Aethernaut

It bangs.

This game has some of the most interesting puzzle mechanics I've ever seen. Even the basic light mechanics in the very early game interact to open up a lot of possibilities when solving puzzles. For example, you can carry aether cubes up ledges to power lamps but not lamps themselves, you can aim a light source at a target directly or through a window or doorway, and you can use a light sensor but not an aether cube to weight down buttons. Once more mechanics like the portals or time cubes are added into the mix, even crazier possibilities open up. The demo sold me on the puzzles, and the full game did not disappoint. The game also has a really interesting atmosphere. I'm not sure how to describe the worlds aesthetic, a sort of low-energy steampunk 1960 with glowey energy bits or something, but its very unique and fairly captivating. The drab, abandoned vibe of a place that hasn't seen real use in a while contrasts well with the bright colored lights of the puzzle elements. The story was intriguing enough, fit the mood, and never interrupted gameplay. It wasn't anything exceptional, but it was good enough that the small tidbits playing after you solve a puzzle generally felt like a reward. The big downside to this game is the techincal issues. Firstly, the performance was very subpar. The game generally ran at an unstable 40-60 fps, with some areas hovering closer to 25, and various sorts of stutters were common. It's not a huge deal in a puzzle game, but it wasn't particularly present. There were also a bunch of z-fighting issues, and the high quality portal rendering caused them to render on top of walls and generally look strange so I had to disable it. More importantly, I encountered a good number of bugs. It was unfortunately common for items/doors to just stop working properly, primarily when using time portals. This manifests in several ways such as doors sticking open/closed, time-entangled items that should already be released, etc. Resetting the puzzle got things back to normal in nearly every case, so it wasn't game-breaking, but it was irritating. There was one case with a spontaneously reorienting projector where that didn't help and I had to use a janky alternative solution however. The ending also had its share of issues, such as most of the achievements failing to unlock and a bonus bridge that showed I'd met the requirements but refused to unlock anyway. I worked around it by going out of bounds, because a notable portion of the walls the final two worlds can actually be climbed, allowing you to break puzzles and escape the map. This doesn't really hurt the experience per se, but it does add to the feeling of technical issues. Overall, this game is incredibly janky, but the unique atmosphere and captivating puzzles kept me hooked. It was also longer than I expected, which was nice. The difficulty was decent, with a good spread between fairly straightforward and highly complex, although I think I may have accidentally broken some of the late-game puzzles instead of properly solving them. Still, even with all its issues, I greatly enjoyed my time with this game.

There are so many clever puzzles in here! I'm 2hrs in so far, and i've only experienced a fraction of what this game has in store for me! Very excited to finish Aethernaut in order to see where the narrative takes me.

Great game with fun and challenging puzzles!

Very much inspired by talos principle with a touch of lightmatter and a sprinkling of portal, classic first person puzzle approach. If you love those games, you'll at least like this. Be wary, it's janky. Performance is bad on good hardware, especially with the portal mechanic active. Graphics are...decently styled, but feel very 1999, and a lot of graphical bugs like one-sided textures and z-fighting. There's voice acting. It's not great, but the bar has dropped on that recently with a lot of bad voicing coming out, so I would've been more annoyed in 2022 than I am now. The time-portal mechanic kinda sucks, every game that has tried that type of mechanic (including my beloved talos principle 1) has failed at it, it's best avoided. The other mechanics are good. I like the combination of TP-style gear with LM-style beam width control. Some puzzles have unused gear, implying multiple solutions are possible. So, yeah, it's got a lot of problems, but a lot of good too. You'll get your $17 worth of entertainment if you like puzzly games.

Interesting game, but has some technical issues. Functions on Steamdeck, but Unity impacts performance heavily. Takes a long time to boot every time. Menu controls are buggy, sometimes moving down several options when you expect to move once, or changing the option again before moving off of it. In game, I think I averaged around 40 FPS, depending on where I was. Very few graphics options to change. Camera control is juttery and doesn’t allow precision. The game is clearly a “narrated by the developer” game, although maybe you can argue that it fits the character. The story is interesting though. The puzzle elements are very interesting, although it might be a little unintuitive until you understand it. I got stuck in an early room where a cube was imprisoned for its crimes, until I looked up the solution and figured out that purple is more powerful than blue, and proximity is important. After that, I liked solving all the puzzles up to where things open up more. After that, I followed a pathway to a new section where there are two puzzles bolted onto each other, and a new green puzzle element. Unfortunately, I restarted in the second puzzle, and the door behind me closed. I either have to figure out or look up the solution, or stay stuck there.

portal+ light matter +talos辺りのシステムだろうか。部屋の施錠されている先にあるアイテムを取得するのが目的。六角形のノードと呼ばれるアイテムをロックされているドアに設置し、ライトを当てて解錠して行くのが基本システム。ライトを当てる装置も基本的には重りでしかなく、色がついたキューブを装着して初めてライトが点灯します。この装置とキューブの分離と付け替えが、既存のパズルゲーを参考にしつつも、特徴的なシステムに仕上がっています。全部で９４レベルまであるプレイボリュームは評価出来るが、中盤から自身の行動を記憶してリプレイさせるタイムポータルが難易度を飛躍的に上げ、同時にバグの温床と化している。 [h3] ゲーム進行を妨げる数々のバグやタイムポータルや次元転移時のバグ [/h3] 異常に重すぎる。Talos2などを60fps切らずにプレイ出来る環境でもカクつきがひどい上にパズル部屋だとfpsも20とか30が平均なのばかり。マップの作りの甘さと崖登りアクションがシーケンスブレイクを発生させやすい。パズルに関係ないマップの装飾オブジェを踏み台に高台に移動出来ちゃったり、ジャンプを連打して装置を高台に無理やり設置、崖登りで無理やりゴールに到達出来ちゃう場面もしばしば。装置を持っていると崖登り出来ない、ジャンプ力が低下するとは言え、持ってるときだけでも完全にジャンプできないシステムか、崖登り自体無かった方が良かったのでは。 それよりも緑のキューブを使ったタイムポータルや次元転移のパズルのバグが酷く、パズルを解く為に、転移先でアイテムを移動していると、いつの間にか消失する。アイテムを拾ったけど、地面に置けない。ポータルに入った途端フリーズと言った、よく発売したなレベルのバグが酷かった。 バグのせいでリトライというパターンに間違いなく遭遇すると思うが、Talosクローンゲーとして多少粗さはあるものの、この手のゲームにしてはクリアまで２０-３０時間掛かるボリュームと難しさを兼ねているので、甘い評価ではあるがサムズアップでも良いかなと思いました。

I'd describe it as a steampunk Talos Principle with some Portal inspired puzzle elements (but it adds unique twists to those). Scant tutorial but part of the fun of puzzles is figuring them out yourself. Puzzles are not too hard though I've barely started. Great graphics, though they did almost max out the GPU utilization on my 512gb Steam Deck. Voiceovers and story elements need work.

非常不错的第一人称解谜游戏，关卡数量十足，几十个小时的游玩时间，制作方诚意漫漫，就是游戏存在一些bug，导致某些谜题正常解法过不了。非常推荐

This was one of those games that was very hard to decide if I would recommend or not. The core gameplay of solving puzzles was very well done, and had some impressive ideas with the challenge increasing over time. However, towards the end game, I found myself hitting the "Complete Puzzle" button quite often because the combination of time travel plus teleportation plus alternative dimensions was way over my head, and I also found the length of the game dragging on. Note that not all puzzles need to be completed in order to finish the game. I was simply stubborn and wanted to collect every puzzle, so I can blame myself a bit for making it drag on. The story was interesting although it's delivery could use some help. I do appreciate the immense amount of voice acting that was included, even if it wasn't the best. The graphics aren't fantastic but what bothered me more was the copy paste of random assets just to fill each room. It made the areas seem cluttered and I honestly would have preferred if the rooms were clean and open. They just didn't add to the atmosphere for me. I ran into a few bugs (which was mostly me jumping out of bounds and breaking puzzles) but nothing game breaking. I did have trouble with a few of the time travel puzzles, as it would highlight objects in green meaning if you interacted with it, it would break the time loop, and certain assets would stay green even after resetting the time loop. I'm not sure if this was a bug or a failure on my part to understand how the time looping system worked, but it was part of the reason I got frustrated with certain puzzles. Music was fantastic. No notes. All in all, I enjoyed my experience even if I kind of rushed the end. Was I saying "Oh god please let it be over soon"? Maybe. But I decided to give a thumbs up because I recognize the cleverness in the puzzle design and the heart that was put into the game. I hope this might help some people on the fence about purchasing. Cheers!