Quern - Undying Thoughts

This is not a good puzzle game. It starts quite strong, but over time it relies more and more not on actual puzzle solving skill (ie: working with the information you have to find a solution) but more about separating the pieces of information so that the solution is obvious, but simply a pain in the ass to construct. It will also simply give you items and expect you to remember exactly where to backtrack in order to continue, while also disallowing you from placing markers on the map (either custom or pre-made). This game is for the most part not a puzzle game, but a memorization game with the occasional block-sliding puzzle (or similar) as a garnish. Both of these together make the game simply exhausting. I'm constantly having to remember exacting minutiae of where and how things are placed, made to run all around the island over and over again, occasionally getting to "solve" a puzzle by finding all the pieces and being made to put them together in the most annoying way possible. I have two relatively easy recommendations to make this game a lot more fun 1: Let the player to draw on their map. If we're supposed to feel like people discovering a place, let us draw on our maps! 2: Allow the player to hold either a letter or their notebook in one hand while still moving around in the game world

incredible puzzle game, very fun and very difficult

Glad I finally completed this. Picked it up and bounced off it as I wasn't making enough notes. 5 Years later (and arguably more intelligent?) I made it through the first couple of puzzles and was hooked. I needed the guide on the audio puzzles, as I struggle with tone & pitch, but otherwise some great puzzles. Make lots of notes & use a pen and paper. The built in note/screenshot options are not enough for some of the symbol/shape puzzles.

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.

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.

Fantastic game, unfortunately I wasn't smart enough to figure out half the puzzles. A big thank you to Oymon for the guide here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1185776078

In [i]Quern - Undying Thoughts[/i], you play as an anonymous person who has just been mysteriously transported to a bizarre island called Quern. The island is filled with various machinery and glowing crystals that seem to be able to power things. While there, you find letters from a Professor Maythorn who explored the world before you and left his research and equipment and you also encounter a spirit of a woman who appears to be one of the native peoples of the land. With no way back home, you must work your way through the contraptions on the island if you ever hope to leave. This game is an adventure/puzzle game that appears to be heavily inspired by the [i]Myst[/i] series of games. As in a [i]Myst[/i]-style game, you must explore the area that you find yourself in and solve puzzles to progress. Because I use a non-gaming laptop, I was not able to experience the graphics that this game has to offer in their highest quality. However, for what I was able to experience, I thought that the graphics did their job well in this game. It takes inspiration from other puzzle solving games where you are stuck on a mysterious island and the graphics are suitably atmospheric. The music works well, too, and also sounds like something inspired by [i]Myst[/i]. The story overall was okay, though I did not think it was particularly outstanding. It is worth paying attention to the words of the professor and spirit as you go along to understand the background story. While this game has two different endings, neither felt very satisfying and it is really left up to the player's interpretation as to which are the good or bad ending, if either. Of course, the main reason to be playing a game like this is for the exploration and puzzle solving aspects. I enjoyed this aspect of the game for the most part. As someone who is a big fan of the [i]Myst[/i] series of games, this really reminded me of the times of playing one of those games for the first time. You are confronted by various puzzles and have to work out what the logic is behind them or collect clues in order to solve them. While some of the puzzles can be challenging, I did not think that there was any point where I found a puzzle to be unreasonably or unfairly difficult. Indeed, I was able to complete this entire game without any hints. My only criticism of the puzzles is that I felt a couple of them required some tedious backtracking even if you know what you are doing. Going back-and-forth can sometimes feel frustrating with the time needed to walk from one location to another. I took about 13 hours to complete this game which I thought was a good length of time. It never got to the point where it felt boring. It does make the regular asking price of US$24.99 a little steep. I bought this on sale for US$7.49 and I think I got my money's worth from it. Overall, I enjoyed this game. While the story is a bit on the weak side, this was made up for with engaging and challenging puzzles that were satisfying to complete. If you like adventure/puzzle games, especially those inspired by the [i]Myst[/i] series, you will probably enjoy [i]Quern - Undying Thoughts[/i].

Very nice