Dimhaven - The Lost Source

Not a masterpiece, but still great. I did not like the final puzzle where I did not see any logic in the solution, but it was otherwise a great experience. Did not live up to the high bar set by Quern, but I would still recommend it to fans of that game and similar myst-like entries in the same genre.

Schönes Rätselspiel, aber zu kurz für den Preis. Die meisten Rätsel sind schlüssig und logisch, lediglich zwei Rätsel haben mir Schwierigkeiten bereitet, da sie nichts mit Logik zu tun hatten, [spoiler]beide Rätsel mit den Wachszylindern bzw. das genaue Einstellen der Frequenzen[/spoiler]. Das Spiel hat zudem einen sehr gewöhnungsbedürftigen Look, die detaillierte Modellierung und die 8-Bit Pixel-Grafik der Texturen passen für mich nicht so ganz zusammen, das tut aber dem Spielspaß beim Rätseln keinen Abbruch. Ein paar kleinere Bugs gab es auch, aber nichts das die Spielbarkeit beeinflusst. Schade, dass im Vergleich zu (vor allem älteren) Trailern offensichtlich einiges an Content für die finale Version gestrichen wurde. Alles in allem spreche ich eine vorsichtige Empfehlung aus. Da es aber nur zwei Nachmittage füllt, würde ich bei dem stolzen Preis empfehlen, auf einen Sale zu warten.

Many interesting puzzles. A rather weird and circumvented story... but many great mechanics. If you love the genre, you'll probably enjoy that one too!

Jeu bourré d'énigme fun mais parfois les aides sont pas très indicatif

I can definitely recommend the game, but admittedly it falls very short of Quern and the other greats of the genre. There are so few games in this genre that it's kind of a no-brainer to pick this up, but I do hope the devs can take the valuable feedback in the other critical reviews here to heart and yeah, hopefully pop off with something truly spectacular in the future. The gameplay here is so buttery smooth and fluid, it just "feels" so good to play. The world feels palpable with tons of interactables and appropriate animations. Hits - Puzzles: Most of the puzzles are fun and somewhat challenging and a lot of these puzzles are actually intuitive, which is nice. Tools: You're given a lot of note-taking tools to help you along the way, it's really cool to be able to draw colored notes on photos that you take. Misses - Puzzles: Unfortunately, there is one particular immersion-breaking puzzle in a completely different style than the other puzzles, and it makes absolutely zero sense - the game literally locks you into it by surprise in the middle of exploring and you can't do anything but look up a guide on how to solve it (or you just brute force your way through it with a hundred guesses). I'd wager not a single person actually solved this puzzle legitimately, which is really sad. I'm also sure a good portion of players rage quit at this point as well because getting locked inside such a weird gimmick for no reason whatsoever makes zero sense (it's not a physical lock, the game devs trap you inside invisible walls and force you to perform weird interactions and solve a puzzle with zero context clues). Tools: Unfortunately, the "journal" just becomes obnoxious after a few hours, after capturing 15 pages of notes, it never seems to open anywhere near where you want it to. It usually opens at the beginning and you have to tediously flip through all the pages to get to your most recent notes, so it's just easier to use a real notebook in real life for most of the puzzles... despite some of them greatly benefitting from the in-game sketching tools. Story: Yeah, it's just terrible. It's cliche and plays on common themes. The characters are forgettable. The place is super interesting as you fly in during the opening and there are a few comedy elements, but once you leave the starter area, everything goes downhill. Nothing really feels fully fleshed out. There's only a very small amount of lore to discover, which allude to only a couple of interesting things, like villagers hallucinating and solar eclipses, but we never see anything like this happen or play out. There's a bunch of posters in the starter area and it has a ton of environmental detail which makes it feel real, but the rest of the game is borderline empty, and empty of the comedy elements too. It feels like the devs spent 75% of their time and effort on the beginning area and 25% on the rest of the game, and unfortunately the starter area is 15-20% of the time you spend in the game. All in all, I enjoyed it due to the interesting, intuitive, and somewhat challenging puzzles. There's around 10 hrs of content. It's short, sweet, but unfortunately pretty forgettable. I really hope they patch out the few moments that made me want to rage quit (for real), so that future players don't have that experience.

Das Setting ist wirklich sehr schön. Sehr mysthisches und schweres Spiel. Auch die Rätsel sind schwierig. Man wird wahrscheinlich irgendwann Hilfe brauchen.

What an extraordinary game! Experiences like that are always too short! I loved the complexity of the puzzles, there was always a logical solution. But I'm sad there are still closed areas, like the metallic door in the kitchen. It's also frustrating that you can't go back after some checkpoints, so the photo challenge is not completable unless you think about it every second of the game.

All in all, a very pleasant way to pass most of an afternoon. The puzzles are very clever and the world is visually lovely and enjoyable to explore. The actual *story* has some pacing and logic issues, and it does at times feel like the writing is working in two very different registers that are constantly at war with each other. Think less Uncharted and more, uh... the last Indiana Jones movie (was it *actually* called "The Dial of Destiny?" oof). I give it a B+.

AMAZING! I haven't felt this way since Myst (and Riven) when I was a kid. Please, please, make more games!

If you like the genre you're aware there are very few good releases. This is one of them. I still like Quern more, but had a lot of fun with this one still. About the puzzles, there are one or two annoying puzzles, and there is a bunch of "meh" ones. But the rest ranges from good to great. Would buy the next game from Zadbox eyes closed.