Dr. Kobushi's Labyrinthine Laboratory

Для тех, кому не хватило Хеллтейкера. https://youtu.be/pHdsZOcVlJE

Pretty good little Chip's Challenge-style puzzle game by, oddly enough, a handful of folks at a small Parisian security research firm. I randomly stumbled upon this on sale a year ago and promptly forgot about it. That is, until the power went out and I needed something to play that was already loaded on my Steamdeck and didn't require an internet connection. After our power returned, I slowly made my way through it as time allowed. What you get is roughly 100 levels with a good ramp-up in difficulty and mechanics, a minimal story very blatantly in service of the puzzling (to the point they break the fourth wall on this repeatedly), and a small cast of fun characters that I genuinely liked. There's also some small Easter eggs in the dialog and musical score that I liked; for example, one of the tracks has sound samples reminiscent of Kirby that were a decent bop to puzzle to. I did have some minor red-green colorblindness issues on some of the later floor tilesets, but the undo features and fast restarts made this forgiving whenever it came up. The game isn't exactly going to surprise you: it's comfort food for puzzle nerds. But that's good enough for me, and might be good enough for you.

Why yes, i did in fact buy the game JUST because of the music made by Fearofdark, how could you tell? The game is HARD AS BALLS by the way, and the dog's name is "Falafel".

I get that some developers want to make games that look like the old classics but to be honest the game looks like crap. I am not the person who rants about how the puzzler looks BTW. There are no PC options, you can press F 10 to quit and that's all your options, you can't skip the boring monologues....nothing! zero options. I played similar games on mobile phone that look cleaner and play better than this game. No basic accessibility option of course but I have to mention this. The worst thing is that the puzzles are well designed but the other elements are not or they are completely missing. Could've been a good game. Sadly i can't recommend this game.

Love this game, puzzles are decently challenging and the music is by my favorite artist. So far it's a good play that was worth the cost

Made my Eurocrypt visit worth it, 10/10.

Awesome little throwback to the 16-bit game area. It's a true gem. Everything from the sound to the graphics brings back the nostalgia of the early console area. Puzzles are clever. And it has an undo feature which is really neat. That way you can really take back moves and ponder over your strategy. That is, unless you die. Which even then is fun since you start at the same level. I loved it !

If you want a puzzle game that really excercises your mind, then Dr.Kobushi's is for you. It really makes you think outside the box with it's turn based grid puzzles.

A charming game with a lot of care. Played for the music, stayed for the creative ideas.

the puzzles are challenging but rewarding, and the characters are very fun! not to mention how COOL the music is (im a huge fearofdark fan, so hearing his music was an amazing treat