Frustrated much?
So today I chose to frustrate myself. Well I didn't want to be I did anyway.
Josh mentioned an app game called Year Walk a couple of weeks ago. The game is a kind of adventure puzzle game based on Norse myth and folk lore. The game comes in two parts the actual game and the companion app which explains the lore behind the game. This does also give some insight into the puzzles.
But oh my days.... does it get frustrating!
So usually in this kind of game, you have hints around the environment to push you in a certain direction. They pretty much point things out for you. Big glowing edges and wiggling objects. You end up just aimlessly roaming the environments until something catches your eye.
However Year Walk is different. Yeah there are hints but less obvious. You have to explore the environment properly rather than just aimlessly, often this means concentrating on an area for several minutes. And by several minutes I mean a lifetime. I think I got that hooked into the puzzles and the environment, that I lost track of what I should have been looking for. I was tricked into thinking too much.
Often, it looked like I was given what seemed to be a solution to a puzzle then when I went to do the puzzle I would try the solution, and it wouldn't work. I kept trying though. Over and over. And over. After a while I would get so confused to why it wasn't working, I would just sit there trying the same thing over and over again. then I tried reversing the combination. Then all of a sudden. BOO! A ghostly figure jumps in front of your face. Once again, I dropped my guard. I couldn't figure out if the I was using the wrong solution to the puzzle or the game was making me over think, or even if I was only given part of the solution. I don't know.
It seemed the majority of my time within the game was spent concentrating on the games environment and not puzzles. To say that this game looks to focus on the story/myths or even puzzles from the outside. The game was pushing you into looking at your surroundings in greater depth to push the game-play.
Like I said this game seems to be an exception in its genre. I don't think I have seen an adventure puzzle game with such little amount of clues/hints and environment that doesn't just look pretty, but makes you think about the puzzle contained in it.
Josh mentioned an app game called Year Walk a couple of weeks ago. The game is a kind of adventure puzzle game based on Norse myth and folk lore. The game comes in two parts the actual game and the companion app which explains the lore behind the game. This does also give some insight into the puzzles.
But oh my days.... does it get frustrating!
So usually in this kind of game, you have hints around the environment to push you in a certain direction. They pretty much point things out for you. Big glowing edges and wiggling objects. You end up just aimlessly roaming the environments until something catches your eye.
However Year Walk is different. Yeah there are hints but less obvious. You have to explore the environment properly rather than just aimlessly, often this means concentrating on an area for several minutes. And by several minutes I mean a lifetime. I think I got that hooked into the puzzles and the environment, that I lost track of what I should have been looking for. I was tricked into thinking too much.
Often, it looked like I was given what seemed to be a solution to a puzzle then when I went to do the puzzle I would try the solution, and it wouldn't work. I kept trying though. Over and over. And over. After a while I would get so confused to why it wasn't working, I would just sit there trying the same thing over and over again. then I tried reversing the combination. Then all of a sudden. BOO! A ghostly figure jumps in front of your face. Once again, I dropped my guard. I couldn't figure out if the I was using the wrong solution to the puzzle or the game was making me over think, or even if I was only given part of the solution. I don't know.
It seemed the majority of my time within the game was spent concentrating on the games environment and not puzzles. To say that this game looks to focus on the story/myths or even puzzles from the outside. The game was pushing you into looking at your surroundings in greater depth to push the game-play.
Like I said this game seems to be an exception in its genre. I don't think I have seen an adventure puzzle game with such little amount of clues/hints and environment that doesn't just look pretty, but makes you think about the puzzle contained in it.