Orten Was The Case

DO YOU ENJOY GOOD THINGS? MAJORAS MASK? OUTER WILDS? KNOWLEDGE BASED PROGRESSION?

If you enjoyed Outer Wilds, this game is for you. Don't look up anything. Just play it. 10/10.

abow bre, guzzen har ♥♥♥ stor göt, vill bazza henne, men hon vill bara ha min para, vilken chagga yani.

Initially, it will have the vibe of being a beginner Unity programmer’s first game, which it is, and starts off seeming very very cheap, but… It’s incredibly complex and well-layered as a curiosity-driven mystery with several characters’ schedules all interplaying with one another that is interesting enough to keep me hooked despite the cons. Very reminiscent of Majora’s Mask, complete with a timeline for each character that you fill out as you witness what each character is doing when, including branch-offs based on your influences. In terms of cons, it’s hard to tell where ledges are sometimes because of the art style but there’s checkpoints for the sections where that matters and fall damage is pretty dang forgiving. On Steam Deck it can occasionally crash but only after it saves your data at the end of a run so it’s not ruining the experience. *TLDR*: In short, this game outweighs its occasionally clunky cons with its interesting complexity and it gets much less cheap-feeling over time, but it does occasionally have another quirky cheaply-made moment every now and then. I think I’d recommend it when on sale if you’re ever in the mood for an intricate interesting time loop puzzle. I’m hooked trying to figure it all out.

This time-loop mystery is an artwork of a Swedish suburb come alive. 10/10 would loop again—gladly lost (in) time within Orten! Best free-movement Point-And-Click game ever.

Very fun execution of a time loop game. There's a couple poorly clued bits but for the most part it's very well designed. My biggest critique is the jankiness of movement on flat backgrounds, but the art style is kind of required for the types of secrets the game hides. Very clever game on the whole!

I went into this knowing only that it involved time travel. What a delightful little surprise this was! This game checked all my boxes: time loops, knowledge gates for progression, a compelling mystery, and puzzles that are challenging but fair. The art style very quickly won me over; it's surprisingly detailed, with a unique charm. And--I just found out this was made by a solo dev! Really impressive work, I had a lot of fun with it.

This is such a beautiful game. I don't even know where to start. I almost tear up just writing this. It is so beautiful...

This is more of a neutral than a dislike but its closer to not recommend than recommend If you are looking at reviews for this you probably already have played Outer Wilds and are looking for similar games. This is very similar to outer wilds from a gameplay framework but worse in pretty much every way. The game uses quests to tell you what to do in loops, and initially I liked this but the longer it went on the more I realized it was killing the agency of a timeloop game which is kind of the point. Very rarely were there times where I stumbled upon what to do, and worse the one time I really sequence broke I was sure I did everything exactly right only for absolutely nothing to happen despite assurances from npcs I did everything right which was monumentally disappointing. After following the previous quest a new one popped up that listed every single step I already did, with a few more added, in painstaking detail robbing me of feeling like I figured something out. The other way its worse is the story itself. It is weird and obtuse but it didn't feel like at the end of the game I understood it any more than at the beginning. Confusingly there are quests that contradict each other in terms of the overall goals of the game. In one loop you are asked to kill someone that in another you are asked to help escape. It works from a gameplay perspective to see different results but from a narrative its extremely confusing. Except for a few instances it feels like you are just kind of doing things for no real reason. I get why people like this game because it definitely has some interesting aspects, but it got to the point where I just went "Hell, I'm just going to watch the other endings on youtube rather than try to follow a paint by numbers guide of what to do"

Time loop and knowledge based progression game, similar to Outer Wilds or the lesser known The Sexy Brutale. It's probably closer to Sexy Brutale than Outer Wilds, as it is less about exploration and more about uncovering what each person is up to and how to resolve their situations. While it is very guided since you always have a clear objective to work on, you're still free to find stuff out of order or ahead of time, although in my case that led to some situations where i had to redo parts i already did for the quest to properly count, since i uncovered the quest after i had already been to places i wasn't really supposed to be in yet. Although after all the quests are more of a guidance tool than a definite checklist you have to complete in order to progress. The game is very whacky and the art style did put me off at first, but i've grown quite fond of it after a while. The controls or rather how janky your character moves through the world, especially in platforming sections, are honestly not good, but with a controller i found it to be manageable. It can lead to some frustrations in the final sequence, as it is quite tight on time. Overall it was very fun and intriguing to discover how all the separate parts and plot points fit together and what was happening. I really enjoyed picking a person to follow around for a loop and discovering what they were up to as well as discovering areas ahead of time and not being able to completely make sense of what i was seeing yet. I would recommend this to anyone who has played and liked any of the two games i mentioned or is a fan of time loop and knowledge based progression puzzle/mystery games.