The Gateway Trilogy

So I have been playing this series since it was free and up on flash gaming sites. I remember it fondly for I saw nothing like it. To my surprise, gog released it with the long awaited ending! Of course I bought it. The first two chapters are excellent as always and brings back memories. How is the ending? It has less creative and strong puzzles in between, but I enjoyed it. I would definitely say it is not everyone's cup of tea. So keep that in mind if you are considering purchasing the game. I would add this series has unique mood, graphics and settings that drew me in. It is not as epic as the other game by the same creator, The Dream Machine, but I like this short, sweet game.

The Gateway Trilogy are three Flash point-and-click adventure games in an isometric perspective. Generally they follow the same overarching design: you have separate rooms with mostly self-contained puzzles. By progressing through rooms you advance the plot. There is an inventory system, you can combine items and use them on the environment, but that's a very small part of the game. The art style of the games is minimalistic and is consistent among the three parts. Because it's made using the old Flash technology I recommend setting the quality to "low" and turning off special effects in the settings menu, because otherwise the game experience will be choppy and unpleasant. The sound design is simple but fitting. Music sits in the background and doesn't attract much attention. Now to the games! The Gateway 1 It's the first installment and it is easily seen if you play all the three games. The puzzles are less elaborate, the characters don't speak, the story is non-existant IMO, and it's the shortest of the games. The Gateway 2 It felt like an improvement over The Gateway 1 in all aspects: the puzzles were more interesting, the characters got dialogues and we got a story that managed to tie in all the puzzles in a nice manner. I found this one to be the best out of three. The Gateway 3 This one tried to be an ending to the story we mainly saw in TG2, but it didn't feel very convincing and just felt like some psychedelic experience. The puzzles are a downgrade: instead of them being a natural part of the story now we have sets of puzzles following different rules, e.g. set of puzzles where you have to light all tiles in a room by walking on them or a set of puzzles where you have to color shapes in a certain way. All in all, I would recommend getting it on sale. I completed the whole trilogy in 2-3 hours. However I must add that I would highly recommend the next game by this developer, the Dream Machine. It has a similar trippy feel, but is much more elaborate.

Solid