Niko: Through The Dream

[i] Niko: A Pick ‘n’ Mix of a puzzle game [/i] This is a very atmospheric and beautiful game. Most of the puzzles look incredibly complicated at first glance but once you get into solving them you realize they are logical and quite easy. This to me is the hallmark of a great puzzle. The problem at times is that the game takes on so many forms and feels like a pick ‘n’ mix…this seems to have been intentional by the developers but honestly it just felt to me that they didn’t have enough of a main core mechanic to go on so they Frankenstein-ed together every possible puzzle they could think of. There is everything here from a Coconut Stall, parkour, sliding block puzzle, combination locks, shadow puppetry (yeah you heard me), stealthing, water container puzzles, swimming and agility puzzles, object manipulation, a moment straight out of Q.U.B.E., mazes, abstract Myst-like puzzles, a scene from Ghostbusters. I could go on. Yes this does keep the game very fresh but it...

I bought [i]Niko: Through The Dream[/i] partially because of its art style, but more because it was being billed as a puzzle game. As a work of minimalist art, [i]Niko: Through The Dream[/i] may well be among the top 10% of games on Steam (though I suppose that's not saying much with con-artists like Digital Homicide on the loose). As a puzzle game, however, Niko not only falls short of the mark, but it drops the arrows before even drawing back the bowstring. As you'll note, I've only played 35 minutes of this game. Those 35 minutes were enough to tell me that the developer doesn't seem to know very much about puzzle design. Let me spoil the first three levels for you (apparently the developer's packed the game with a good 18 of them, so I should think this to be acceptable spoiler-wise). First, a few technical notes. Apparently, the resolution in the config tool is the resolution of the *window* containing the game, and the resolution in-game is the resolution the game runs at. Tab...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeZBO72cD8I This is a summary of my review video, which I encourage you to watch if you are looking for a more in-depth review. Niko Through the dream proclaims itself to be a first person adventure experience with a puzzle element, but that's not exactly true; there is a lot- A LOT- of platforming throughout this game. I would say 40-60% of the game is platforming; a staggering amount considering there was no mention of platfomring on the games various pages. The story of the game is supposed to be a narrative experience in a puzzle elemented world; but the narration is not told through vocalization or words, rather relying heavily on the 'dream world' element. It does not do a good job of providing a feeling of connection or emotional suspense. Information about the character and her story is told very abstractly, leaving much to the imagination. I never was able to understand why she was having issues, or even what they were. How you experience ...

This is one of my favorite games for 2017 (yes, I know it came out in 2015 but I JUST got to play it)! I'm honestly surprised it doesn't have more reviews. I play so many overly complex puzzle games where nothing ever makes sense or you have to stare at the screen for an hour just to progress further. Niko is not one of those games - it's extremely refreshing. I agree that puzzle mechanic is relatively simple but it's only because everything just makes perfect sense - it's so well put together! Many levels took my breath away with how clever and beautiful they were. Only cons with the game were the jumping controls (I would mostly overjump or not jump far enough) and lack of frequent save points. Other than that, I highly recommend Niko to everyone. This game is also a great starting point for anyone who wishes to learn puzzle mechanic or become a better puzzle solver.

Yet another game where "Dreamlike" just means "A sequence of random unconnected rooms that make no sense". Also, there are plenty of huge, wide open spaces and cubes floating in mid-air. I think that's actually a requirement when making a game with the word "Dream" in the title The puzzles themselves aren't too bad, but 50% of the difficulty is down to the game never explaining the rules to you - you have to figure that out on your own. Once you actually know what you're supposed to do, they're generally very straightforward. This is not puzzling. This is being given a random bunch of letters, and the challenge is to work out what type of puzzle you've got ("Oh, it's a WORDSEARCH!"). And then there are only two words to look for and you can finish it in about 30 seconds. The other 50% of the difficulty comes from the pixel-perfect reactions and/or jumping segments. Make the slightest mistake, and it's aaaaaaallllll the way back to the last checkpoint. This game can't decide whether i...

So, it appears to be first person puzzle game set in a weird minimalistic 3-d environment. It starts off with a hand drawn cartoon (not sure what was going on, but hey) before dropping you into the first area. There are no instructions as to what to do, but if you move around (the usual WASD / space) *look* at things and activate things (E), it becomes obvious, though it might take a couple of attempts. The puzzles (so far) have been quite easy to solve, but equally quite satisfying - all (so far) things you'll likely have come across before (pressing buttons in the right order, lining things up, a bit of platforming...) and there are clues as to what to do. There's also some nice sparse background music which adds to the atmosphere & the general surreal feel of it all. A couple of gripes though - if you hit escape during play, you're presented with some pretty unhelpful menu/symbols one of which just closes the game down without warning (though in hindsight, it does look a bit exit-...

No information or explanation of controls in any way ingame. No info of where to go or what to do. Controls are atrocily bad and collision detection ingame is almost non existent, you will get stuck to invisibly walls or stuck to walls if you get to close. Full of bugs. No save system apart from checkpoints very far apart. Miss something, exit to try to findout what to do or what controls are, suprise, suprise start at the begining.

Since I really enjoy first person puzzle games and was intrigued by the artstyle I decided to purchase Niko: Through The Dream at launch and just finished all chapters after about 5 1/2 hours of gameplay. The puzzles are easy but quite enjoyable; unfortunately the developer decided to put more and more emphasis on platforming elements towards the end of the game which don't work out too well. Playing with keyboard and mouse, I felt the controls were too wobbly and it took me more attempts than it should have to solve the rather simple platforming segments. There's also a severe lack of visual settings. The developer offers ini-workarounds in the Steam discussion board for FOV, arbitrary resolutions and some other important settings but I feel it shouldn't be hard to include these in the in-game menu. Apart from that, the game's performance was flawless as expected (1440p, GTX 970, i5 4570). Despite the aforementioned shortcomings, the audio-visual presentation and the majority of puz...

This game has some beautiful scenery to be seen. The visuals atracted me to the point of buying the game in a 80% discount. I must also say that the beautiful scenes are 10% of the game (maybe less). The rest of the time you are looking at generic smooth walls from UE. This game is marketed as an adventure puzzle game, in which it leaves to be desired. Some of the tasks felt really boring and some physics just didn't work as you would expect (to the point that I couldn't finish the game). Buy in a promo? Maybe? Idk

The puzzles aren't terribly difficult, but some of them are interesting enough and give the "A-ha!" moment. Narrative was a bit pretentious and even after finishing I still don't think I understand what the game was really about... But it was an entertaining couple of hours and was worth the sale price.