This is a re-review after having 100% completed the game. My opinion hasn’t changed, but I have more to say. My playtime has all been on steam deck and it runs perfectly with it.
This game is a real hidden gem. It mixes puzzling elements with reactive gameplay well, and it manages to avoid frustration most of the time. There are a few levels that are more focused on the dodging gameplay, but they are few and far between and in my opinion don’t detract from the puzzle elements at all.
The visuals aren’t anything to write home about, but they do a good job at expressing what is happening at a glance. There is one enemy late game that relies on visual obstruction, but it never requires you to memorize long sequences of actions while blind.
The enemy variety is amazing. There are a total of 20 different enemies and they all behave DRASTICALLY different. The only thing I would want differently is for them to mix with each other more. No level has more than two enemy types, and different colors of enemies never mix which I found disappointing. However the dev did say they were working on this in a future update.
The level fail condition is running out of time, and on the default difficulty, getting hit by an enemy doesn’t instantly fail the level, but gives you a “half-complete” level after it’s over. I played on the difficulty that makes getting hit an instant death, and it feels like it’s the intended way to play.
The story is… well… here. After clearing a level, you get a couple paragraphs of text to read. For most levels, this is lore. It does a great job of world building, but I found it difficult to follow the specific stories of the hacker(s). The fact that I can’t tell how many there are probably goes to show how little I understand. The levels that introduce new enemy types have special entries that give background details on each one. Those were my favorite to read
Lastly, I would like to talk about this games difficulty curve. You can use an assist feature to skip levels, but if you don’t, every single level is required to beat the game. And if you are a gamer with lots of pride (like me) you can hit a brick wall and be too stubborn to skip.
The first couple of levels do a good job at explaining the game’s main mechanics. After that however, the game goes into a cycle of introducing a wave of new enemies across each megacorp and giving 3-5 new levels for each. The last of which is considerably harder than the rest, usually featuring 2 enemy types instead of one and being a lot tighter in movement. The first time I got stuck was on levels 313, 411, and 511. This is a huge difficulty spike. I did finish these levels eventually, but It never felt like I found the “correct” solution. After these however, with the introduction of new enemies, the difficulty drops to be the about the same as the tutorial for a couple of levels until you get back to the end-of-section difficulty spikes.
The end of the game is also disappointing, the last two levels of each megacorp combine two sentinels, but I found these levels to be weird with difficulty. Most of them feel like they should have been much earlier. They are complex, but they don’t pose as much of a completion challenge as the three levels I mentioned that come much earlier in the game. Level 525 however definitely stands out as being much harder, and is the good example of a final level.
The very final level of the game is 125, and it is so wierd. It features one sentinel type, one color, and none of the special tile mechanics aside from doors. It isn’t that hard either. Most segments can be easily accessed, and the one difficult part could be brute forced on the fly. I definitely feel like this level would have been way better super early into the green section, and it should be replaced with a more fitting and climactic final level.
Overall, I do recommend this game. I know most puzzle players don’t like reactive gameplay, but if you do, this is a great example. There are some problems with difficulty, but if you can get over the hurdles mentioned earlier, you can probably beat the whole game and enjoy it while doing so.
