Dimhaven - The Lost Source

[h1]A beautiful world with far too much unused potential[/h1] I finished Dimhaven with very mixed feelings. There is clearly a lot of talent behind this game. The environments are carefully built, the machinery often looks fantastic, and discovering hidden rooms inside other hidden spaces can be genuinely satisfying. I do not regret buying it. But I also came away feeling that Dimhaven repeatedly hints at a much larger, more varied adventure than the one it ultimately delivers. [h2]A world that feels larger than the playable game[/h2] This was probably my biggest disappointment. Dimhaven presents an island that looks fascinating. You can see a town, roads, bridges, large structures and other locations in the distance. The environment constantly suggests that there is much more to discover. Sometimes that impression comes from an actual locked door. Sometimes it is a gate, a path, a building or simply an area that visually looks reachable but never becomes part of the adventure. Individually, none of that is a problem. Together, however, it creates the feeling that the island is much larger in concept than it is in practice. The mansion and laboratory are well designed, and the game does a good job of layering hidden spaces on top of each other. But a surprisingly large amount of progression is concentrated into a relatively small area. That is a shame because I genuinely wanted to explore more of the island itself. The distant town, the larger structures, the bridges and the infrastructure all looked like natural places for the adventure to continue. Moving between them could also have given the puzzles much more variety and context. Instead, much of that beautiful world remains scenery. [h2]The voxel effect never worked for me[/h2] The voxel-like texture treatment is obviously an intentional visual choice. Unfortunately, to my eyes it rarely reads as an art style. It looks more like [b]textures that have not finished loading[/b]. That is particularly unfortunate because underneath the effect, Dimhaven is often a very attractive game. The architecture, lighting, machinery and environmental design can all look excellent. I repeatedly found myself wishing there were an option to disable the effect and simply see the environments more clearly. [h2]Too much electrical engineering, not enough puzzle variety[/h2] There are some clever puzzle ideas in Dimhaven. The problem is that after a while, many of them start to feel like variations of the same technical theme. Restoring power to one location is perfectly appropriate. Doing it again somewhere else can still be fun. But when you repair a power system in town, travel to another location and discover that you are effectively dealing with [b]another power system[/b], the novelty starts disappearing. There are a lot of: [list] [*]generators [*]turbines [*]fuses [*]voltage settings [*]wiring [*]switches [*]electrical control panels [/list] It almost starts to feel less like an island mystery and more like a very elaborate renewable-energy maintenance tour. The game desperately needed more puzzles that were strongly connected to the specific place you were exploring. A town could have had its own mechanical or social history. A bridge could have been a traversal puzzle. An observatory could have used astronomy. A harbor could have used tides, navigation or machinery unique to that environment. Instead, several puzzles feel as though they were designed around making another complicated machine look impressive. Some of those machines [i]are[/i] impressive. But eventually I stopped thinking [i]"interesting, what does this mechanism do?"[/i] and started thinking [i]"all right, which electrical system am I repairing this time?"[/i] [h2]The puzzles are often complicated rather than satisfying[/h2] This is connected to the same problem. Several puzzles take relatively simple relationships and wrap them in multiple layers of symbols, notes, intermediate mechanisms and backtracking. That makes them harder, but not necessarily more interesting. The best puzzle games give me an [i]"of course!"[/i] moment when the solution finally clicks. Too often in Dimhaven my reaction was closer to [i]"finally, that is done."[/i] And this creates another problem. If you get tired of fighting the puzzles and start looking up solutions online, Dimhaven actually becomes a fairly enjoyable atmospheric exploration game. You can walk through the environments, discover the hidden rooms, operate the strange machinery and enjoy the atmosphere without spending an hour decoding another electrical diagram. [b]For players who mainly enjoy walking simulators and environmental exploration, I can actually recommend playing it this way.[/b] But there is an obvious catch. Every time you leave the game to watch a YouTube video or read a walkthrough, you remove part of the experience the game is supposed to provide. And with some of the more elaborate puzzles, watching a solution means watching a significant chunk of the game itself. At some point I started wondering: [i]If I am repeatedly watching someone else solve puzzles that feel overcomplicated, unintuitive, or essentially repeated variations of the same systems, how different is this from simply watching a complete walkthrough instead of buying the game?[/i] That is a serious problem for a puzzle adventure. Looking up an occasional hint is normal. Having to regularly replace the puzzle-solving part of the game with an external guide makes the experience feel fragmented, and it greatly reduces the sense of discovery. [h2]The story never delivers on its mystery[/h2] The game spends a long time building mysteries around Zack, the Ravenstones, Vosh, the island, the masks, the laboratory and the technology hidden beneath everything. Those ingredients are interesting. I expected them to gradually converge into a strong explanation of what happened here and why. Instead, the ending introduces or emphasizes several abstract concepts very quickly, resolves the central mystery with surprisingly little dramatic weight, and then ends. I understood the basic sequence of events. I simply did not find it particularly satisfying. Even a much more conventional story would have worked for me if it had provided stronger character motivations, a clearer conflict and a more meaningful payoff for everything I had discovered. Instead, the mystery often feels more developed than the actual story behind it. [hr][/hr] [h2]There is a very good game hidden inside Dimhaven[/h2] That is ultimately what makes it frustrating. The environmental design is strong. The machinery is beautifully constructed. The mansion is memorable. The hidden areas are fun to discover. And the island looks like somewhere I genuinely wanted to explore. I just wish the game had trusted that world more. Spread the adventure across the island. Give different locations their own style of puzzle. Let those distant places become actual destinations rather than background scenery. And give the story enough room to properly explain why any of it matters. [b]I do not regret buying Dimhaven, and I can recommend it with reservations.[/b] If you mainly want atmospheric exploration, enjoy discovering elaborate environments and do not mind looking up puzzle solutions, there is definitely something worth experiencing here. If you are looking for a puzzle game where solving the puzzles themselves is the main attraction, I would be much more cautious. Dimhaven contains enough good ideas that I am glad I played it. But it feels less like a finished realization of its world and more like a glimpse of the much larger, more varied game it could have been.

I have mixed feelings regarding Dimhaven. Overall, the experience was positive, but this game doesn't quite reach the superb level that the studio (Zadbox) demonstrated in Quern. First thing I must say is that the game does give a nice challenge: the puzzles are interesting, entertaining and not too frustrating (obviously, if a puzzle is not frustrating at all, then it's not as rewarding to solve it, haha). For those seeking my opinion, I would recommend buying this if you have enjoyed Myst-like games and Quern, but if you have a choice - try Quern and Myst first. [h1]Consequences of the short-notice release[/h1] [b]TL;DR: The game is nice, but way shorter than Quern and it is easy to notice that this was unplanned.[/b] [h2]Expectations vs. real game[/h2] One thing to notice is that the trailer of the game was [i]really[/i] promising. The idea and vibe were of the Myst-like games we all love. However, even the trailer showed several puzzles that didn't make their way into the released game! E.g. take a look at the clock puzzle at 0:15, photo puzzle and "LEAVE!" message at 0:19 or some sort of corridor at 0:35. Or take the amazing view from the beacon at 0:42. Or horror-like elements at 0:48. The trailer promised a lot of beautiful and neat things that I am fairly certain even worked, but were probably cut at short release window. There's a reason I blame the release timing: the game [i]had numerous bugs[/i] right after publication. One of the funniest: look at the screenshot with a cat. It has a panel in the top: [inventory] [map] [notes] [photos]. Alas, map and notes were never available (I thought I failed to find some kind of journal, but it just ended up blocked until the very end), and a few days later a patch was released that removed these buttons altogether. The reason I write "[i]had bugs[/i]" in italic is because most of these were fixed shortly! Overall, they didn't really affect my experience, but just gave a funny notion sometimes... But it made me think that a few times I was stuck were due to a bug. [h2]Story issues[/h2] [b]HEAVY SPOILER WARNING[/b]: this section may spoil your experience in your playthrough. Skip it if you don't want spoilers. Spoilers are unmarked. You have been warned. The story in Quern was rather deep. In my playthrough, it was that I slowly came to an understanding of the titanic work that was done by (Quern spoiler) [spoiler]the Professor in order to achieve his goal and (presumably) share the realm of Quern with the world[/spoiler]. In Dimhaven, the story was more somewhat... I don't know, erratic? I'll explain what I mean in the next section. There are many areas in the game that seem to be explorable, but at some point you meet a one-way pass point without visiting. E.g., the protagonist comments on several locked doors that they are 'not gonna open without a key', yet you get no key at any point... Obvoiusly, it wasn't meant that way. Right after release, you used to receive a phone call with some spy-themed dialogue, but it turned out this line never got developed. The mere idea was amazing, because later you learn that in the realm of the game, a Secret Government exists, and this was such a promising move... But it ended up abandoned, as many other things. In the final game you only get a wordless call. Regarding the characters, first and foremost: the protagonist character is not introduced, and it is somewhat easy to skip the important story elements about who Zack is if you don't look in the album. The devs should have made a very short intro-game where you meet Zack (maybe in protagonist's childhood), communicate with him, receive some memento from him, or whatever. Other characters look similarly superficial and shallow. The hotel keeper explains nothing he says, and it basicaly soound like some gobbledygook. You can't even check into the hotel - that would have been a fun mechanic, if you ask me! The actions taken by the main friend/antagonist aren't explained either, and his decisions seem erratic and forced. For instance, why would he lie to the protagonist that he never knew Zack? Why does he neither help nor hinder the player? Why does he tell the crucial information in chunks? It never gets explained, even if you read the story carefully. The available answers of the protagonist also seem stretched and improvised, like in a bad play. Kalman Vosh also appears in an unexpected way and looks somewhat irrelevant to the story at first, while afterwards it appears that he was one of the central characters. Oscar Ravenstone is not duly introduced either. The worst part, though, is the ending sequence. When you "enter the sequence", the game unexpectedly... ends? And at the same time dumps the whole background to you which was not given earlier. Zack and Kalman Vosh turn out to be alive, Oscar disappears, while you don't really understand what exactly you have accomplished - instead, you feel as if you're a monkey that pushed some buttons. All in all, the story seems [i]quite[/i] raw and underwhelming. It is not surprising, though, when so many gameplay elements got cut from the release - the story got severely damaged as well and the devs had to adjust somehow. [h1]Puzzles[/h1] [b]Spoilers here are marked[/b]. Most of the puzzles were good, in my opinion. Some of theme were even great! Yet, some of them seem to be made up on the spot and a little bit ugly. Where to start... Well, the beginning of the game was really well-made. The puzzles in the first area seem really well-thought. They are challenging enough, and while there is some space for improvement, this is a really decent work, better than many puzzle games. What I liked the most was the visa puzzle, which was quite complex but satisfactory. The next part ([spoiler]link to the 'town'[/spoiler]) was ridiculously (and even insultingly) easy. In fact, (in my opinion) it is blatantly the worst part of the game. The terrain has invisible walls (which breaks an unspoken rule of good game-making), while the puzzle is as trivial and linear as it gets -- [spoiler]find a lantern and pass through a dark zone[/spoiler], really? Right after the release, this area was laggy as hell, and I had to switch from Ultra to Minimal settings to play further. The game even displayed a warning that I should switch graphics settings if I experience freezing. Luckily, the lags got fixed soon, but alas, the bad puzzle still persists. The [spoiler]hotel+turbine[/spoiler] puzzles are also well-made. The best part was when you had to [spoiler]walk a large circle to get on top of the elevator[/spoiler] - makes you think out of the box. The think that might possibly frustrate you (I think it is not a spoiler) is that you don't get the fifth level of power in this location - just don't try. The [spoiler]Raven's nest[/spoiler] puzzles seem decent, but become overly linear, in my view. The [spoiler]Ravenstone lab safe[/spoiler] puzzle, though, is exhaustive rather than fun (I still don't get how [spoiler]the cupboard drawers correspond to numbers[/spoiler], and I looked hard!). The [spoiler]final[/spoiler] puzzle turned out to be too simple, in my opinion, and should have been done differently. However, it's [spoiler]not as bad as the game unexpectedly ending after this...[/spoiler] [h1]Final verdict[/h1] Well, having all that said, Dimhaven is still a decent game that I enjoyed. I recommend getting it, especially if there's a discount. However, I strongly recommend Quern over Dimhaven. Buy it, especially if you like complex puzzles and do not really care about the story.

I am a puzzle game lover and really enjoyed the puzzles and exploration of this developer's prior game Quern. Dimhaven is not like Quern. The story was convoluted fantasy about a lost civilization that we never really get to see or learn much about. Instead we are herded through a house figuring out combination locks from information subtly sprinkled throughout the rooms. After working for 3 hours on a puzzle based on clicks and clanks recorded on a wax cylinder I looked at a walkthrough. The walkthrough used the "hearing impaired" option in the settings menu to reveal written onomatopoeic interpretations of the clicks and thunks to figure out the sequence of levers to manipulate. Nearly every puzzle was that level of tediousness. At that point I uninstalled the game and watched a walkthrough. Watching someone else finish it was almost as frustrating as playing it. Shallow story, bland setting, terrible puzzle feedback. Skip this and play something fun.

The puzzles start off promising but the developers seem to have confused "difficult" with "opaque". As the game progresses, many of the puzzles rely on obnoxious + tedious running back and forth, often having to click through multiple mechanisms just to traverse the estate. The final puzzle relies on a level of visual interpretation that doesn't even feel fair given there doesn't appear to be a way to independently confirm individual elements of the puzzle have been entered correctly. In a few cases, the hints were helpful, and in a few cases, they just told me what I already know but didn't actually provide a useful hint. Solving puzzles in the back half of the game went from "awesome!" to "ugh, finally, that felt forced". There were a few puzzles that relied on having to interpret and transforming information from a few different places. There is a puzzle with an 8 digit code that genuinely felt challenging and rewarding. The ability to take photos and sketch on top of them was useful when solving this puzzle, although I constantly felt that I was fighting with the sketching functionality. The interaction polish on this felt lacking - and I encountered a bug more than once where every subsequent sketch or text added to an image squished and shifted other text/sketches already drawn on the image. Speaking of, the controls on both mouse+keyboard AND controller felt strange - I could never totally get the hang of them as there are so many different modes that change what you press to do the similar things. There is probably room to improve and simplify these by quite a bit. Paging through and managing the photos is also very tedious. Giving the player character a choice of dialogue felt a bit pointless - the character brings the same incredulous attitude to nearly very interaction. I lost interest in picking dialogue options quickly and would've preferred either greater variety of dialogue - even if the choices don't really matter - just to feel like I could put myself in their shoes. Barring that, simple cutscenes without dialogue choices would've been better. It became clear after the first set of puzzles that generally you would not go back to previous areas at all. This is fine, but the game kept teasing areas or interactions that were pointless and never explored. There were a few doors and directions throughout the game where I wondered "oh, what's in there? I bet it'll fit into the puzzle as we go", and then it never did. Seems like they were maybe trying to find a middle ground between "everything can be interacted with" and "only the things that matter can be interacted with" to give it some challenge - which I respect... But this particular execution left me disappointed I couldn't explore further.

**Recommended — but with serious reservations.** Dimhaven has a strong atmosphere, an intriguing world and enough good ideas to make it worth playing, especially for fans of Quern and classic first-person puzzle adventures. I genuinely want to support developers who still make games like this. That said, the game often seems determined to make things harder in ways that are not particularly clever. First, I really dislike the pixelated visual style. I honestly do not understand why this artistic choice was made. The environments and atmosphere would benefit enormously from a cleaner image, but instead everything is covered by an artificial low-resolution effect that frequently makes the game uglier and harder to read. Several puzzles are also unnecessarily cumbersome or forced. Difficulty is fine; obscurity is not. Too often, the challenge comes from unclear visual communication, arbitrary ordering, or trying to understand what the designer expects rather than solving a satisfying logical problem. The Valaton Sequence near the end is the clearest example. The basic concept is not terrible, but the execution is frustrating: matching approximate values, understanding which number belongs where, and determining the intended order are all poorly communicated. It feels less like solving a puzzle and more like reverse-engineering the developer’s assumptions. So yes, I recommend it—but not without hesitation. There is a good game here, with real atmosphere and ambition, buried under some questionable visual choices and puzzle design that occasionally mistakes confusion for intelligence.

I really wanted to love this game. Puzzle adventure is my favorite genre and Quern was one of the best modern iterations on the Myst formula. Unfortunately the puzzle design in this game may be one of the most frustrating I have ever experienced. Many of them have clever base ideas but the clues and solutions are seriously lacking in creativity and come down to you staring at a sheet of paper you find somewhere nearby. If you don’t understand the clue you are effectively stuck as the game progresses linearly. I had several instances of fully understanding the puzzle, the clue, what the solution is but the game would not accept my answer because the dev’s logic was too open ended. As in, they assume you will understand some of the leaps that make sense to them but perhaps we’re not tested with a wide enough player base to make sure it doesn’t ONLY make sense to them. And because no puzzles have much feedback when inputting answers (this is fine for difficulty sake) I was often left feeling irritated instead of stumped. In short, I would not recommend this game even to others that like this genre.

[i][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/35145066/] My review page.[/url][/i] [i][url=https://www.twitch.tv/nightserg] Follow me on twitch![/url][/i] [h1]The gist of it:[/h1] Sadly, I have super mixed feelings about this game, and it kinda sucks to give it a thumbs down. It's not a bad game, thumbs down doesn't really mean that. It's just hard to recommend it even to hardcore puzzle fans. The problem with the game is how different it feels in almost everything when you arrive in the first area compared to everything else after it. It's like the first part was made by a sane genius and the later parts by an insane madman, and sadly, it's not just puzzles-wise. 👍 [u]The good parts:[/u] +Fantastic atmosphere in the first hours +Great and logical puzzles in the first hours 👎[u]The bad parts:[/u] -Horrible or too simplistic logic later in the game -The main story was super underwhelming [h1]Story[/h1] I don't even know what to say here, it's so short that even one simple description can spoil it. It was below average in terms of engagement. It starts off really well, you notice tiny amounts of story in the level design, and it all feels super mysterious. After you reach mid-game and until the end, the story bits in the level design are entirely gone, and it's all just random nonsense, even the puzzle where you have to figure out who was at the table felt...pointless in the long run, besides the fact that it was idiotic and out of place, but more on that later. Like, ok, my uncle loves video games and met with some people, but why? Where are they? There's no proper connection to the events. Then the game ends with...some sci-fi bs that came out of someone's ass. It was insanely meh. Do not buy this game for its story. Story rating: 6/10 [h1]Gameplay[/h1] I think this game was a massive bait. The demo area was the best place in the game, which is in the first few hours. It had some well-thought-out (despite me failing some obvious things), well-connected, and logical environmental puzzles. Then comes the rest of the game, and its puzzles completely take a massive nosedive in logic and simplicity. Some of them are so easy that you may get stuck wondering if there's something you're missing when, in fact, no, they're just boringly simple, but made to waste your time. Then comes the absolutely insane logic that not even the hint system can help. It could have multiple ways of logic, and you just have to guess which one the developers picked. You may guess it from the get-go, or spend an eternity. To make matters worse, the last puzzle has a symbol matching aspect where you match two displays based on double digits, for example, the oval shape is 6.2 HOWEVER and this is the biggest fail ever, there is absolutely no visual difference between 6.2 and 6.3 or 6.1 or whatever, so you go on a guessing game. Normally, stupid puzzles come with the territory of playing a puzzle game, it's to be expected, however there's very few of them in the game, no side ones, barely any exploration, and none of them are ever fun. Gameplay rating: 6/10 [h1]Audio[/h1] Decent voice acting, decent music, and decent overall sound design. Not much I can say about it here. I was really hoping the music would at least be awesome, since the genre is famous for having really nice chilling songs, but nah. Audio rating: 7/10 [h1]Graphics, performance and tech analysis[/h1] When I played the demo, I was put off by the pixelated textures, and after finishing the game, I still did not like it. It was a bad decision, and the game's atmosphere suffered for it. Level design was fine the first few hours, and then it's just super linear, but in an annoying way. At least it runs super well and has no bugs or issues whatsoever. Graphics, performance, and tech analysis score: 7/10 [h1]Conclusion[/h1] Honestly, this felt like a 10 bucks experience you'd buy from some random indie developer, not from the makers of Quern. You won't miss anything skipping this one, however, if you want to support a dying genre that some of us still love, then do please buy the game. [h1]Final score: 6.5/10[/h1]

Compared to their previous release, Quern, this one just doesn't feel like a high quality puzzle game like that one did. My top guess is that their publisher rushed them to put this out, resulting in half the game being cut, but there are many obvious areas where there seems like there should be more gameplay (including parts that were in the demo that are now just completely missing), but there just... isn't. On top of that, there are some extremely un-intuitive puzzles in places that will probably leave even the most veteran puzzlers eventually looking up a hint or the answer. Overall, as a game I was hotly anticipating, this was sadly a pretty big disappointment.

Да, но с оговорками. Во-первых игра гораздо меньше, чем может показаться изначально. Во-вторых финал просто скомканный и какой-то глупенький. Ощущение что разработчики делали огромную концепцию лора и мира, а потом у них закончились деньги и они такие - ну короче давайте, заканчиваем. Что до головоломок они поначалу крутые, а потом всё сводится к зубодробительной сложности, если бы не друзья-приятели, которые со мной сидели и давали советы, хрен бы я до чего доагадался (но, возможно я тупой, а вы умнее, так тоже бывает). В любом случае - это скорее смешанный отзыв. Крутая игра. Но лучше по скидке.