Relicta

 PC
Metascore
74

Mixed or average reviews - based on 16 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 6 out of 16
  2. Mixed: 10 out of 16
  3. Negative: 0 out of 16
  1. Adventure Gamers
    Sep 28, 2020
    90
    From simple magnetism and gravity mechanics springs the fiendishly challenging Relicta, a highly polished environmental puzzler through a lunar space station with your every move being watched.
  2. Impulsegamer
    Aug 31, 2020
    90
    If you like a bit of brain strain and some lovely visuals with a decent science fiction story to top it all off then you will most likely love Relicta.
  3. CD-Action
    Oct 15, 2020
    85
    If you love Portal, The Witness, or The Talos Principle, you’re gonna enjoy Relicta. Its puzzles might get a little tedious in the long run (they are all based on magnetic gloves), but I really enjoyed them throughout most of the campaign. What’s important (to me at least), the story is not just a quick, half-baked addition to the puzzles, but a valuable element of the game. [10/2020, p.90]
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  5. Hooked Gamers
    Aug 25, 2020
    85
    In all Relicta is a challenging puzzle game with a lot of beauty to it, whether it's the music, the visuals, the “Ah-Ha!” moments that any good puzzle can give you when it's solved, or even in Patel’s entertaining interactions with the other characters. As a lover of puzzles, I can say for sure the ‘just one more puzzle’ vibe is strong with this one, so I recommend Relicta to any fan of the genre, it’s got literal magnetic attraction.
  6. PC Games
    Aug 10, 2020
    80
    The puzzles in Relicta are hard and there isn’t any handholding. This fact, however, is part of the game’s appeal. It feels great to finally solve a tough-as-nails puzzle. More variety regarding the levels would have been nice, nevertheless.
  7. SpazioGames
    Aug 4, 2020
    78
    Relicta is a first-person physics-based puzzle game that you should try. The gameplay is very interesting: you have to deal with complex mechanics of altering the magnetism and gravity.

User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
5.8

Mixed or average reviews- based on 28 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 11 out of 28
  2. Mixed: 9 out of 28
  3. Negative: 8 out of 28
  1. TitaniumDragon
    Jun 7, 2021
    5
    Relicta is a first person puzzle game that really wants to be Portal.

    Like all such games, it falls well short. But unfortunately, it    Relicta is a first person puzzle game that really wants to be Portal.

    Like all such games, it falls well short.

    But unfortunately, it doesn’t even manage to stand out particularly as its own thing. Despite its high graphical fidelity and production quality, it starts out promising but ends up falling apart about halfway through, both in terms of gameplay and story.

    Like all such games, it has a “core mechanic”. The core mechanic here is the ability to give blocks (and some pads that can hold charges) either a red charge or a blue charge. Opposite colored charges attract, same-colored charges repel.

    In addition, you can make blocks weightless, allowing them to fly through the air after having been given a push from a charge, or continuing on their momentum from a moving platform.

    That’s it. That’s all there is.

    The game is entirely centered around grabbing blocks and putting them on buttons to get rid of various force fields blocking your way, and sometimes toggling the odd switch. The force fields can either block everything, or only one thing – you, blocks, or drones.

    There are some platforms that you can move, along with some drones that remove all special effects on all nearby blocks and charge pads, and which can carry blocks.

    And… that’s all the mechanics there is.

    The problem is, this is a 15 hour long game, but it has fewer, and less interesting, mechanics than something like Portal 2.

    So how does it make the game last 15 hours?

    Unfortunately, the answer to that is by just making increasingly long puzzles in the back half of the game. Frequently, puzzles would either be multi-stage things, where you go through a series of mini-puzzles, or a puzzle where there was some sort of “hub” that you kept on having to solve mini-puzzles to unlock a central door. Only rarely were there big puzzles that actually felt like they integrated all the pieces.

    As a result, the entire second half of the game starts to end up feeling tedious rather than interesting. Some of the later game puzzles were okay, but never was there a puzzle in the game where I felt like it was particularly amazing to solve. A lot of the “harder” puzzles were harder because you couldn’t find a particular “puzzle piece”, so to speak; once you actually had the pieces in hand, what you were actually supposed to do was often fairly straightforward, if sometimes fiddly later in the game, as you had to line things up rather awkwardly to make some puzzles work, as the “snap-to” portions didn’t work in some areas due to them not sending you in quite the right direction or being aligned in the right way.

    The game ends up just kind of dragging on by the end, and I just wanted it to be over.

    Which brings up the other problem – the story.

    It starts out promisingly enough – there’s some sort of inciting incident with a weird purple crystal, you have a set of coworkers around and a daughter who is coming to the space station, ect.

    The problem is, this all ends up falling apart about halfway through the game. The central plot twist of the game isn’t very good and results in almost all of the characters you spent the first half of the game talking with never talking to you again throughout the rest of the game. As a result, the game's supporting cast dynamics end up being totally tossed out the window and not mattering at all for the rest of the game, as you end up interacting with a second, and less interesting, set of characters for the second half of the game.

    Indeed, if you spend any time thinking about the plot twist, it both feels unnecessarily convoluted and makes no physical sense, nor sense with the other characters in the story, who act like no time has passed at all. The loss of contact with their former colleagues gets short shrift and the story itself seems to forget about what happened to them, as the characters don’t seem to care despite supposedly being emotionally invested. Only at the very end of one of the game’s two multiple endings (which are chosen at the last minute for… some reason? I don’t even know why it has multiple endings…) does the game remember “Oh, these people existed” and actually follow up on it at all, and then only in a stinger thing that is not very satisfying (though there’s more from a title update I have yet to play).

    Overall, then, the game fails to deliver in terms of story, character, or gameplay. The story doesn’t even make a ton of sense in terms of characterization, and the gameplay is too simple for a game as long as Relicta is. Despite a potentially promising start, it just doesn’t hold up, and it never really does anything particularly good, let alone great.    … Full Review »
  2. catholicbatman
    Aug 15, 2020
    9
    This game is a breath of fresh air. It's very much in the style of puzzle games, and it hits it out of the park on that front. I've had a lotThis game is a breath of fresh air. It's very much in the style of puzzle games, and it hits it out of the park on that front. I've had a lot of experience with these types of games, having played Portal, Portal 2, The Talos Principle, The Witness, The Turing Test, Steamroll, Lightmatter, Q.U.B.E, The Swapper, Chromagun, The Spectrum Retreat, MIND: Path to Thalmos, Etherborn, Polarity, and Magrunner: Dark Pulse so I feel like I can speak with some leverage in the this particular niche (which happens to be my favorite!)

    You play as a female scientist on a base on the moon. You are trying to get everyone in your crew together but things just don't seem to be going the way you want them to and in order to press forward you have to complete various puzzles. These puzzles typically involve cubes, pressure plates, switches, gravity, anti-gravity and magnetism and you have to use all of them to your advantage to move forward. Early on as the game introduces concepts through puzzles, they easier and quicker to move through. As you progress the puzzles in Relicta become challenging almost, at times, to the point of frustration, but very satisfying to solve and totally reasonable when you realize what you are supposed to do. The breadth of some of the levels makes them take quite a bit of time to both analyze, set up a plan, and implement it. Occasionally the implementation of your ideas does not function right and you have to try repeatedly to accomplish what you want to do (or give up on that method), but the game does a good job of allowing easy ways to get your cubes back as well as an easy way to restart a particular puzzle if you need to. I was particularly impressed with some of the really unique ways that Relicta has you solve parts of puzzles. When I made the discovery of how to do these particular things, it felt so incredible. You have to really think outside the box! Since I would describe this game as a puzzler, I wanted this to be the first thing I discussed.

    The graphics of the game are good. Each area of puzzles has it's own beautiful biome style and they are impressive. I was a bit disappointed that I couldn't explore as much as I'd like due to the invisible walls. I particularly liked the jungle biome and I liked the sounds for it too.

    The game runs smooth at about 80-100 fps with my GTX 980. I have not had any bugs and the game seems well polished.

    The voice acting is good, but I wouldn't call it outstanding.

    I was not too happy about all the crude language in this game so, fair warning, you're not going to want to play it around kids at least during the times you are travelling because that's when the dialogue happens. Every game I've played in this style has managed to do it with little to no cussing from what I remember, but this game excessively uses it in my opinion.

    The one other gripe I have is with the travelling. Travelling from place to place through the main area and the other world areas was really kind of difficult. Half the time I didn't seem to know exactly where to go and had to just stumble around. It would be nice to have some sort of arrow to direct you where it wants you to go so you can get there - there are just so many ways to go. That said, the game does have hidden PDA notes and some collectibles hidden throughout the worlds, which is nice.

    I forget where I made the discovery of Relicta initially, but I am glad I decided to pick it up. Typically I don't buy a game at full price, but I did with this one knowing the style of game it was and I have to say it had totally been worth that amount of money. Based on what I know about the game, I'm guessing I am a little over halfway through it at the time of this review and have put in 12 hours. The story has kept me interested in what is yet to come, and I can't wait to know what the ending is going to be. For very few people working on this game, I am very impressed with the quality of it. It's hard to find a good game in this vein, but this is definitely one of them.    … Full Review »
  3. PassionalGamer
    Aug 6, 2020
    9
    Nice! Challenging physics game with a funny gameplay and nice graphics.

    Recommended!
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