Decent puzzle game. Some kinda hard puzzles if you struggle with following lines like I do.
The gist of this game is pressing a series of buttons connected to hooks by wires to clear the hooks from the screen in a certain order. I saw the price and the 97% approval rate on Steam and decided to give it a go.
The first few levels are incredibly easy to complete which is fine. Puzzle games should have a few easy levels at the start to get players used to their mechanics. The problem is that the levels don't really get harder or more interesting but rather longer and more tedious to complete.
As more and more wires are added, the level just becomes a visual mess. If the game were made clearer by, for example, colour coding the wires so you can more easily see which ones connect or highlighting which wires can be cleared and which ones can't yet (stuff a good puzzle game would probably have), then there would be no more puzzle as the solutions would be extremely clear. The only puzzle-solving you do is trying to figure out which line connects to which hook. That's not a puzzle. That's just mentally untangling wires which is not fun.
There's a sort of lives system in place where every time you try to clear a hook that can't be cleared yet you lose a life which prevents you from just spamming the buttons and forces you to actually think about the puzzle. This is good but it makes it so you can fail a level if you aren't incredibly careful and miss something. If you fail, you have to start all over again which is really annoying because then any "puzzle-solving" you do is rendered useless. Even if you know the solution you still have to do it all over again because the solution isn't discovered, it's achieved.
The solution to each level can be found in the same way which makes them all feel repetitive and bland; once you play level 30, you've basically played the next 20 as well. I tried to play as much as I could in order to make this review fair but once I hit level 50 I was just so bored and annoyed that I stopped. The only reason a puzzle was satisfying to solve was because it meant I was closer to putting the game away.
TLDR: the game is more like mentally untangling cords than solving puzzles. If you like that sort of thing then give it a go. It doesn't cost much but I would probably still be giving it a bad review even if it was free because the game was more annoying than it was fun and just not worth the hour I spent on it.
PS.: if you want a cheap, minimalist puzzle that is clear and concise and actually makes you think, I recommend "Twickles". it has a very similar visual style and, even though it's a bit pricier than this game, it's much better value as you can get more than one hour of gameplay out of it.
The first few levels are incredibly easy to complete which is fine. Puzzle games should have a few easy levels at the start to get players used to their mechanics. The problem is that the levels don't really get harder or more interesting but rather longer and more tedious to complete.
As more and more wires are added, the level just becomes a visual mess. If the game were made clearer by, for example, colour coding the wires so you can more easily see which ones connect or highlighting which wires can be cleared and which ones can't yet (stuff a good puzzle game would probably have), then there would be no more puzzle as the solutions would be extremely clear. The only puzzle-solving you do is trying to figure out which line connects to which hook. That's not a puzzle. That's just mentally untangling wires which is not fun.
There's a sort of lives system in place where every time you try to clear a hook that can't be cleared yet you lose a life which prevents you from just spamming the buttons and forces you to actually think about the puzzle. This is good but it makes it so you can fail a level if you aren't incredibly careful and miss something. If you fail, you have to start all over again which is really annoying because then any "puzzle-solving" you do is rendered useless. Even if you know the solution you still have to do it all over again because the solution isn't discovered, it's achieved.
The solution to each level can be found in the same way which makes them all feel repetitive and bland; once you play level 30, you've basically played the next 20 as well. I tried to play as much as I could in order to make this review fair but once I hit level 50 I was just so bored and annoyed that I stopped. The only reason a puzzle was satisfying to solve was because it meant I was closer to putting the game away.
TLDR: the game is more like mentally untangling cords than solving puzzles. If you like that sort of thing then give it a go. It doesn't cost much but I would probably still be giving it a bad review even if it was free because the game was more annoying than it was fun and just not worth the hour I spent on it.
PS.: if you want a cheap, minimalist puzzle that is clear and concise and actually makes you think, I recommend "Twickles". it has a very similar visual style and, even though it's a bit pricier than this game, it's much better value as you can get more than one hour of gameplay out of it.
A wonderfully relaxing little puzzler with very simplistic yet easy to understand graphics, and a calming ambient soundscape. Our only complaint? ...we wish it had a level editor. Which, hey, when our only objection is "we want more levels to it so bad, we'd make them ourselves"... ;P