InFlux

[b]This is a rather long review, so if you just want a brief summary of why I recommend this game skip to [u]Results[/u] and read from there.[/b] Impromptu Games creates a fantastic puzzle mystery which keeps the gears in your brain continually grinding. InFlux offers a serene ambience with melodic music that produces a peaceful environment that is calming. [b]Campaign:[/b] Influx is the story of a small ball and its adventure to complete mazes, explore an island, and collect orbs. You must collect orbs in each area in order to unlock the maze that allows you to progress to the next section. The island continually grows as you progress through this amazing campaign and the emptiness keeps you wondering at every turn. I completed the game in about 3-hours, which means it’s not a very long game. You could spend more time exploring the landscape although because of the poor mechanics of the protagonist exploration can seem rather annoying at times. [b]Ambience:[/b] The rhythmic musi...

Very relaxing, very enjoyable. The zen vibe is palpable. Aided by a cool soundtrack, chill atmosphere, and beautiful landscape even at lower settings. For some reason I had trouble installing it, but once I got it working it was totally worth it. It's largely free roaming exploration and it's quite easy to understand what to do due to it's simplicity. Due to how enraptured I was into the game, it was actually a little shorter than I anticipated. It could really benefit from an additional level or two under a different kind of landscape, like perhaps a snowy tundra, a space level, or a man made system of some kind. Still if you need to relax, but you also want to have fun while doing it, then I highly recommend this game.

THis was a game unlike any other in my collection, something chill and relaxing that I could just throw on at the end of a long day and kind of fade away into. The puzzle engages just enough grey matter to be enjoyable, but are spread out enough that just exploring the world and finding neat landscapes in between breaks up the experience into a joyful take-at-your-own-pace eerie wonder. It's so rare to find a game which favours and rewards self-exploration for those of us who just like to meander through every nook and corner for idle amusement.

Do you remember that joy of discover you had when playing Portal? This game has that. No obvious tutorials, it's a fascinating and weird landscape where mechanics are gently added to your repertoire. Absorbing and fascinating. It's not going to be for everyone, sure. And it does have a few quirky things. But there's just something about it that I found to be compelling.

As a fan of marble games like Marble Blast Ultra, and Switchball, it's an interesting blend of the two. It's broken apart into six different hub worlds, each containing 3 puzzle areas. These hub worlds are wide open natural vistas, whereas the puzzle rooms look a lot like those Marble Blast Ultra. Most of the puzzles deal with world rotation, and getting other marbles to designated areas. The movement feels pretty different than Marble Blast Ultra, mostly in that you carry much more momentum, and you don't have a button to jump. They introduce a charge boost though, that accomplishes similar goals. It has a small story being told organically through the world, and it's just a really satisfying time. I'd highly recommend it to dudes that dug Marble Blast Ultra/Switchball/Spectraball.

Intriguing but ultimatly pointless game. Racing a ball in an open world environment sounds fun. Unfortunatly, the execution is flawed. The open world is full of bugs (I played 10 minutes, I got stuck about 5 times) -you cannot explore the world per say, you have to follow a path from one puzzle house to the other, any sort of deviation and you will either stay stuck bugged out and reset, or you will drown and reset; in other words the open-world feature is useless, very demanding and moslty left unseen- and the camera/controls feel unatural (I played with a PS3 controller). Now that I purchased it, I wonder what's the point. Oh well. If you want rolling balls, don't get InFlux, buy Rock of Ages instead !

So, this game really is loads of awesomeness. It has an incredibly calm atmosphere, lush graphics, ridiculously smooth gameplay, and aims to bring a new light to problem-solving and virtual puzzles. Its originality in terms of both puzzles and overall gameplay really gives off a great vibe, and in my opinion, it feels like the developers really knew what they wanted from this game. They executed this indie game extremely well and it really shows. I have not had the chance to play this game with a controller, but for a mouse and keyboard(which feels more natural to me than a controller), the controls are perfect. The developers really struck a beautiful balance in terms of how you control the gameplay, and subsequently, how the gameplay controls you. They left the complexity and problem-solving to the puzzles of the game and made the controls simplistic. Perfection. On the topic of the puzzles, they also match this game perfectly. As you can see from the teaser video clips, the puzzl...

natural views are great, but the puzzle and the control are pretty nasty

The main problem with InFlux is that it doesn't matter that you're a ball. Rolling physics games, like Marble Madness, rely heavily on conservation of momentum as a game mechanic. InFlux does not. You have very good control over your movements and can arrest your forward momentum at any time. Moving slowly often makes the uneven ground difficult to traverse, but that's more an annoyance than a gameplay mechanic. There's no incentive to dash madly through levels, not in the least because you spend the navigation levels searching for hard to spot motes of light that you need to unlock the next puzzle. The game has some ramps, but you don't so much roll up them as you hit them at speed and bounce into the air. Once the game introduces the boost mechanic all semblance of ball relevance goes right out the window, as you can use it to easily turn on a dime at tight angles and even essentially freeze time in mid air to target perfect landings. Overshot your mark? No problem, just b...

This game is absolutely beautiful. The graphics are amazing, the puzzles are inventive and challenging, and with an open world environment, you truly get a feeling of freedom from the enclosed spaces of puzzles. Definitely worth the money.