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 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, andThis 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.… Expand
RelictaYour Score0 out of 10User Score
