[u]In short:[/u] Simple Dot is an innovative physics-driven puzzle game where you have to guide falling balls by drawing lines with various properties. The gameplay core is rock solid and pretty fun to experiment with, but as a one-developer-project Simple Dot is a little rough around the edges (notably in the UI department). I was surprised how much I like the soundtrack. The game seems fairly underrated to me and for roughly 5 hours of gameplay it is also incredibly cheap. A very easy recommendation for puzzle lovers looking for a breath of fresh air and don't mind a little clunkiness.
[u]In long:[/u] Each of the 73 levels is a self-contained maze with a spawner, a goal and lots of obstacles in between. The spawner constantly spits out a series of balls that fall into the void, die on spikes or end up getting stuck somewhere. [b][u]Gameplay[/u][/b] now consists in drawing lines with your mouse, which creates new platforms. The basic version helps move dots by making inclines or floors above spikes. Later bounce pads, repulsive lines, rotors and attractors join the fray, giving you lots of tools and even ways to counteract gravity. Levels also get more creative with windmills, accelerators, portals, switches and moving platforms. While the basic aim is to drop a few balls into the goal, there are some puzzle aspects to it. First there is an element of highscoring. Every level you get a pool of 5000 points which is the total length of lines available to you. The shorter your solution, the better your score on the leaderboard, which rewards clever ideas and precise placements. Secondly the amount of lines you can use is technically infinite, but you have target numbers. If you can beat the level within these specs (eg 2 regular lines, 1 bounce pad and 1 rotor) you are awarded with stars (and achievements). This taps more into planning and getting the most out of available resources (eg using 1 long line instead of 2 tiny ones, so solutions can be quite different from high-scoring ones). Levels are usually open-ended sandboxes and more often than not feature multiple paths to the goal. The difficulty was fairly casual, but there are some tough nuts to crack here and there (especially in the bonus levels at the end). Not every level is pure gold, but there was only a small handful of levels I didn't enjoy.
The [b][u]UI[/u][/b] is one of the big shortcomings of the game. It's fairly clunky. Icons are non-descript, hotkeys that are sometimes weird and can only be rebound in the loader. There is no in-game menu. If you are in a level you can only quit to the main menu and access settings or level select from there, which is fairly cumbersome. Solutions are never saved, meaning you cannot run old levels or improve upon designs. There is an undo feature (good!), but unfortunately it is the only way to delete lines (bad!). So you better make sure every line you place is perfect, because going back to adjust one means deleting everything you've created since. The only slight mitigation is an undocumented feature that allows you to rotate any line with RMB. But if you want to change length or postion you have to undo and start from scratch.
The [b][u]presentation[/u][/b] is a bit of a mixed bag but surprisingly good. I kinda like the clean minimalist aesthetic of the levels. But the UI doesn't really fit and is fairly ugly and out of place (classic developer art). I was very surprised by the quality of the soundtrack. There are 10 different tracks and they all have something going for them. I usually mute the music on games within the first hour, especially on puzzle games, but here I ended up enjoying it.
On the [b][u]technical side[/u][/b] the basics are covered. The classic Unity loader allows you to pick the visual settings (including windowed mode). The ingame menu has separate audio sliders. There were some bugs and oddities, but most were resolved within a week of me reporting them (excellent support!). As far as I can tell the physics are perfectly deterministic. The only quirk is that sometimes balls can phase through platforms if they are squeezed hard enough, but it's a rare and inconsequential thing.
In [b][u]conclusion[/u][/b] this strikes me as an underappreciated gem in the rough. The concept is great, the execution solid. Don't expect much polish, but it's a fun game based on a fairly novel idea. I was skeptical at first (the store video doesn't really do the game justice), but it's pretty good and fairly well supported. I would say it's easily worth bying at full price.
