I decided on this warm summer night that I'd rot/enlighten my brain with some early 2000s Flash games, but this thing caught my eye and didn't let go of me until I'd beaten it. This is one of the best puzzle games I've ever played. The medium of Flash was inundated with Escape the Room-type games for years but, like the guy who found that one fungus what turned out to be penicillin, I feel like I found the first good one.

As you might guess from the genre, you're trapped in a room and a series of puzzles lies between you and escape. Apparently the person who made this spent 3 years crafting these puzzles, and it shows. They largely test your ability to recognise patterns, to take seemingly disparate pieces of information and make the one connection between them needed for solving. Even if this takes place in a lovingly 3D rendered environment which makes absolutely no practical sense, there's just enough logic in your surroundings and the pieces given to you to make the moment of solving so satisfying. Not too obtuse, not too simple, a nice curve of difficulty all the way to the end. This is a real pen and paper, logic it out, meat and potatoes, dick in the vagina, cheddar cheese and chicken tikka masala type game. MS Paint and Snipping Tool are also invaluable. None of the extra tools needed feel like a chore though, and the thing that impressed me the most was that, after some work, my logicking was often correct. That's not even me grasping at whatever vestiges of intelligence I have left after years of brain misuse, it's a compliment to how the puzzles lead you along and verse you in the language of this strange place.

The difficulty is interesting because I know the puzzles were getting harder in isolation, but also somewhat easier in context of the whole game. I felt I was getting better at understanding how the creator's mind worked to make this, their sensibilities and which pieces of information were important and which were noise. Getting across a real sense of authorship and artistry like that over a few hours of puzzling is no mean feat.

I also love how the game looks and how it's laid out. Each area has this bizarre sense of place; it could easily exist but also never could. Dream logic leaning more towards logic but dragging the dream along with it. All the materials feel and look so right, and the sound effects are your only companion in discovery, success, or failure. It's a joyously tactile game and a sensory delight throughout.

This thing I found randomly on a Wednesday night has catalysed a whole new interest inside me for this type of puzzle game. Three hours of Danny DeVito looking into the camera, saying "Oh my God, I get it" in Impact font. Maybe I should try Myst. The world is my lobster.