[b]5/10[/b]
An artistic game showcasing the beautiful art from an old illuminated manuscript, heavy on the artistic and light on the game.
[b]What is it:[/b] A short puzzle game based on the illustrations from a 16th Century book. The framing is that you’re helping a little girl finish her book by putting back together the illustrations.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3303271652
It consists of four chapters, each with a few levels. The first one is a block puzzle, you have to arrange buildings of different shapes inside the cities. The second one is a pipe puzzle, you have to rotate tiles with rivers or roads to make a continuous path from one edge to another. The third one is a jigsaw puzzle, you have to assemble buildings from cut up pieces. And the fourth one is again a block puzzle, but with more pieces than in the first chapter.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3303271712
The art is beautiful, but that is copied from (or at least heavily inspired by) the book. The puzzles are very easy, and not very well implemented. The block puzzles are trivial because you are given a lot of 1x1 blocks that help you fill in any gaps you may have left around the other larger pieces. The pipes are also trivial because you don’t even have to solve the whole grid, just the path of the river/road, and you can just start from one edge and rotate one piece until it connects the previous and the next tiles. And when it might be ambiguous, you’re given even more help in the form of trees, fences, or just lines hinting how tiles must be oriented. The jigsaws are both easy and frustrating at the same time. Easy because you have a few pieces, usually between 10 and 20. Frustrating because the cuts are straight, a bunch of rectangles and triangles, often along the natural lines of a building, e.g. different floors are different pieces, and with no target image, you have to guess which floor is at the bottom and which is on top. It’s not as much joining pieces by how they fit, but trying to guess how the building might look, and try to bring pieces together hoping they would snap.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3303288968
Some other bugs make it even less pleasant to play. Clicks are often not detected. It doesn't fit properly on all aspect ratios, for example on the Steam Deck the menu button is partially hidden in some levels and completely missing in others. Progress is always lost when restarting the game.
This was a good idea, but the very basic and buggy implementation makes it an unpleasant experience. Only get it if you really want to look at the illustrations and can’t find/don’t want to buy the original book.
[b]How hard is it:[/b] Trivial to easy.
[b]How long is it:[/b] 4 chapters, each with a few levels, an hour or less of playtime. Must be done in order.
[b]Level design:[/b] The layout/art of the levels are taken from illustrations of real villages and buildings, with Arabic designs, so they're as good as in real life. But as game levels, they're quite bad.
[b]Quality:[/b] Beautiful art, but the original author of the book, and the original architects and builders of the cities deserve most of the praise. Everything else is very basic. Multiple save slots in theory, but progress is always lost when closing the game. Mouse only controls. No settings at all. No exit button. No cloud saving, no achievements.
[b]Worth the price:[/b] No.
[b]Most positive aspect for me:[/b] I’ll say beautiful art just to avoid saying “nothing at all”.
[b]Most negative aspect for me:[/b] Too easy.
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