Teslagrad

This game is pretty and atmospheric. It has some nice stretches and then some parts, where the checkpoints are too far apart. The game is NOT a puzzle platformer! The 'Complex Puzzles' line in the game description is false advertising. The puzzles are far from complex. The game is, at it's core, a platformer that is all about precision and timing. Made more difficult by sometimes imprecise or even random controls. Worst of all are the boss fights. They are long and partially random. Sometimes you can dash through that shock-wave, for example. Sometimes, when doing everything the same as the last three times that worked, you are blown off-screen. Which is insta-kill. So, to beat the bosses you'll need luck, patience and a high frustration tolerance. But hardly any skill or thinking. The 'puzzles' involved in the boss-fights are very obvious. All in all, this is a game that could have been good, but isn't. Good and bad parts balance each other out, so that you get an average game for people with a high frustration threshold.

In the early parts of the game, some symbols like X, O, □ and ∆ are used to show what you need to do. Feels like it was made for console and only after released on PC. I don't care about those few symbols in the beginning but the controls themselves are worse. For a game with as much focus on precision as this, it's just frustrating using the keyboard. Difficulty level on the puzzles are OK and no problems but they require a lot of precision and the controls are not up for the task. I stopped playing when a puzzle destroyed itself twice. When giving various hanging boxes different charges, they clumped together and went out of reach. Had to go back about a min for the puzzle to reset. Then it happened again. Since it anyway was more frustrating than anything I decided to quit. Pretty graphics, nice way of storytelling, good ideas and mechanics etc but very poor controls and too much focus on making more or less frame perfect jumps. I would have preferred figuring out the puzzles to be more difficult. As a whole the game is frustrating.

This game is really hardcore and has quite unsatisfying checkpoints, unfortunately. It still made some fun, while i never managed to finish it, due to it's unsatisfying checkpoints. Often times you have to do a lot passages again, because you can die really fast and the checkpoint is at the start of the passage. What a bummer!

Couldn't get used to the slippery controls. This is a game that requires a lot of precision timing and I just couldn't get the hang of it.

I quite enjoyed this game. The artwork is amazing and the storytelling is very unique. The sound effects all fit the game very well. I enjoyed the puzzles a lot. Even though there only a few mechanics I didn't feel like the puzzles ever really repeated themselves. I've seen other reviews complain about the difficulty of this game. It's really not THAT difficult. Sure, you die, bu the checkpoint is usually 30 seconds back. The boss fights are puzzles and I'm sure you'll die several times figuring them out. At times it might be frustrating, but the game took less than 10 hours to complete. It's not that difficult. But then, I grew up playing things like Ninja Gaiden, so maybe I'm a glutton for punishment. Games should be challenging, and with that challenge comes a sense of accomplishment when you do finish the game. It takes real effort, but it's worth it.