Sensorium

Great concept, poor execution. This is a cute little puzzle game in which you explore 5 different types of puzzle design based on the five senses. And like any good puzzle game, you then combine them during the final phase of the game. Unfortunately, this game is bogged down by some very frustrating puzzle design choices. I have no problem with difficult puzzle games - Baba is You and Myst are two of my favorites. But the difficulty in a puzzle should come from the conceptual understanding - that 'aha' moment. If you're toiling away at a puzzle long after figuring out what you're supposed to do, then it's a poorly designed puzzle. And this game repeatedly creates difficulty through tedium and finicky execution rather than clever design. Despite studying music growing up (though admittedly out of practice) I found it quite difficult to memorize some of the 7+ note melodies which required you to combine pitch, timbre, and loudness. And there was at least one puzzle in which a valid solution is rejected because there are two different ways of inputting the same note. And one of the later puzzles required you to determine which of several sub melodies combined to create the overall melody (these melodies overlapped in timing, it wasn't just stringing sequences together). But the real kicker was an optional puzzle which required you to memorize a 34 note melody. I guess it was just an easter egg, but still an absurd one. The touch puzzles were interesting for the first few, but ultimately they were really just sokoban puzzles from a first person perspective, which is not the ideal set of controls. None of these were difficult, but the number of steps in some of them was very annoying, and a bit nauseating due to how much you have to change direction. The sight puzzles were the best designed by a mile and I have no complaints. Really the game designer should have just made an entire game based on this premise. The taste puzzles were well executed, though fairly basic. There wasn't much to think about. The smell puzzle really encapsulated the frustrating design philosophy of the game developer. Slight spoilers ahead but you basically had to solve this with pencil and paper after trudging around the entire map looking for the combinations of clues. Interesting when you figure it out, and a nightmare to actually execute. The final puzzles were a mixed bag. While some of them cleverly combined aspects of the games base puzzles, some where simply maddening. One of them requires solving a maze, but the instructions for the maze are in a different room and from a 3D perspective that makes it impossible to just take a picture. You either need a photographic memory to remember the approximately 35 step solution, or a pencil and paper and pray you didn't make a mistake. Who exactly thought this was fun? So in conclusion, this was a game with a lot of potential, hamstrung by it's creator's design philosophy. Maybe with some more polish, and some more thought about how to create real challenges rather than artificial difficulty, this could have been a masterpiece, a modern Myst. But alas, it was not.

Jogo muito bom! Sensorium tem uma premissa bem interessante: puzzles baseados nos cinco sentidos, visão, tato, olfato, paladar e audição, em um pequeno mundo aberto. Mesmo sendo curto e seus puzzles sendo fáceis, porém na medida certa, são divertidos de resolver. É um jogo sem foco em história, com uma trilha sonora simples e visuais bonitos que garante algumas boas horas de diversão. Existem alguns secrets mais complexos de descobrir, eu particularmente, não senti tanta vontade de explorar cada canto do mapa para encontrá-los. Ainda assim, a experiência valeu a pena. A forma como os puzzles foram desenvolvidos é criativa. Nem todos os sentidos foram representados de forma tão clara, mesmo assim, o conceito é bem compreensível. O ponto alto do jogo está na criatividade das mecânicas dos puzzles.

Easily worth the $10, interesting puzzles and a good variety. The only thing I didn't personally like were the audio puzzles (just didn't fancy them) and the general movespeed is sluggish considering how much navigation and backtracking there is.

Bardzo interesująca gra logiczna z pół-otwartym światem. Jestem pod wrażeniem tego, jak twórca zinterpretował trzy zmysły, których zazwyczaj nie używa się w grach - dotyk, węch oraz smak - i stworzył na tej podstawie intrygujące zagadki.

not bad puzzle game

It's a good, challenging but not-too-challenging puzzle game... except audio-based puzzles. I couldn't solve ANY :) Still, it's pretty fun and entertaining. Do recommend.

好