Quern - Undying Thoughts

Steam needs mixed reviews, as I wouldn't give this a thumbs up or a thumbs down. I will give it a Thumbs up only based on the music, the hang drum was a great touch. The Good: I really enjoyed the music and the atmosphere. I did enjoy some of the puzzles, as they made you observe pictures and be able to figure them out. The journal with photos was a great touch. The bad: Some of the puzzles felt annoying, I clearly see what I have to do, but I have to look at my journal 100 times to make sure I do it correctly. There are also parts where I thought I didn't have enough information, and I had to run around for an hour to figure out the next step, but then I got annoyed and just used a guide. Then I used the guide more than I really should have and it took away all the fun of the game itself. I am by no means a great puzzle solver, but this was a bit much for me. 5/10 I will recommend this game to someone that doesn't mind looking at a guide every once in a while, or is very good at puzzle games!

I had such a good time playing this!! I've never played one of these types of puzzle games before so it was a bit tricky at the beginning but once I got into the swing of things it was great. At first I didn't realize how important it was to remember everything you haven't done, there are a few parts where I found myself running around aimlessly clicking on stuff. Besides that, great time.

Ottimi puzzle, ottima musica, una trama che si fa seguire e un'estetica per niente male

Of the very few negative reviews, they mostly complain about some puzzles either being idiotic and unintuitive, long travel distances due to bad map design, and having to constantly keep track of like 7 ongoing puzzles at all times. These are all true. Multiple times throughout the game I had to use a guide because of just how ridiculous this game is. I will attempt to avoid major spoilers, but I will be partially spoiling 1 puzzle due to how absurdly stupid it was. I will also list bugs and other things that annoyed the hell out of me. Obviously, I did not finish the game. First is the puzzle I want to spoil. [spoiler]There is a puzzle that involves putting jars on a disc that has 6 slots. I found no way to remove old items from my inventory so at this point you would assume that the first 6 jars you find are all you need for the puzzle right? NOPE! There are 7 jars total so if you collect the first 6 and then spend 1 hour slamming your head into a wall before using a guide and realizing there's 7, you would be a very silly person! The 7th vase also just ends up clogging your inventory until the very end of the game where you can get an achievement for placing it. Many items clog up your inventory, it sucks.[/spoiler] Multiple areas in the game have horrible ambient sound effects (namely the creaking wood), which ended up making me turn off sounds completely only like 2-3 hours in. Lots of the items you get are for items on the opposite side of the map which means you have to keep a mental map of every single unopened door, locked door/chest, unfinished objects (think matches for a candle and gears for a broken clock), and other annoying gizmos. 2 times I fell back onto the guide I was using, only to find out the reason I was stuck was because I had to go back to a completed puzzle that wasn't even hinted at, which basically means I wasted 1.5 hours of my playtime looking for nothing. The puzzle that made me incredibly pissed off and made me rage quit shortly after was a type of pathing puzzle. I got the first solution on my own, attempted the second one on my own but failed. I used the guide, compared it to the clues to see if I understood how it worked, and for the 2nd puzzle you have to put in a 2nd code so I tried what I just learnt, and then after looking at the solution for this 3rd (technically 2nd V2) puzzle for over 5 minutes, I just gave up on understanding it and moved on. Even right now, this puzzle seems idiotic and unintuitive to me, and I'm still mad about it. I had it happen multiple times where I got launched incredibly high into the sky and almost got launched into areas I shouldn't have access to yet. I literally had to strafe in the air to get back into the area I was supposed to be. I have more to complain about but it would have to be said with blatant spoilers so I won't. Riven and Myst are INCREDIBLY fun and enjoyable, I would recommend playing those a million times over before this, and even then maybe play all of "The Room" games first just to stall for time. This is graphically great with good voice acting, but I genuinely think I would rather eat rocks, not a figure of speech, literally would rather eat rocks.

I like the game overall, but some of the puzzles didn't click with me, so I just used a walkthrough for those.

If you wish they still made games like Myst, good news: Quern. The plot was kinda iffy and the performance is suspect, but hoo boy this scratched my Myst itch.

It's mostly just stumble around trying to find the one puzzle that you can currently solve, write down the relevant info in one location, then use it in another. If you overlooked something, have fun searching every square inch of the map again. Save your money, there are many better puzzle games out there.

incredible puzzle game, very fun and very difficult