Rhell: Warped Worlds & Troubled Times

Rhell was of the most fun I have ever had with a puzzle game. I was laughing uncontrollably at some of the spell combinations that I tried and cheered on multiple occasions when I solved something through lateral thinking. Rhell herself is a really charming protagonist and I loved seeing the story unfold. I did also enjoy all the slapstick antics I inflicted on her. Usually unintentionally. Usually. Do not cast a magnet spell directly on Rhell without also making it a dismissable area. Especially do not do this around cannon balls. There are definitely a few secrets in the game I have still had a hard time finding, but I'm sure I'll have fun when I go back to get them (or hopefully there's a guide by now), but other than that and a few moments of "what the hell am I supposed to do next?" and a puzzle or two that I could only think of slow, tedious solutions for, it was an overall great game!

This gets my Puzzle Game of the Year, hands up, in the absolute cinema pose

Pretty good exploring puzzle game. Drops you in the world with a couple tools to get around, and leaves it up to you to find more, and to figure out what's going on and what to do about it. It does keep track of characters you met and what they told you, info about locations you've been to, and other mysteries, with clear marks when you've completed everything related to each. You can also warp back to any room you've been to, so if a room seems like you can't solve it yet, leaving and coming back later does not take a long backtrack. For replayability, it even has a quite in-depth randomiser and custom start settings you unlock after clearing the game one. For slight criticisms, I'd say: 1. Camera felt much better after going into Steam input and reversing right stick axes. Game's default is inverted (right stick up to zoom out), and in-game control config menu did not work properly when trying to reassign right stick directions. 2. The game has an option to turn off the hint NPC dialogue, which is great, but annoyingly instead of fully disabling it, the setting turns it into an OoT Navi-style attention seeking behaviour whenever she has something to say, but with a constant noise rather than a single short jingle.

The game has a unique visual style and the ability to create your own solutions to puzzles will be a goldmine for those who like to think outside the box. Well worth your time if you enjoy puzzle games

Rhell: Warped Worlds & Troubled Times foi uma das maiores surpresas que já tive e rapidamente conquistou um lugar entre os meus jogos favoritos. É um daqueles títulos que conseguem ser únicos em praticamente tudo o que fazem, entregando uma experiência extremamente criativa do começo ao fim. A direção de arte é simplesmente fantástica. A mistura de cenários em 3D com personagens e elementos em 2D cria uma identidade visual marcante, enquanto os mundos apresentam um visual belíssimo, cheio de personalidade e com um toque fantasioso que faz cada nova área parecer diferente da anterior. Explorar esse universo é um prazer constante. Mas o grande destaque é a gameplay. O sistema de magias baseado em combinar runas é brilhante, permitindo criar uma enorme variedade de feitiços para resolver os desafios. Em vez de existir apenas uma solução para cada puzzle, o jogo incentiva a criatividade e a experimentação, dando uma sensação incrível de liberdade. Descobrir novas combinações e perceber que um problema pode ser resolvido de diversas maneiras faz com que a progressão seja extremamente satisfatória. A exploração também merece muitos elogios. O mundo semiaberto recompensa a curiosidade o tempo todo, escondendo novas runas para expandir seu livro de magias, personagens interessantes, segredos e puzzles opcionais. O mais legal é que o jogo nunca força um caminho específico: você decide para onde ir, o que explorar e quando voltar a áreas antigas com novas habilidades. Isso faz com que cada jogatina seja diferente, já que a ordem em que você encontra as runas muda completamente as possibilidades disponíveis em cada momento da aventura. Rhell é um jogo que consegue unir exploração, quebra-cabeças e criatividade de uma forma que poucos conseguem. A sensação de liberdade para experimentar, descobrir e encontrar suas próprias soluções tornou essa jornada inesquecível para mim. Sem dúvida, uma das experiências mais interessantes que já joguei e um dos meus jogos favoritos de todos os tempos.

Some minor inconveniences (typos galore, repetitive music) should absolutely not keep you from giving this game a change. Seriously, this is one of the most criminally underrated, underappreciated gems of the past few years. The fact that it's the effort of a single solo dev just blows my mind. Totally recommended.

Um maravilhoso e extraordinário jogo. Realmente encantador. Jogo muito criativo, artes lindas, história interessante e as mecânicas de magia são muito divertidas. Se tornou um dos meus jogos favoritos!!

I don't think I've ever had this much fun with a puzzle game in my life! Rhell is truly something special: an open-ended, non-linear game where you navigate the world using magic runes to make custom spells, solving each problem in any way you can think of. I typically bounce off puzzle games because they often feel arbitrary and prescriptive; I'm not solving a problem so much as discovering the solution someone else set up for me. They're often limited by the constraints of what the developer thought of when creating the puzzle. What's delightful about Rhell is that while most puzzles *do* have an "intended" solution (or at least one suggested by the level design and context) most of the time you'll completely ignore it in favor of some harebrained scheme that emerges spontaneously from the game's huge pile of systemic interactions. To open two battery-powered doors with a single battery, you might use a duplication rune to clone them, create an electrically conductive portal between the two terminals, build an automaton that shifts the battery back and forth between the terminals to alternate the doors, convert a nearby prop to an electrified material and substitute it for one of the batteries, jam the doors open with something, or even just abuse the "area of effect" modifier to create a portal on the other side of the door and bypass the puzzle entirely. Not only are the puzzle rooms themselves open-ended, the world is too; each region can be accessed in several different ways and different directions, so how you might solve any given puzzle depends entirely on where you've been previously and which runes you've collected so far. You could replay the game in a different order, and have completely different solutions to most of the game's puzzles as you come up with weird workarounds to missing runes in your library. I was pretty far into the game before I found the "smoke" and "cast on self" runes, both of which are super helpful in reaching high-up locations, so I had to get clever with portals, bouncing gel, timers, and automatons to navigate the world. A different player might totally miss the "shrink" rune and resort to turning themselves into a puddle to fit through narrow cracks. Even my biggest gripe with the game - the combination of artstyle, control scheme, and camera work can make the world annoying to navigate - still does a good job of supporting the game's strengths, plastering over some of the jankier aspects, and contributing to the tone of slapstick, crackpot creativity. Fans of games with heavy systemic/emergent gameplay cannot afford to miss this one. It really lets you "play your way" unlike anything I've seen before. Brilliant, joyful, can't recommend enough.

peak metroidbrainia. collect spells (through the form of runes), use spell combos to unlock more spells, help NPCs, and save or transform the world. There's three endings and lots of collectibles to find. The map keeps track of what you've collected and your minimap will show the locations of loot in the area you're in. I loved the visuals, the character designs, the interactions between magical spells. It's peak your honor.

Очень хорошая и самобытная головоломка с прекрасным юмором и сложными загадками