Highly recommended!
Waterfall Prisoner is a very enjoyable escape room (actually escape prison tower) style game. It is chock full of puzzles of several varieties. Many of the puzzles are what can generally be regarded as combination locks in that you need to know a code or sequence to make progress. There are also puzzles that require you to use an object from your inventory. Solving a puzzle rewards you with either a new inventory item (which you will likely need for a different puzzle), or some kind of clue for a different puzzle, or unlocks a door to a room or whole new section of the game.
As mentioned above, a lot of the puzzles require knowledge obtained outside of the puzzle screen that leads to the combination/sequence required to solve the puzzle. The fun part is how you figure out the combination. The following section can be considered to have slight spoilers - it does not reveal any clue specific to any puzzle, but I explain all (or most) of the mechanisms the game conveys clues to you. You may want to discover all of these on your own. I mention them because one of the things that makes the game so enjoyable is the diversity of methods of presenting clues to the player.
[spoiler]Very often the information is distributed in one or more documents (with some combination of text, pictures or symbols on them) that you come across in-game, or by just observing arrangement of in-game objects that are part of the static scenery, or objects already in your inventory, or some combination of information derived from these different types of clue sources. Clues in the documents are not glaringly obvious, especially as you often come across documents long before you need the information in them, or before the information even seems relevant which might make you forget about the document altogether. So it makes a nice challenge when you feel a bit stuck - go and review the documents, and you may be rewarded with a sweet "aha" moment.
You can pick up most documents you come across, and those are effectively put in your inventory so you don't have to walk back to where you first came across the document. However, other documents are essentially a fixed part of the scenery. Some of the most satisfying moments are when you are reviewing documents, a document that you picked up earlier that seemed to be useless at the time you picked it up suddenly has new relevance! There are also a few clues that are provided by either looking at the scenery from a particular vantage point, using an item in your inventory to look at the scenery in the game.[/spoiler]
Movement in the game is like in any typical first person shooter, although there is no jump key and there is no platforming in the game. As far as I recall at the the moment, nothing in the game requires quick timing or reflexes. There's even a sprint key which is very useful when you need to quickly revisit a location. There is a lot of revisiting of locations required: either to take another look at something which may be a clue to a puzzle at a different location, or vice versa i.e. going back to the puzzle location you think you now have a new clue on how to solve, or you just acquired an inventory object required to solve a puzzle that you saw elsewhere.
There are three categories of things that you come across in the scenery that you can interact with. 1) objects or documents documents that you can pick up and view. These automatically go in your inventory after your initial viewing 2) puzzle screens - these fix your location in the game world temporarily as you interact with puzzle element hot spots 3) marked puzzle element hot spots - these can be objects you just touch with your bare hands, or with some tool object from your inventory, or a place within a puzzle screen where you must place an item to proceed with the puzzle. Each of these 3 categories provide a different on screen symbol to let the player know what type of thing you are looking at. The symbols are always large and clear enough that it is *almost* impossible to miss anything you can interact with. No pixel hunting! Additionally, within puzzle screens, there may be additional mechanisms or items that you can manipulate. Beware: those are not always marked, and it is possible to not realize that you can (and need) to manipulate them.
The documents also provide some back-story and sometimes attempt to explain why some of these puzzles exist in the first place.
Bonus Game:
As a bonus, after you finish the main game, a new area opens up that is essentially a standalone game of the same genre. There is a very small amount of text you may read in Garden of Secrets that lets you know this is related to the main game. Aside from that, and one optional instance where you need to use an inventory item retained from the main game, and some achievements, Garden of Secrets could have been released as a standalone game that I would have gladly paid for and also given a stellar review. It was very generous for the devs to provide this essentially for free. I am very much looking forward to their next game!
Garden of Secrets is much more purely puzzle oriented in that exposes much less story and does not make as big of an attempt to explain the reason for the existence of the puzzles. This did not make it any less enjoyable to me. Garden of Secrets is very well designed and very enjoyable.
Bugs (devs please note):
There were two puzzles (one in the main game, and one in the Garden of Secrets) in which you have to enter/interact with a sequence of items presented in the puzzle screen that were slightly buggy in the following way. To solve the puzzle, you need to enter the correct sequence, but the puzzle has to be in a correct initial "reset" state to start with before you enter the correct sequence. To give an example of what I mean, lets say a puzzle requires you to enter a 4-long sequence A, B, C, D to solve it. If this is the very first time you interact with the puzzle and you enter A, B, C, D then bingo, you've solved it. But let's say you enter B, C, D because you did not understand the clue, and the puzzle doesn't unlock. Then later you figure out the correct sequence and you revisit the puzzle. Everything on the puzzle screen looks like the way it was the very first time you encountered the puzzle. Now you enter A, B, C, D - the puzzle won't be solved! That's because your earlier failed attempt put the puzzle in some non-reset state.
As far as I could see, there was never any indication that the puzzle is in the reset state. And the puzzle did not provide any kind of reset button. Even exiting the puzzle screen and re-entering the puzzle screen does not reset the puzzle. To make things worse, the puzzle does not make it clear that you even need to start from the reset state, which is unfair because there are other similar puzzles in the game where to solve it, you just need to enter the correct sequence, no matter what partial or incorrect sequence you may have entered earlier.
The puzzles I am referring to are 1) main game: [spoiler]punch card computer.[/spoiler] 2) Garden of Secrets: [spoiler]fertilizer mixing bowl for making the anti-fertilizer. However it seems that making the fertilizer does not require staring from reset state. At least in this one I could reset the puzzle by making the fertilizer, then using it up[/spoiler]
The only work-around I found for the first one (after getting help from the devs) is by exiting out of the game, then restarting it again and selecting continue game.
I hope these can be fixed by the devs - either by not requiring the puzzle having to be in a reset state preferably (and most likely, simpler to implement), or by providing a puzzle reset button in the puzzle screen.
