Thistlemine

Overall an awesome experience I had playing this game. Thistlemine certainly is different from your traditional puzzle game, and mixing it with a turn-based combat system led to a game I enjoyed playing a lot, and still do. Originally offered this game to a friend, I decided to try it myself, to no regret. I highly recommend playing it if you're up to the challenge, struggling to find a way through the exclusion zone and its many dangers was awesome, and I'm still having a lot of fun trying to get the achievements and other content.

Either the description of this game gave the wrong impression or the first 30 minutes does, because I was expecting puzzles like "find these items", "figure out who needs what", "navigate mazes using hints and context clues", etc. and not "understand the entire battle system through item and skill descriptions to figure out one of a very few number of ways to escape this battle alive" for ~10 consecutive battles. I was expecting an escape room and I got a kaizo experience for a pokemon clone whose mechanics haven't been explained. From what I've seen in the reviews, it looks like the game does open up after some time but considering the game's warning that you should be making numerous saves (presumably because of the consumable item softlocks mentioned in other reviews), that you may need to brute force your way through encounters to find a route to success, and how it's unclear that a given encounter may be possible considering some suboptimal item usage from several encounters prior I'm not really interested in continuing to find the other puzzles in the game that I'm actually interested in seeing. While I see the interest in a game experience like this this game doesn't seem to do much to help ease a player new to this experience into the specifics of their system nor does it fix any of the tedium that would be inherit in their intended play experience. Assuming that the intended experience is to optimize battles and route out your path to an overall success then doing a better job of explaining the battle system is a must and a branching save system (see Papers Please) would help think about how different routes would progress given they're starting with different items. The game does seem to have 3 difficulty modes including one tailored to a player like myself who isn't very interested in the battle puzzles, but it also gives the impression that you'd still have to go through the battles just with any items you want, any party members you want, at any levels you want, which seems like it would also flatten out all of the other puzzle mechanics. For me, this feels like the perfect game to watch someone else puzzle out, because I really couldn't be bothered to figure it all out on my own especially when the game warns that it may be required to brute force routes.

Really unique puzzle game. the turn-based battles feel like they require a different strategy in every encounter and have just enough wiggle room to leave you wondering if you could save juuuust a few more precious ressources and still get by. I think the game is also very good at setting a strong oppressive mood: you're constantly lost, trying to find your way alone through endless nonsensical mazes, and when you do find your comrades, most of the time you'll be counting your bullets to see if you can put them down before they get to you first.

Intense puzzle-solving (which sounds like an oxymoron, but is the best way to describe the gameplay in Thistlemine) mixed with excellent artwork and a lovely soundtrack.