Rituals

I tentatively recommend this game. It is a simple point-and-click puzzle game. Interesting story, presented in a very simple way, with a few things hidden in corners that expand the details a bit. Nothing too obtuse or difficult to understand, beyond the basic part that requires a suspension of disbelief. So the good is: I found it fun, the puzzles were interesting, kept me occupied for a few moments, but were not terribly difficult, so it was right in that range to quickly make me feel engaged in solving it, without ever being frustrating. The world building was simple, but effective, the audio was atmospheric, and I felt engaged in playing it the whole time. At its core I would describe it as: minimalist, but it uses everything to its greatest potential, so while minimalist this also means no wasted space in the design and atmosphere. The bad: I have played it through twice, with 100% achievement completion in one and a half hours, and that is just the stats Steam gave me; I wa...

A great short story for a quick puzzle game that will send you through places unknown and back revolving around something bigger, possibly around something actually revolving.

The controls are horrendous.

Love the 3D movement, great adventure.

This game isn't bad by any means. It's just nothing special. GAMEPLAY: Click on-screen arrow buttons to move around like the adventure games of yore (think Myst), hold click and move mouse to look around. I'm not sure why this style was chosen, other than to perhaps give players a clearer indication as to where they should be going. But with as simplistic an art style as it has, combined with the ease of its puzzles and the games' short length, this isn't a necessary helping hand. It's not a detriment, nor is it a benefit either. You will primarly be walking around exploring, and otherwise, solving some simple puzzles (I'm hesitant to use that word, as it's mostly just plugging in items into the correct place). No combat to be had here. VISUALS: Simple, cell-shaded, with lots of colour and fairly minimal detail. It looks nice, and again serves to highlight where you need to go. AUDIO: Nothing to write home about. There's a general lack of music, no voice acting (aside from some bac...

Using Steam's own terminology I would rate this "Postive". But just that. Not bad for a very limited dev team and fair for a sale price. But there's not a lot going on here and both my son and i found some of the puzzles tedious. I'd try something. Nope. Then literally every other thing possible. Then go look at a walk through video and - oh it was that first thing, but more of it. But beyond that, I like low poly games by small teams. It shows that a game is possible to make using more artistic flair than capital. I feel good supporting efforts like this.

A tight mood piece about empty places and the way we affect the world. Good for a short stroll in the dark.

I'm really enjoying this one so far. The low-poly style and bizarre, dream-like quality of the environments mix well with the mystery of the story; it feels like I've been caught in a nightmare. Mechanics are simple point and click; you can mouselook with the right mouse button, and click on the white arrows shown in the screenshots to do a step-wise movement to the next square, like in some old-school RPGs. Puzzles are akin to standard point and click fare, with a very small inventory shown in the upper left of the screen; objects are moved onto the environment to use or each other to combine.

TL:DR - Rituals is low-budget MYST. Interesting indie puzzle-adventure game. Puzzles are challenging without being too difficult, although the aligator one and the last one took me a while to figure out. The game doesn't really give you much indication as to whether you are on the right path to solving a puzzle, which can be good and bad. The story is interesting, but not terribly complex. Overall, the game isn't bad, but its really small and obviously made by a small developer with a small budget. But the price reflects this "smallness", so I can't NOT recommend it. I would like to see this developer's sophomore effort if they make one.

kinda cute game