Quern - Undying Thoughts

I just completed the game yesterday, and it provided a fun and worthy experience if you enjoyed previous Myst titles. The puzzles are fun, and the world is rendered beautifully. There are some small flaws to this game (as stated in previous reviews) that are annoying, but didn't impact my ultimate enjoyment of the game. Cons: - You can take screenshots for your in-game journal, but they're rendered in a flat sepia "sketch", which is criminal considering some of the puzzles are color based, making those screenshots near useless. - A couple of the puzzles are not obtuse, but have confusing "charts" that imply one easy solution, but are actually the other way around. It's hard to explain without giving away any spoilers, but if you get stuck, try looking at the data for the puzzle "vertically" instead of "horizontally". - You do end up with a bunch of items in your inventory, some of which you will re-use, some of which you won't. - The story is not convincing. Pros: - Some of the puzzles have alternate solutions, very nice! - If you get stuck, most items have a "hint" system that reveal more and more of what an item is used for. It helped me out during one of the sound puzzles, because it'll tell you what the tone is when I couldn't hear the difference in game. - For the most part, the game gives you the information you need to complete the puzzles one at a time. This may be a con for some people, but there's generally no "well, there's 3 puzzles I could go to, but I'm not sure which one I can complete right now" feeling in the game. Usually there's one or two solvable puzzles at each juncture of the game, and they all usually require finding the data for each puzzle somewhere else. As a general rule, if you're stuck, you may be missing required information to complete the current puzzle. - For the most part, there's environmental clues that hint where to go or what you need to complete a puzzle. I had fun, and only had to look up a couple solutions. Recommended!

First is optimisation, it's not too well optimised to the point where even on a beastly PC it feels a bit sluggish and not so smooth. Graphically pretty, but some weird texture pop-ins, disappearing water and strange physics on occasion. Other big criticism is the music. The music itself is not bad, it suits the mood. The problem is, it loops CONSTANTLY, which is kinda annoying when you've been on a puzzle for an hour and the same 30sec-1min track is in its 60th loop. The flagship puzzle game for music would be Myst III Exile which has a music frequency slider -- music kicks in at pivotal moments as opposed to playing the entire time, and Myst III also used a "self-composing" system, where music would be different every time you played the game. Apart from that puzzles are neat and it's good value for money, and very challenging.

Just finished this game -- wow! Others are correct that it's very Myst-like, but that isn't a bad thing at all. The graphics, puzzles, environments, and especially SOUNDTRACK are top notch. Recommend!

I think this is a fantastic Myst spiritual succesor type of a puzzle game. I like how the puzzles are mostly envirnmental and no logic puzzles.

Really nice puzzle game. Solid feeling physics and great puzzles. The main happy surprise for me was the sheer amount of content. There is more to this game than I expected.