Lake Ridden

I really wanted to like this game but sorry, no. This game has quite good grafics and a lot of light to switch on. The game mechanic is functional. But other than that... Some the puzzles are really bad designed. You have to guess the answers and the hints were no hints for me, because i already knew all that was in the hints. Still very good for a puzzle/adventure game to have a hint system, and i mean it: really good. Back to the game: It has no human characters, only some kind of ghosts (no more spoiler), just a "hint" (pun intended) of a immersive story (it kicked me out of the immersion more than once) and some voices coming from nowhere. That would be okay, if the puzzles weren't so idk superficial? illogical? not thought completely through... it made me angry and sad, because as i said in the beginning: i wanted to like this sweet little puzzle game.

Good game for its atmosphere, main story puzzles and overall experience. The downsides : - a few kind of puzzles that are reused too often, which is a missed opportunity, with more varied challenges the game would have made it to another level. (Main puzzles are fine though). - near the end you have to walk the same path again and again with nothing new to discover - The ending itself (after gaming) is poor visually speaking. All in all totally worth it for its main puzzles, setting and relaxing atmosphere. 3.5/5

I finished this in around 13 hours and I like to play these calm games without stress as some meditation. I finished Kholat (the creepy Russian game) a couple of days ago, and wanted more of that kind of stuff. This was basically what I was looking for and it's what I got. It bugged me a bit that sometimes I did not understand who was talking. It was the same color on the text, but it was not really clear what voice was what person. I mostly played it for the atmosphere and the puzzles and that was the purpose of the game. I enjoyed almost all the puzzles, and I did not need to use that many hints from the build in hint page (I really like those kind of sections). Only a few places I used the hints just to conclude that what I already tried to do was what I supposed to do. It was a good level on the puzzles and they made me feel quite smart. The puzzle boxes annoyed me so much though. After I got like 7 photos, I just skipped opening more puzzle boxes because that one was too tedious and boring. It was quite fun the first three times. Never re-use a puzzle more than three times! However, since I finished the whole game - it was a nice game. I was using an Xbox controller on PC so it was a little bit annoying to light all the super small candles and lights all the time, but I just wanted them to be lit to get the cozy atmosphere. I don't want to complain more. It's good if you want some nice puzzles and meditative feeling between more rough games.

Positives: - art direction is great - i love lighting the plenty lanterns, candles, etc - fully voiced dialogues - included hint system is helpful negatives: - i've played all these puzzles before - cliche boring story - tedious progress --- disclaimer - i played through about half of this, stopped and deleted it. really boring, no payoff

For anything else, in the end is a poor 3d version of "Myst", but without the breathtaking and varied scenarios. The puzzles are repetitive and rather poor, the game is full of completely useless objects that you can only lift and drop, as well as places that you can open and examine to no avail. In short, a pretty confusing story told as a boring game book. I quit halfway through it, I was falling asleep. Two stars, I said, just for the effort in drawing the scenarios, boring yes, but with some effort in making them. For the rest, at least for me, i'ts a big no.