Obduction

I come from a family of puzzle adventure game junkies, I've played every Myst game, as well as puzzle adventure games from other studios like Quern, Ether One, and Manifold Garden; Obduction was an interesting one for me. While the world design was excellent, and it felt like people actually lived there at some point (I love that hidden bar). The puzzles themselves suffered. They felt way watered down compared to Cyan World's other works such as Riven and even Uru CC/Uru Live. You might utilize the swapping mechanics to unlock different areas occasionally (one of my favorite mechanics in this game), but outside of that it was back to "Oh hey there's a number system which I need to learn to get part of a code for a door with a keypad" and less interacting naturally with the environment (Like in Riven, Uru Live and even Myst 4) to discover clues to an eventual puzzle. Here the number system felt like a box check, more than something artfully added to the game world like in Riven. But by far the worst part of the game is the maze, yes I would take a million Riven waffle makers (the final major puzzle in the large golden dome) over that stinking maze. It's jarring, considering the pattern established for that world, uses backtracking to bloat game time and is effectively the only major puzzle in that world. Over all, this is one of those games that I wish I could give a neutral review to. On the technical side the game is executed well, performance is fine sans loading screens (but that was more of an issue when the game released {or if you still put the game on an HDD}, it's fine on modern SSDs). It's also still enjoyable despite the flaws.