[u]In short:[/u] Yarne is a meditative, simplistic puzzle game about stretching and arranging strings. The levels are well designed and can get fairly difficult. The minimalist aesthetic does not excuse the lack of settings and several elements of jankiness. Even for roughly 5 hours of unique content I wouldn't recommend buying at full price, but on sale it's a decent pick-up if you're looking for a relaxing puzzle game.
[u]In long:[/u] The [b][u]mechanics[/u][/b] are fairly simple. Each level is comprised of hexagonal tiles. Some have polygons inside which represent curled-up strings. Grab them with the mouse and unravel them by crossing into different tiles. Since strings cannot cross, the challenge lies in finding configurations that allow all strings to be fully stretched out.
At first this is an easy task because of open boards and lots of surplus paths, but later [b][u]levels[/u][/b] can get fairly challenging. The game seems primitive at first, but over time certain patterns emerge and the aspect of iteration and problem solving becomes more prominent. It may not look like it, but the second half is certainly a full-blown puzzle game beyond just trial and error, and obvious solutions. Yarne has 100 hand-made levels across 4 sets. Usually there are multiple paths to the end of a set, allowing you to skip some levels if you get stuck. Later sets introduce longer or shorter strings, but walls are the only real new mechanic the game has to offer. I like how levels are thematically grouped and the difficulty curve is pretty well done. I had 95 of the 100 levels beaten in about 4.5 hours, but then got horribly stuck on a particular level for over 7 hours. If you are smarter than me (or willing to use the guide I published) you should expect roughly 5 hours of content from this game.
The [b][u]presentation[/u][/b] is generally well done and follows a minimalist aesthetic. Almost too minimalist as the menus are fairly indiscernable as well. The visuals are just pixellated lines on single-colour backgrounds. If yellow on blue is not your thing you gradually unlock 7 different themes/palettes. Finished levels tend to yield interesting and pretty patterns. The sound effects are simple but nice. The music is just a nice atmospheric loop that gives the game a fairly meditative feeling.
My only gripe with the presentation is the weird off-by-one counting system the game uses. Strings are wrapped up into polygons that gradually straighten out the more moves you make. These polygons stand for numbers and you can also toggle a straight-up nummeric display. So how many moves should a square denoted with 4 make? The answer is three. The first move counts it down to triangle/3, the second to line/2 and the third move marks it as solved. To me this makes absolutely no sense. Why would 1 be the target and not 0? Why does the shape not tell me the number of moves it can make?
The [b][u]technical side[/u][/b] is lacking. The game starts windowed in a fixed 1600x900 resolution and there is no ingame way of changing that (undocumented Alt+Enter works for full-screen though). In fact, there are no ingame settings at all, except for a mute button that for some reason affects sound effects but not the background music. I've never seen an odd arrangement like this.
Sometimes the game also wouldn't let me make legal moves and at the end, clicking around on the credits page I somehow managed to soft-lock the game into a level I could not exit again. It's stable (as expected from a Unity game), but there is definitely some jank with minor bugs going on.
Sadly you shouldn't expect any kind of support form the developers, as this game seems all but abandoned. Time to delve into the [b][u]background[/u][/b] of the game a bit. This game has all the hallmarks of a mobile port (no exit button, bad menus, virtually no settings, etc), but I could not find a mobile release anywhere. You have to scower the [url=https://rowanqueue.itch.io/yarne]game's itch.io page[/url] to find mention of an old iOS prototype "soon to be updated". This page is also where you can play the first 25 levels of the game in your browser as a demo, while the last post on the Steam forums is someone asking for a demo almost 1 year ago and never getting a reply. Yeah, it's pretty dead. One of the developers mentions on his [url=parkercrandell.com]personal website[/url], "Before I joined the team, Yarne only had an endless mode with randomly generated levels. [...] Many of the puzzles in Yarne are simply about teaching the players the fun and interesting patterns I found in development and then building out more interesting challenges from there." That is all fine and dandy, but where is this fabled endless mode now? It is available for free on [url=https://armorgames.com/yarne-game/19102]Armor Games[/url], but not included in the paid Steam version. Admittedly, it seems fairly primitive and would greatly benefit from user-controlled parameters (size, complexity, difficulty), but still... if you have a finished endless mode, why not put it into your product?
In [b][u]conclusion[/u][/b] I have some mixed feelings about Yarne. The game itself is fine, though quite simple and with a weird counting system. The levels are mostly well-made and often resolve into neat patterns, but an endless mode was seemingly cut from the game and could have greatly benefitted replayability. The settings are a joke and some minor bugs persist due to lack of developer support. It's janky, but if you know what you're getting yourself into, I can recommend buying this on sale.
