[b]imbroglio[/b] is your garden variety 3d sokoban with stylish presentation, pleasant music and a few less traditional mechanics. there are [b]7 big levels (worlds) with multiple puzzles each[/b], adding up to about 40, with the goal of grabbing keys by pushing special blocks onto pressure plates to open gates.
puzzles are connected by paths and can usually be done in any order within a location, so puzzle select, as tedious as it is, is a thing, but [b]already finished areas can't be replayed[/b], start over from the very beginning, sucker. the only progress indicator is the number of remaining keys in the current place, no level numbers anywhere.
[b]pushing and pulling[/b] are both possible, supposedly making things less stressful and tedious, but worry not, there's plenty of both on offer. movement speed is surprisingly fast but [b]controls are way too sensitive, to the point of being frustrating[/b]. initially not so much, but world 3 introduces climbable boxes and falling to your death from higher places, and world 4 adds lethal traps. [b]undo is available and works from a fail state[/b] but it's still not a pleasant experience. later on there are falling blocks and ones that push up whatever is put on them.
[b]non-rebindable keyboard and gamepad movement with alternatives[/b] (wasd and arrows), mouse works in the menus. hold space to grab, 'z' is undo, 'q' and 'e' rotate the camera in certain situations, 'r' is reset. unfortunately, [b]rotating the view often doesn't help much[/b] and the incessant sandstorm in world 5 hinders visibility even more.
what's worse, [b]reset can scrap the previous puzzle if you're not careful[/b] and it completely resets the final world every time. before that, instead of putting you back to the beginning of the current area, [b]it drops you at the end of the previous puzzle, gotta go all the way back to the one just restarted[/b]. this is why a basic level select screen is absolutely necessary. some pre-release playtesting also helps, or at the very least post-release patching up, none of which applied here, outside of a few minor fixes.
settings, available while playing because there's no main menu either, are windowed mode and resolutions, only a single volume slider, brightness, languages, v-sync, fxaa and screen space reflection toggles. [b]credits are unskippable[/b], once clicked, gotta sit through the whole thing. another gripe is esc not closing the pause menu, only brings it up. and while there's very little text, only the menu and brief tutorial pop-ups, they still managed to include at least one typo.
it would be okay overall, a bit on the short side (probably around 4 hours, I gave up around halfway), but [b]without level select and potential progress loss and other annoyances due to problematic controls, it's not something to recommend[/b].
