Jazzpunk itself is a fairly boring game, with very pointless objectives to complete in each level. Its draw is everything around those objectives - meaning side-objectives, mini-games, weird mechanics and the various nonsensical occurrences. Which, sadly, there aren't a lot of in each level. Regardless, once you complete them, you have to return to the main objectives and complete those in order to move on to new experiences. I found Jazzpunk very funny, and quite enjoyable to mess around with, but enjoyment of this game is very subjective. The humor is nonsensical, and the game's idea of jokes is showing you something unexpected - such as a pool that is actually a trampoline. Enjoyment also greatly relies on being able to move from level to level just as you're losing interest with the level, and have seen everything there is to see there, or just about. Getting stuck in this game is a death sentence to your enjoyment of it. Luckily, levels are fairly small, so most of the time there's no chance of getting stuck for long periods. But the small levels also mean there isn't a lot to experience in each level. It's most felt towards the end, since the ending to the game is a rigid "boss fight" on top of the roof of a building, making it the smallest level in the game, without many distractions from the level's main objectives. My only other major gripe is that the game can be sometimes painful on the eyes, with how bright everything is, and how quickly the character moves. Jazzpunk is an enjoyable distraction, if found for a major discount. I felt there could have been more levels, but what I got felt enough for me to not feel ripped off. Especially since towards the end the humor seemed to deteriorate in quality, and started to rely more and more on cheap pop culture references - such as seeing flying toasters in the sky.
Secret Files: Tunguska has a strong start, by putting the Tunguska event as the big mystery this game revolves around, hinting at an interesting solution to that mystery. It also introduces what looks like humanoid monsters, which kidnapped the main character's father - a father that was investigating the Tunguska event for a few decades. On top of that one of his fellow researchers went missing, so there are plenty of mysteries to go around. But soon after, it seems like those mysteries are abandoned and forgotten about, and instead we're solving puzzles that do nothing to progress the plot. Not that it gets resolved in any fulfilling way, partly due to the plot being taken over by run of the mill bad guys, which you are now trying to fight. Regardless, the plot isn't very important to the game - puzzles can be solved intuitively, without learning a thing about the plot. The plot only helps in giving you hints as to what to do next. But all you really have to do is scour every screen for the hotspots, pick up every item, make a note of where the puzzles are, and figure out how the items you picked up help you solve those puzzles. You only get stuck once in a while, and then it becomes a marathon of trying everything on everything else. You could pay attention to the plot, but dialog is so long and not very good, and there are plenty of videos that don't add much to the game, that I preferred to skip those most of the time. Not to say this is a bad game, it has a lot of effort put into it, but most of the puzzles are fairly straightforward, with only a handful of generic puzzles to solve - puzzles you see in almost every puzzle game. My other big gripe is with the character not being someone I want to follow. The game has a lot of potential, but the main character's remarks and dubbing seems off, considering her father was kidnapped and possibly hurt. Luckily she's self reliant, but she plays the damsel in distress if it gets someone else to do the work for her.
Bulb Boy is a puzzle game with puzzles that aren't that difficult, with a unique look that isn't very scary - just weird. Looking at it, it seems like a baby's version of a nightmare. It isn't long enough to become annoying, nor short enough to feel cheap, and although simple puzzle games with weird visuals are a dime a dozen, the puzzles in Bulb Boy are logical enough for the experience to not become annoying. It does become more difficult later on as you start encountering timed puzzles, and puzzles get repeated several times during the game's version of a boss battle, but not difficult enough to rage quit. The character is also fairly interesting, and although it's round, light-emitting head is used in some puzzles, he feels underutilized. It would have been nice seeing him used in more unique puzzles. A decent time waster.
A terrorist attack has taken place, and it's up to you to discover who is behind it all, using a computer terminal and free access to everyone's personal communications, whether e-mail, chat or on the phone. Throughout the investigation you'll scour dozens of different documents and try to uncover a network of activists you suspect of orchestrating the attack. But as you continue searching for the culprit, more and more attacks take place, and more innocent lives are lost. Sounds fairly interesting, but your job isn't exactly to investigate, rather to transfer whatever data you find to your supervisor. To do that you don't really need to read the different documents, since relevant data will be highlighted for you, and it's up to you to decide if it's important enough to pass to your boss, or whether to discard it. That is, until you get stuck, and realize the piece of information you thought superfluous is actually something you need to pass along to your supervisor, for the game to continue. Plot-wise, nothing makes sense - the people you follow are glorified keyboard crusaders, and half of the information you dig up that has some value seems to be things a government ought to have on file - such as names, birth dates, photos, places of work, phone numbers, etc. The other data you need is conveniently given on-line through conversations between the different members of the activist network, despite knowing the government is spying on them. There's also an amazing hacker, that seems to hack from his personal computer, with all his personal info on it. There's also no sense of urgency, despite trying to stop a terror attack, and there's no need to manage your time wisely - no need to follow two conversations at once, to decide which person to focus on, etc. Instead every scrap of information you come across is saved forever on the government's computers for you to look at even days later. The ending is also bad, since the attack's motive makes no sense.
Conarium is yet another hodge podge of puzzles, only this time they take place in a nice looking 3D environment, and the game is supposed to be connected to the works of H.P. Lovecraft. But like most works inspired by Lovecraft, it comes nowhere near the quality of his work, nor manages to duplicate the sense of dread and awe found in his better works. In fact, it seems Lovecraft hurt the game more than he aided it, since you spend your time wandering around encountering callbacks to Lovecraft's work, which distracts from this game. It doesn't help that most of the plot to this game seems to be conveyed through text, which you can completely ignore. The visual design is also not good enough to instill any horror in me while I play - each area of the game is so well lit, there aren't any surprises, and for the few darker segments, you get a flashlight to light the way. Design elements also get repeated far too often, leading to areas feeling like a copy and paste of previous areas. There are just too many statues all over the place, for them to become creepy. It does work at first, conveying the sense of exploring the underground dwelling of a long forgotten race, but the game jumps between areas so many times, the suspension of disbelief never lasts. The design of each area is also lacking, since it repeats itself in structure - each area is large and sprawling visually, but fairly empty puzzle-wise. Once you learn the general layout of the game, you have no incentive to explore. Each area has 3 or 4 points of interest, which you can sprint between, since the only thing to do is located there. Every time you get stuck, you just need to explore those small areas for that one thing you missed. Everything in between is superfluous. The game is also sparse with puzzles, opting to have some puzzles be skippable, so you'll only need to solve them for a 100% run, which isn't very fun. At times I skipped a puzzle unintentionally, since I got whisked off to a new area.
If you played Limbo, you played this game. Both main characters look the same, walk the same and act the same. There seems to even be a callback to the worms in Limbo. Luckily "Inside" is better put together and more interesting visually, and seems to offer an interesting plot, at least at first. It seems people are being rounded up, and that the world you're in suffered some catastrophic event, and you're trying to traverse it undetected. It makes for a very striking start, as weird people are chasing you around, trying to either capture you or kill you. Sadly, that horror doesn't last long, since you eventually move away from those people and get to roam around in large empty levels at your own pace, unperturbed. Not having any urgency also hurt the puzzles, which are, for the most part, fairly straightforward. You simply need to take note of the handful of things you can interact with, and try to figure out how they're supposed to work together. After all, only being able to move from side to side, and having a small kid as a main character greatly limits what you can do in the different environments. You do eventually leave the empty levels and get to experience some creepy imagery, but the feeling of haste doesn't really return. The game also throws so much creepy imagery at you, it erases whatever horrific feeling you had playing this game. Throwing a dozen horror tropes at the screen ruined whatever suspension of disbelief the start to the game managed to build. After a while I felt like I might as well be flicking through a Heavy Metal magazine. Any creepy feeling you might have felt from the abundant imagery also gets erased, eventually, as the game ends up being comedic - intentionally or unintentionally. The last part of the game seems to resemble a long slapstick routine. Sticking with it will offer no reward, since the game has no ending to speak of. In addition, the kid you were tasked with protecting becomes unimportant halfway through the game.
Sam Peters isn't bad per se, nor is it low effort, it just lacks in content. The plot revolves around an annoying main character that goes on a generic jungle adventure. If the game was expanded, it could have been a fun budget title. After all, the locations are somewhat interesting, the characters bearable, the visuals good enough and the mystery you're uncovering is somewhat interesting. But Sam Peters spends too much time on telling us instead of showing us, giving you big blocks of text to read, or long conversations to endure, filled with mostly useless exposition. It doesn't help that most puzzles are extremely easy and straight forward, since almost everything you can interact with, you should interact with, and everything you can collect, you should collect. It makes jumping from location to location quick and easy. An okay pretty-forgettable game.
Her Story seems to recreate the feeling of being a detective trying to figure out a mystery, having only the suspect's testimony, and a clunky computer interface. It seems the suspect's video interviews were fragmented into short sections, and it's up to you to find them all, by searching for words in the videos' transcript, causing the videos containing that word to pop up. It doesn't make much sense, but you'll have to go with it to enjoy this game, and instead focus on the story and the actress portraying it. Sadly, overall, the story isn't very good, but the actress largely makes up for it, except for a few videos where she sounds a bit fake. The mystery is good enough to draw you in, and make you actively seek out new videos, but the more you learn about it, the more it feels like a hodge podge of dime novels. It doesn't help that the game has no real ending, and that you don't learn very much about the case. Videos are so fragmented, you rarely come across a long one - almost two minutes long, and instead come across mostly videos a few seconds long, with the occasional 30 to 40 seconds one. Some videos are also superfluous, such as a video of the suspect spilling coffee on herself, or looking at the detective's family photos. It seems having many videos is done to attract completionists, hurting players playing to uncover the story. But to finish the game, you don't need to watch all the videos - only enough of the main ones, which took me about 2 hours. Trying to find them all, I played 5 hours in total, still missing 17 videos. The scenery is also a problem, but only after you stare at it long enough - one interrogation room is of the stereotypical kind, and another makes videos appear as if they were filmed in someone's kitchen. But the videos are downgraded enough to make you believe they came from a tape, and the computer station you're working on has enough audio and visual cues added to it, to make it seem to be located in a dirty, stuffy office.
