SPIN Protocol

Difficulty : 1.5/5 (Easy) Global : 1.5/5 (Decent) Curator page : [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44695991-Anokturnus/]Anokturnus[/url] SPIN Protocol is a puzzle game about rotating nodes to redirect colored signals. Each puzzle has signal sources and receptors of different colors, the goal is to activate every receptor while avoiding triggering security. I love laser/light puzzles and this game is very similar to them, it just uses nodes as a way to redirect instead of playing with light reflection. The game overall is pretty easy, though it gets harder and better when color mixing and complex nodes/branching appear. The major problem of SPIN Protocol is the wrong focus in the puzzle design. It's one of those games in which the challenge doesn't lie in completing the level, but in doing it in a limited amount of steps (in this case, rotations) and time. Except perhaps for randomly generated puzzles, timers in puzzle games are never fun and always completely irrelevant. It's just immediate memory and there's nothing interesting in that, it's annoying to replay the levels for nothing. The step counter however isn't always a bad idea. But there's another major problem... there's no undo button. Any error means you need to reset and that's extremely frustrating. You can't ask people to optimize levels without the necessary basic quality of life, that's called artificial difficulty. It also clashes with the few actually challenging levels that require a high number of minimum rotations (like 120). They are already tricky to solve, I don't think anyone wants to optimize that, much less without an undo button. Even though some mechanics were used in surprising ways near the end, there was more to do with them. When two different colored signals enter the same node, none of them can exit. Why is this only used once in one of the last levels? It's just an example but there's so much you can do with that, it was a very good eureka moment and could've introduced an entire chapter about it. Anyway, SPIN Protocol isn't a bad game. It's just flawed like every small game and probably lacked playtesting and true feedback, but the puzzles are still largely fine. [quote]For more puzzle game reviews, news and everything puzzle-related, follow [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/25928931-Puzzle-Lovers/]Puzzle Lovers[/url] and check out our [url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/puzzlelovers]Steam group[/url].[/quote]

Ignore the daft twit who gave this game a negative review for it's UI. SPIN Protocol gives you exactly what it shows, and if you don't like it then don't ruddy get it lol! Personally, it scratches a very niche but satisfying itch similar to games like Unloop and Hook, and I absolutely love it! I highly recommend getting it, especially because of it's cheap price! Look forward to any future DLC or games from the Spartano lads!

While I'm not much of a puzzle gamer, this is a delightful little game! The polish of the visual presentation, from the clear puzzle design to the UI to the effect work, is really clean and marries nicely with the sound design, which is pretty satisfying. I really like the music and hope the devs can afford to add a few more songs in the future! I'm only up to the third set of puzzles, but insofar it's felt like just the right amount of challenge and given information to feel like solutions are always up to me, rather than a lack of direction (pun not intended). Looking forward to sneaking more sessions in during my downtime! Cheers devs, this is fun!

game play is okay. visuals suck. what is the obsesion with crt. it doesn't make game better. what more they make it a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ crt. igrew up using crts. mine were never that bad. if for some unknown reason you want to make your game look like ♥♥♥♥ please add an option to turn that off for everyone else

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