The White Door

I loved it. It feels nice to play and unleashes melancholy.

The game consists of two parts. One is the repetitive and monotonous daily routine, where you time after time have to perform the same simple and tedious tasks. There are minor variations from day to day. Overall, however, it doesn't stay fresh even until day 2. The other part consists of the cringy and poorly narrated dreams dreamt between days. Typical gameplay during these dreams is listening to someone read the line "I took a sip of coffee" with a monotonous voice (because it is deep) and then pull the coffee cup to the protagonists mouth. Wow. Puzzle solved. Mentally challenged deluxe achievement won. I don't have much good to say about this game. If you loved the other games published by this developed, you could very well like this as well. I haven't played them. I probably wont after trying this as it discouraged me so. It feels like a Bergman movie for the mentally handicapped. With some added garbage puzzles for interactivity. They should have skipped the interactivity and complete garbage puzzles. Like when for example during a dream, the narrator says "the clouds were moving across the sky" and you have to manually pull them across the sky. Come on, who thinks that kind of stuff is fun or challenging? I respect that they tried (therefore 2/5) but the product is shit.

For those who played Rusty Lake already, there no need to say anything more than the title of this review. For folks unfamiliar with Rusty Lake I always recommend Samsara, it's free. here on GOG and it can be called a Rusty Lake demo. You like Samsara, you will like everything else, and vice versa. Rusty Lake is the only puzzle game studio which is so consistent over the decade. They didn't release better or worse game, all are on par, no recycling, no auto-copying, always fresh and different but still the same. In case anyone is wondering of sequence to play Rusty Lake in - no worries. It doesn't really matter. Yes, there is a story line which goes throughout all games, but you will loose track anyway.

This has all the strengths of the Rusty Lake franchise games that came before it, other than challenging you with the puzzles that has(it's quite easy), and it being somewhat less morbid than a number of the others. I would be really bothered by this if I didn't think other things made up for it. Honestly, I think a strong case could be made that this is somewhat like the first Portal. The entire thing feels to some like a tutorial. And certainly this could easily be your first brain teaser. As well as your introduction to this universe. As always I would recommend buying on sale but then this series gets a very attractive reduced cost bundle every so often. Some have taken issue with the repetitive nature. And it is definitely true that there is not as much variety or breaking of the format here as one might wish and as they've done in some of the others where they've also for example structured it over multiple days. Personally I thought there was enough. And it is also worth noting that it is purposeful. You play as Bob Hill who is in a mental health institution. It has been arranged so that his daily life is predictable. We're not meant to think of it as thrilling. And the dreams really help break things up. The split screen is yet another example of the developer experimenting and as usual it works really well. Their bread and butter are escape rooms so this is not the first time that they put the player in a small confined space that we're going to find claustrophobic. But being able to see just how limited you are in where you can go really hammers that home. It also means much less clicking to get to where you know you have to go to proceed. The monotone voices are as carefully chosen imo as the black and white color scheme during his day. It reflects his sadness. The ending that you're likely to get on an initial play through is pitch perfect if you ask me. I feel like each of these is better than the last. So glad to see this level of creativity rewarded.

Nice game with strange and addictive story. The puzzles are not very difficult but sometimes look difficult even if the solution is in front of your eyes. The game is not very long but it takes its time to solve it. The only dark point is the achievements… When you try to understand the puzzles and follow the story, you cannot definitively look for the stars of the achievements. Finding the achievement looks like clicking anywhere like in some Hidden Objects Game… But solving the puzzles is more trying to understand what to do and how to solve them… something more intellectual… Maybe to find the achievements you will have to play several times this game… but the puzzles stay the same with no real replay ability… Not very funny… it looks like working ;-)