watch bullets moving towards you at a snails pace. Panic though and it’s game over as they speed up and hit you before you can blink. This unique mechanic allows the game to present as a corporeal puzzle game as much as it is as a shooter, which is ironic considering the incorporeal theming involved.

+ Innovation

This is a game concept that makes so much sense. Even if you have never thought about it in your life, you hear the explanation of what this game is and think “wow, of course, how come I didn’t think of that?”. And it works! There isn’t another game like it, at least gameplay wise. It is one of those titles that creates something completely new and showcases it to its full potential.

+ Aesthetic

What can be seen as a simple aesthetic actually serves to be a great asset in the gameplay itself. There are three colours. White, red and black. Red = enemies. Black = objects. White = anything else. This completely eliminates any visual clutter aiding even further in the idea that the gameplay IS the game. It is distinctive, it is thematically appropriate and it is everything that it needs to be.

– Hitboxes

The hitboxes weren’t quite as precise as I would have liked considering this can be a game about millimetres. It could be technical limitations, it could be a choice to be discourage using cover, but bullets being stopped in the air by an invisible corner is frustrating when you feel you have otherwise made a good play.

+ Fast Pace

Levels vary in length but they rarely outstay their welcome. The short bursts that the game gives you allows for going ‘all in’ – getting creative without fear as dying will only set you back a couple of minutes. This can go two ways. On one hand, you can bash your head against the level until you nail it. It isn’t a problem because once you have died you are already back in the game trying again before you even have time to finish any outbursts it may have brought on. As soon as you complete it you forget the struggle, feeling like the baddest ass in all the land. Or alternatively, you nail it first time and truly are the baddest ass in all the land.

– Difficulty Curve

This is where my troubles began. I would say the difficulty throughout the game is sprinkled. Naturally, it starts off simple, but there were some early levels that tripped me up in the same way as some later levels, while there were some later levels I did easily in one try. For some, this will provide an interesting pace. For others, it may be a little more frustrating as it can be difficult to tell if you are improving at the game.

The final level, however, is something else. It is long. Mercifully, it is checkpointed, but that didn’t save me. The previous levels contained more strategically placed enemies, highlighting the puzzle element that I mentioned earlier. This level though is – for lack of a better phrase – on another level. Personally for me, it felt different from all the rest of the game. Yes, it felt climactic, but also it lost a lot of what I enjoyed about the previous sections. I don’t want to say specifically why as that is spoiler territory, but my strategies weren’t working and I couldn’t find a set answer to get through it. This, sadly, marked the end of my Superhot experience. The frustration outweighed the potential pleasure of succeeding and I had my first ever on stream rage quit. As it turns out, I had been probably around 15 seconds from completing the game, but unfortunately I have no desire to return.

+ Story

I like the story this game is telling and more so the way it tells it. It is brief, it is memorable and it uses the medium well. As you progress an unsettled feeling creeps in and the further you go, the more it grows. It plays with ideas of control and reality, and it was always welcome to check back in at the pc every few levels.

Upon putting it down, I vowed never to go back to this game. As much of a shame that it is that it ended this way, I still had fun in the lead up. The short snappy levels were great fun and when something works out well, it truly feels superhuman. Punching an enemy in the face and catching their gun to then shoot them in the face isn’t something that you get to do very often and while it may be a novelty, it doesn’t lose its appeal for the duration of the game.

SUPERHOT wanted me to complete the game, so in a way, technically, the fact that I quit actually means that means I won. So with that in mind, to conclude.. SUCK IT SUPERHOT. I BEAT YOU.

+ Innovation

+ Aesthetic

– Hitboxes

– Difficulty Curve

+ Story

If you would like to see ALMOST the full game then you can here!

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Let’s Play – Portal

I managed to go 13 years without getting this game spoiled. Pretty impressive.

I am not a fan of first person games but I knew this game was a classic and when I picked it up extremely cheap on Steam I knew I had to play it.. if for any reason for the history lesson.

As it turns out.. I probably would have benefited from some extra context.

Everyone else – Portal is such a fun game! It’s so funny!

Me – This is the most stressful thing I’ve ever done in my life. Let’s just forget Portals exist, do everything wrong and micro analyse every little thing.

I can’t even put it any other way.. my play-through sucks. However, now I feel much better equipped to attempt Portal 2!

Full playlist available on Youtube!