Riven was astounding to my adolescent imagination, and it's a joy to see that legacy carried on with games like this. There were some very clever and challenging puzzles in here. I really enjoy the way they let the puzzles breathe and speak for themselves. It required me to be genuinely observant. There were times when I got frustrated, but eventually I realized it was just because I refused to slow down, look closely, and think things through. I couldn't typically rely on the game to give me the next step, which was a breath of fresh air. Some nice music. I felt as though the voices were fine, but could have used more personality or character. For a game dabbling with the idea of many alternate worlds, everything looks very mundane and samey. I appreciate the opportunity to make a choice at the end. It was something I could reason through and I suppose people will make different calls based on their own sensibilities. But overall the story felt too vague. That works to some degree because it's dealing more with broad themes of power, technology, knowledge, and balancing these with ethical decisions. But it was so vague that for me it lacked impact by the end. Ultimately, though, it's about the quality of the puzzles, and I was very satisfied on that front.

Yes it's a Myst-like, and a pretty good one too. It's not just cribbing ideas from Myst, but feels like it's in conversation with Myst. If you were ever bothered by how Atrus is positioned as a good colonialist (who's still finding new worlds and ripping up their resources to build his own machines and change them irrevocably, but he means well so that's alright), then Quern feels like a deconstruction of that idea, following the train of thought to its terminus. I won't say the plot is brilliant, but it is trying to do something interesting with its influences.

Puzzles are pretty good, on the whole! Quern promises reusable puzzle mechanics, and those are the best of the bunch - they have that Metroidvania quality of getting a new toy and having your mind run through all the places you could try playing with it. A handful of Myst-like big-machine puzzles and a few stock logic puzzles are thrown in for variety. They're not always integrated plausibly, but they're appreciated.

The puzzle structure is very linear. Quern gets away with this in the first two thirds of its runtime as you run around the whole map reconfiguring it with every new reveal, but slips up with an endgame that feels more like an obstacle course than an actual place.

Quern wears its Myst inspiration on its sleeves pretty heavily. On it's own, that's not a bad thing, but it's hard not to hold it side-by-side and see the flaws laid bare. There is a definite abandoned-village vibe, but the art direction is a little gray and mundane so there's no sense of wonder. There are many unique puzzle mechanics that require you to work out the properties of the objects you interact with, but without the grounding of a character story to motivate you, it feels more like checking off a to-do list than following a story. There's no grander thing that's happening to take this whole experience to the next level. But worst of all, there's nothing new that this game brings to the genre. An homage does best when it supercedes the reference by being more modern and bringing a fresh take, but this game retreads old habits in a bit of a lackluster way. I'm convinced that if this creator learned from this lesson and created something new from their own ideas, they have the capabilities to make something great, but unfortunately it appears this was their last attempt.

There were about a billion opportunities that could've made this more than just mediocre, and maybe it's just a sign of its release date.

The island itself with its techno-mystic charm reminded me of Physicus but in a similar fashion was slowed down by convoluted paths and constant pacing between locations. The puzzles are mostly good and environmental, but brought down by three factors: purpose, usability and recovery.

It is only natural for puzzles to gradually unlock the world, but it can be done in vastly different ways. Quern often uses the most obvious way: keys and even more egregious, parts of keys. And that just doesn't feel good after a while, there needs to be a purpose beyond getting access to another facility that also makes keys.

Most puzzles make sense, but the later parts often switch to environment-unrelated minigames which can be terrible to solve - if I see another gamedev use the inversion puzzle (light up all points using four buttons that invert random patterns) I will explode. And these are then often chained together and/or completely overengineered, pressing a lot of buttons and levers for simple things.

The puzzles are usually organized in linear paths and concentrated in the same room, but trouble starts if they're scattered about for no reason and even worse if you happen to miss something, as there's no joy in running around on the island and you don't even know what you could have missed.

This is not helped by the generally grey and dull appearance, it's extremely monotone and the aesthetics serve no purpose - the whole game could've been in a sci-fi setting and would work the exact same way. And while it's clear that the puzzles are environment-related and varied to make this an adventure, the narrative is lacking too, resulting in random exposition towards the end and, of course, le epic final choice!!!

Overall, it's not that bad; it's just arbitrary and feels like playing an adventure version of Far Cry. Just play Aporia instead (it only came a year later and despite a more lacking narrative, has a way better puzzle-world interaction).