Quern - Undying Thoughts

I have to say, i was really impressed of the layers of depth in this game. This game is so well balanced in the way the puzzles reveal themself and the logic behind it. As you can read in a lot of the other reviews it its hard to not compare this to games from the amazing Cyan studios. The story of Quern is a bit to much to the fantasy side for me but all in all does it has some interresting moral aspects on the end. What really got me where the puzzles and environment, they work togheter in an amazing and logic way, but you have to take your time to understand them. Some of them are very logical, other really need some (basic) calculation or insight. The puzzles become a bit harder over the course of the game. I was really asthonished about how unique every puzzle was and i did really enjoyed them: There was never a time that i thougt; 'Okay i don't get this at all, let me search for a walktrough', the only time i did that i was just impatience… Every time i did know that i was missing something, so again: Take your time. The graphics in this game are beautifull and i love the machinery and unique environment. All by all is enjoyed this (way) more than Obduction from Cyan, it deserves a spot with the 'greatest puzzlers of all time', and it really let's you hope for more of these games and takes you back to the good old Myst games. Well done developers!

So this is a really well done adventure puzzle game with strong strong inspiration from Myst. There's tons to do, puzzles galore, but I have two critiques. One, the padding. "Do A here, now walk all the way across the map to do B. Nothing wrong with that to pad things out, but I think the game relied on it a little heavily. Perhaps it plays into the second critique as well. This one is a little more subjective, but I actually think the game was too long. It felt like it was starting to drag in the last few hours. Nothing wrong with the game itself, but having played games like this my whole life, you eventaully reach the point where you're ready to see things wrap up, and I think Quern overstepped that line by a decent margin. All in all, a great entry entry in the adventure puzzle genre with some pretty minor critisisms.

Important notes first: it's hugely reminiscent of Myst in the best ways, but with several straight-up logic puzzles just to slow you down and much more linear. If you only game on Mac, don't bother, it's horribly optimized. Quern has a very, *very* Myst- and Riven-like feel to it, and that is a very good thing—we haven't finished it yet, but I can't count how many times we've just paused to look at and admire a scene, even favorably comparing it to those classic prerendered worlds. And like those games, Quern has its own universe and its own rules. (Unlike those games, it's pretty graphically demanding.) For the most part, the abundant puzzles are environmental and make a great deal of sense, and there are often plenty of clues lying about. However, Quern also relies a bit too heavily on traditional logic puzzles that just serve as artificial roadblocks: netwalk-like rotating pipes, Lights Out style puzzles, even a 14-note-long game of Simon (where you have to memorize a randomized sequence of button presses). There also seems to be an overabundance of inventory items, and several puzzles boil down to using the right item in the right spot, which isn't always clear. That aside, it's a beautiful game where everything else fits together quite nicely with some delightful surprises, though sometimes it suffers from a lack of signposting—more often than not, when I got stuck, it was for not knowing where to find the next puzzle, or having no idea what the item I just picked up was supposed to even be. One thing I'll say is, whenever you come across an odd mark in your exploration, be sure to make a note of its location for future reference. I bought this game on sale, and I feel like I underpaid. It's easily worth $20+, even with some annoyances.

I played the original Myst when it came out and recently returned to it 20 years later. Fond memories, so I moved on to Myst II Riven and then Myst III Exile, both of which I'd never played before and on balance really enjoyed them. Now hooked and with a better laptop I chose Quern as my next challenge based solely on the reviews for the game posted here. Quern just sucks you in slowly and for me it is absolutely brilliant. Define 'brilliant'... Well, the atmosphere, the imagination, the scenery, the gameplay from a practical sense, the genius of the ideas, the puzzles and challenges. The story that underpins the game is as good as it needs to be and holds it together well. I thought it was genuinely enthralling and at times just couldn't break away from it. The challenges are well thought about and imaginative and the puzzles are a mix of levels. Some obvious and logical and some obtuse and confusing but hey, that's the magic. I played it with my partner who had NEVER played anything like this in her life and she absolutely loved it in a way she could not have imagined. Playing it together we had a great mix of strengths and weaknesses and it brought us together to complete the game in a way nothing had done so before. That's a subtle but important point and we reflected on the experience. We took a few weeks to finish the game as it's absolutely vast and just seems to go on forever so the value for money aspect is utterly off the scale. Personally, if you have had experience of Myst and enjoy this genre of game then you will not be disappointed. You DO need a very good spec machine to run it on and if that's not the case I can imagine it would be very frustrating and irritating to play. In summary, I can't imagine anything to be better than this but we'll see!

I think this is a very well made high quality game in every respect. It took me just about a year to finish this game but in the whole time I didn't experience even one glitch or hang. For a game this big I think that part alone is very impressive. The story, the scenery, the music and the puzzles are all first rate. A lot of the puzzles were hard for me and required a whole lot of patience, I found myself stumped for weeks and months and then I would finally solve the puzzle only to find myself right back stumped again on the next puzzle. I thought it was the perfect difficulty level, hard but solvable with a lot a patience and no help. The only puzzle that I needed help with was the audio puzzle, I can hear, but I hear really bad, I don't think I would have ever got that one. All the others though, I finally got em without help. This is definitely the longest game that I've ever played, I was really surprised and pleased at how it just kept going and going. I think I started expecting it to end around halfway through based off other games I've played. You really get your money's worth with this one. I finished Obduction right before I started this game and to me Rand Miller will always be in a class by himself, he is just a truly gifted guy when it comes to these adventure puzzle games, and while Quern may lack that little extra spark of genius that Miller brings to his games, in my book Quern will still go down as one of the best adventure puzzle games ever made.