Call of the Sea

The lovely visuals of this first-person Adventure drew me in, and they never quit; the game is gorgeous all the way through. You'll spend most of your time wandering around an island and solving puzzles to progress. I say wandering mostly because it isn't super open, so exploring is a bit generous. The puzzles are pretty fair; there were a few that seemed impossible at first, but that was because I'd missed a detail that made everything fall right into place. There are a few toward the end that involve some tedious backtracking, because the details were separated, but they were very few in number. The story is also really interesting; it took a few turns you wouldn't necessarily expect, and I really like what they did with the ending.

When I gauge whether I'm getting my money's worth out of any game, I expect 1 USD to equal 1 hour of gameplay. This game should not take you 20 hours to complete. I finished the game over the course of a few hours spread out over three days. Therefore, I find the full price of 20 USD to be very difficult to justify. However, the short length is a good thing. The game does not overstay its welcome. The core of the game is within both its story and the puzzles. The story is very good, but that's all I can say without spoilers. Chapter 1's puzzle is a joke, but I promise you gets better. They do not become exceptionally difficult, but are usually solid enough, clever, and well presented. I think my favorite part of the game is the wide variety of puzzles. The game doesn't get stale by presenting you the same kind of puzzle over and over again, like Portal 2 or The Talos Principle. The worst part of the game is your character's very slow movement. My finger was practically glued to the "shift" key to run, and that was still a good pace to enjoy the scenery. It's not great, but survivable and not a deal breaker. I hope my review helped you make a decision. Happy gaming.

A lot of foreshadowing early on, plus figuring out the controls is not intuitive, which actually forced me to restart once early on. Still, it's not rocket science and eventually I started to get the hang of it. I seem to be stumped for the moment, but I assume I just missed something and I need to figure out just where and what I blew off another clue. It's a little frustrating when you think you've done everything right, but still can't get the puzzle solved. Oh well, just gotta keep plugging away at it.

Very well written, great story and beautiful graphic design. Sadly there are not that many puzzles and none are very hard. I solved a number of them before I even found the clues scattered around. After finding the clues I felt like they were giving away so much that they are ruining the experience a little bit. I wish it was a lot longer, the story kept me pulled in but left a few question marks that were not answered. PS.: ditch the ladders if they have to be this slow to use. They are the frustrating bit of the game. Luckly there aren't that many of them.

Horrible controls on PC. Too bad, as it looked like it might be a good game.