Subject 13

Very little animation, stingy voice over (which the subtitles don't always match), bad mechanics, tacked-on plot, passable graphics, repetitive puzzles, surroundings not very interactable, weird character responses ("Nothing doing there"), bad click recognition, glitches galore. Simply put, Subject 13 is a puzzle game that feels the need to excuse itself by throwing in a plot. It seems you're the sole survivor of some catastrophe, and it's up to you to discover what exactly happened. Helping you in your search is a possibly malicious computer-sounding persona, who seems to treat you as a subject in a still active experiment. It's an interesting premise, or rather trope, but plot progression is achieved by collecting "testimonies" - diary entries of the people that perished. Not being integrated into the gameplay, nor needing it to advance, I couldn't care less. As for the puzzles, they range from mindless brute force puzzles, to puzzles a 5 year old could solve. In fact, often times you'd know what you need to do, and your only problem is finding out the very rigid path the game wants you to take to advance. Trying to reach a high ledge, you'll need to find a hidden keycard, open a storage area with it, take the ladder from it, place it just at the right spot, and voila. The puzzles are extremely difficult solely because of the game's mechanics - you not being able to move the camera around too much, and being forced to use the mouse as a hand - to drag items to move them, rather than simply clicking on them. In addition, the problem solving is rigid - you can't use item A on B, but rather B on A, and you need to place items at just the right spot for things to happen. Getting very little feedback and being forced to find ridiculous solutions to problems didn't help either - such as using a knife to cut a cord you can remove by hand, or using soda to remove rust. It's just bad design. Add all the glitches to it, and this feels like a very early beta. Just bad.

This game like others have said is a bit of a what could have been. puzzles are mostly ok, but some were just too illogical for me. The controls can be changed but even the interface for changing them I found a bit odd. Storyline is better than most, but characters are abit shallow, It is also a bit short. Visually it looks like sokal/metroid, so if you like that, then it's good. Actually that's probably the bench mark, do you like Anuman? Then you'll like this. If you like point and click, you may get something out of this. But like others said, such a missed oppurtunity.

This sci-fi puzzle game was difficult for me to rate -- I like both sci-fi stuff and puzzle games, but I only liked the first half of this game. Some of the puzzles seem a little mismatched and underdeveloped - despite these hiccups most of the puzzles were enjoyable, with the notable exception of the extremely frustating final Mineswapper-themed puzzle. I do wish the use of Mayan arithmetic appeared more than once. The ending is just... horrible and dumb!! [Specific score: 2.5+ / 5 stars]

There is much to like about this point and click puzzle game, it has an immersive environment, the puzzles range from easy to ' need a walkthrough ' difficult, the story is interesting as well. I found myself enjoying this game for a few hours until all the small aggravations kicked in to ruin my experience. Annoyances are mainly with the odd radial wheel interface they use, often times you misclick the radial wheel that opens on a hotspot with choices of actions. There is a lag behind the mouse pointer, so you have to wait till the wheel swings into the wanted action and many a time that is missed. The buzz kill of the whole game was an idiotic mine sweeper game at the very end with many buttons to click. If you missclicked once (easy to do with the bad click interface and the transparent buttons) you had to start over again through a lengthy animation scene. This puzzle ruined the tempo of the game and in frustration I looked up a video walkthrough for the finish and I was relieved that I stopped playing. The game ended immediately after leaving unresolved questions and a cliff hanger ending. Very unsatisfying. The graphics were basic, with some bad texturing but I didnt mind that. The music was a repetitive loop, very basic and needed work. There is a very short tutorial on how to begin the game but you are on your own from then on. Lots of fumbling around till you get the hang of it. the look action usually pulled up lame text such as ' this lock has a combination' or 'try to open the door'. duh There is a hint button, which can lead to spoilers if you arent careful. It flashes when a hint is available and like a dope I clicked it a few times and got spoilers without meaning to. Overall, the last puzzle ruined the game for me what had previously been an mildly amusing puzzle game. Gameplay is about 6 hrs, add in a few hours more if you dont use a walk thru for the mayan number puzzle which was very difficult. Buy it on sale

This game is simply a collection of the most stupid random puzzles. Everything is just hit and miss. Add one random thing to another random thing to solve puzzle. Tedious and pointless with very little actual thought involved.