Obduction ®

The game would have been great if it didn't take up to a minute and a half to load new areas, and I have a low end gaming PC. I maybe could have tolerated that if it wasn't for the fact that some puzzles require multiple moving from one area to another, another words, loads of loading time, or loads of time sitting doing nothing waiting for next screen to load. While I played most of the Myst games over & over I only played this one a couple of times because it's just too tedious spending half an hour waiting while the game loads over and over. If you have a high end gaming PC it's probably ok, but for regular users it's going to take a while & that's just not fun. It is possible to make a game like this look as good but not require such high hardware specs and run fine with shorter load times. There's also a catch 22 problem with one of the puzzles. When I got there I knew where to look for the answer, the problem is, it's impossible to get back there without completing the puzzle first. So you've got 3 options. 1) Start the game over from scratch and look up the answer you now know you need before you get there. 2) Exit the game and look up the answer on the internet or 3) Use trial and error and hope you stumble upon the right answer by chance. None of those options are good. Normally I find games like this fun to play once I know what I'm doing, but in this case it just isn't fun to play, it's just plain tedious.

I got this in the free offer recently. I thought I'd surprise my mom with it so she could play. She loves Myst, Riven and even tried to like Uru... So, I downloaded the game this morning, moved it to my USB disk, and then to her Macbook Air. After extracting the zip into Applications and starting the game I was told the game is from an "unidentified developer" and could not be opened. Fine, run anyway... (There is a override) Then it got stuck on "verifying obduction" which took 10-20 minutes, only for macOS to again tell me the game could not run because the dev is unknown. And what's up with the zip file saying (in the file name) I have version 1.7.2 but then the actual downloaded file claims 1.7.0. C'mon Cyan, get you shit together... Or is this one of the games puzzles, get a perk if you get the game to run :(

And I swore to myself I would not let myself get dragged into another Myst-like maze runner, no matter how beautiful. Life is too short.

TL:DR - if you are the kind of player that wants it all easy and simple and no brainpower required - go play DOOM, otherwise if you like to be mentally challenged for a couple of dozen hours, try Obduction - but buy it on sale - it's good but not quite £24 good. I've read some of the more recent reviews and almost all of them have the same theme "WAAAA". This game isn't meant to hold your hand. It merely gives you rough clues to figure out yourself, running around, trying stuff until you work through the solution - almost like an actual PUZZLE GAME. Funny that. No you can't keybind - so learn the keys - there's only a handful anyway. Yes the localisation isn't great, but then there are quite a few other games produced for non english markets, with very poor english localisation. Localisation costs money, money better spent on developing the game and this was a KS backer funded game. Had no resolution issues - suggest those are player related, not game related. The game itself is lovely with some genuine OOOH moments for the visuals and I've been gaming for over 35 (of my 50) years, so I've seen a lot, but Obduction still managed to impress in places. I would agree the second half of the game can drag a little with the devs using a bit too much of the seed swapping system, and the Villein Maze puzzle can be a bit of a headscratcher, BUT for several of the Villein puzzles (forest area), if you learn to think in FOUR DIMENSIONS, not just the three in front of you but including the one that isn't (on the OTHER SIDE of a seed swap), you'll have an easier time of it. This is a "no frills" PUZZLE game - if you need notes - write them down on paper "old school" style, like we used to before you kids got all your fancy UI ingame notepads with easy quest reminders for those with the memory span of a gnat. There's also a camera you can use to take photographs for reference reminders later on FOR A REASON. Overall a nice change of pace, and worth the time spent.

medium quality buggy graphics, average sound, choppy control and gameplay, a whole bunch of game breaking holes that would force you to restart the game from scratch, some nice puzzles -most of them trash-lots of pointless walking and to top it off some poor as hell acting from the live action clip characters within the game would describe this game. CERTAINLY not worth 30 bucks. 5 i would say. 10 tops