Desktop Explorer

Wow... Just wow. This game made me feel dumb (and spooked, the horror aspect are hecking nice) in so many ways. I'm not made for thinking around so many corners. Despite my lack of frontal lobe development, Desktop Explorer took me 5-6h. Not too bad, but I missed SO MUCH AS WELL AAAAH. Please try this as well!

汉化非常非常非常棒！ 相对售价体量略小

Please make more games like this. I need more.

This is one of those games where the less you know going in, the better. I'll try to help you determine if the game is for you with minimal description of the content. The game has a length, variety of content, and consistent level of polish that is well worth the price tag compared to other games in the genre. There are some natural "chapter breaks" that make it easy to pace the game across multiple sessions. Desktop Explorer has great puzzles. The game consistently gives you fresh tools and challenges that build on each other as the game progresses. The difficulty increases at a fair pace and you are rewarded for being observant and making predictions. There are multiple puzzles that you could figure out early with partial information and clever inferences (which feels SO rewarding), or you can keep searching for clues for an easier solve. This game has a great built-in hint system. It is consistently available and it does a great job of giving a tiny, cryptic nudge in the right direction without giving the solution away. There isn't a single unfair low quality puzzle in the game that 'requires' an external walkthrough, like in many similar games. Desktop Explorer has a rich story. Some details are explicitly told and are required for solving puzzles, but there's much more story to be inferred through tone, context clues, comparing sources, and laying out timelines. The writers put a lot of detail into the storytelling. You'll be rewarded the more you pay attention, but many details aren't required for completion. If you've played other games in this "indie detective/puzzle/horror" genre, you probably have a good idea of how you expect the plot to go. I was pleasantly surprised at multiple points that the game subverted my expectations. Enjoyment of Desktop Explorer does not rely on a shallow 'twist' that the computer program is possessed or made by the devil or something. There's a deep story that has well written characters and something heartfelt to say about a strong theme. The soundtrack and art have a lot of polish. The atmosphere of the desktop is great. Check out the content warnings on the steam page if you need to. All in all, Desktop Explorer was a great experience that I highly recommend and look forward to reinstalling and revisiting in a few years.

This game was great. Challenging puzzles, but I only got really hardstuck on a puzzle a couple times, I was generally able to get a hint when I needed. Really immersive and fun experience. Please consider adding some content warnings at the start of the actual game itself; I 100% did not notice the ones in the store page and was unpleasantly surprised a couple times.

An atmospheric desktop-based puzzle game with a nice mystery story tying it all together. If you haven't yet, look up the OST on whatever music platform you use. It's fully available and absolutely stellar. Singlehandedly, it bumps this game from around a 7/10 to an 8.5/10. They utilize it excellently to really immerse you into the puzzle adventures that the game throws at you. I'm not a huge puzzle person, but this is the type of puzzle game that I love. Most of the puzzles were very creative and intuitive. Even though I used a walkthrough for a few of the puzzles, only a single late-game one had me going "Ok that still doesn't really make any sense." after looking into the solution. A retrospective tip: Pay attention to your environment. There were quite a few times where I failed to notice that the game was giving me several clues on what to do. Also, utilize your desktop's tools to their full extent! Almost every application feature is utilized at least once during the game. Pacing-wise, the first two acts of the game pull it off wonderfully. I don't really understand some of the negative reviewers disappointment with the second act. While it does it a bit differently, it still heavily utilizes desktop features for its puzzles. Guess some peeps can't be satisfied. I was quite disappointed (hehe) with the third and final act. It felt rushed in a very jarring way. [spoiler] This was especially disappointing because the third act ingeniously uses a command .dos and a point and click adventure as its medium of choice, but you get only get about 10 minutes of play within the medium before the game shifts. There's a story reason for this, but it wasn't very convincing. [/spoiler] The story itself was satisfying. There's a plot twist near the end that got me emotional. I will say that the horror elements of the game peter off pretty quick from the 1st act, which is sad because the atmospheric music and scary face scares of the 1st act really did chill me to the bone. Overall, I still do highly recommend this game. It's a bit shorter than i expected, but the experience is great. I'm excited for whatever else this developer makes in the future.

Such a great puzzle game!! I love how the hint system works. Just nudges. Never tells you the answer, you WILL need to find that for yourself. Also a great story, and such a good use of the desktop setting. I really recommend this game!!