Puzzle Agent

It seems the developers could implement a clear set of instructions for every logical puzzle, but decided not to.

Puzzle Agent was a good game with a few key flaws. But overall it was a great deal for the price (on sale for $5). Pros: - Fun game overall. Great low-stress time-killer. - A nice range of puzzle types--and some good ones I'd not seen before in puzzle games. - Goofy characters and wacky plot. - Minimal, but creative art and animation that gives it a unique style and feel. - Short play time--which could be a detriment except I think this game works best not drawn out. It is around 4-5 hours; just a few evenings of short gaming sessions. Personally, I thought it was a great 'palette cleanser' between more serious games. - Played a lot of it with my 9-year old helping out and it was a really fun parent/child bonding game. Cons: - Some puzzle repetition (though each repetition does get more difficult, so it's not terrible that some puzzles repeat). - Most are good, but a couple of puzzles do have poor design that render them almost useless as puzzles (like there is one 4x4 grid where you click on each tile to rotate it. You have to rotate them all to form a pattern. However, ALL of the edge pieces include the flat edge INSIDE the tile design. So you immediately know the proper orientation of 12 of the 16 tiles instantly. No thinking at all. There were 3 or 4 like that where you had to wonder how they passed a QA review without being refined). Some have complained about the overall puzzle difficulty or harsh scoring system. I didn't have a problem with that. Not that a couple weren't tricky. They were. But I liked that. One was so tricky to solve in-game (just hard to wrap your head around it on a screen) that I had to draw it out and solve it in the physical world. But I actually liked that. It reminded me of drawing my own King's Quest maps and that old school gaming. A couple were real stumpers at first, but they can all be solved with some thought. Overall, I recommend the game. Just know that you are buying a relative short, if humorous and fun, experience.

To get this game to work, I needed to put this file: dinput8.dll ...in the game folder. I did a G-search and found it. (Watch out for programs claiming to install it for you! It's a LIE!) Puzzle Agent is an anthology of mind-bender puzzles with an "X-Files"-esque wrap-around story involving a government agent investigating a small-town incident and a local legend. The puzzles themselves are the sort you'll find in "escape room" type of cell phone & tablet games. You can get clues to help you solve them. Using clues and getting wrong answers costs the taxpayers money but don't appear to affect the storyline.

First things first, if you buy this, buy also the second one, as the story directly continues there from where this one left off. Puzzle agent has certain charm to it in many forms, from art to characters and from humor to sound design and like the name suggests, this game is focused around puzzles, some easy and some mind bending. Puzzles rarely require any real world knowledge and are self contained brain teasers. Player is given an option to be given hints, but they are not forced on you and in some cases even the hints may not save you from thinking. Mechanically this game works as a basic point-and-click adventure centered around a small town filled with quirky people. I had no problems with UI or controls while playing and never got stuck because of stupid game design. Story wise the game is a light crime mystery, with comedic turns and nothing too serious happening(on the surface at least). If you enjoy poin-and-click games or laid back brain teasers, I recommend you to at least test this game out, though if you want to see the ending to the story, you are going to need to buy the sequel.

The puzzle logic seems a bit nonsensical at times, and some of the hints are borderline useless, and there's some mostly minor graphical glitches (and one major one where there was this white box obscuring the hint I was trying to view, the bird pictures), but other than that, it's a good puzzle game with charm and atmosphere. The game can be as easy or as hard as you want it to be with the handy dandy (and kind of disgusting, but what's a gum addict to do?) gum hint system. You have pieces of CHEWED gum, which can be randomly found throughout areas as part of the scenery, you pick one up, you get one hint ammo. You can use up to 3 hints per puzzle, and the third hint more or less gives away the solution usually. Solving a puzzle with no hints used, and getting it right on the first try will give you maximum score for that puzzle. If you haven't already, go watch Grickle on Youtube, dude makes some wacky, bizarre, and charming animations. Think "2D Wallace and Gromit", but even weirder.