I don’t believe that one has to really understand art to appreciate it. Ephemerid: A Musical Adventure is definitely more art than game. Despite being interactive and having a few true gameplay elements, for the most part, it seems to be designed as a pretty backdrop for a rather epic soundtrack.
Completing the game is simple. There seems to be no true fail state, although there are at least a few spots where interaction is required to advance. In fact, if there’s a point where you’re unsure what the game requires of you, hints come early and often. Which makes sense, the game has an agenda, a certain amount of story it wants to tell accompanying each track.
Players that come into this looking just to experience it will probably have a fine time. The art and the music are pure joy, and despite the lack of text, there is a clear story happening. However, if you really hate bugs, or have severe arachnophobia, you probably won’t have the best time. Yes, there’s an antagonist, and it’s a big ol’ spider with a boombox.
The entire game took less than an hour from start to finish. I didn’t struggle with any of the adventure game / puzzley segments, and the game didn’t seem to penalize me for being downright awful at the rhythm parts. I was, however, surprised that after the credits, I had only unlocked one solitary achievement. Achievement chasers should be aware that the only other non-hidden achievement requires perfection in all 7 of the rhythm game sections.
There is definitely more game here if you want to look for it, but for me, I was satisfied just to have played through to the end. In a lot of ways, it reminded me of a music video or a laser light show, but I didn’t find any of the game play elements compelling enough to play through it multiple times. For the scant asking price of $3, I didn’t even mind the short play time.
For me, Changeling was a bit of an off-brand pick for #DatingSiMonth. I have very limited experience with visual novels, and I’ve found them to be very hit or miss. However, the few I have really enjoyed have not been romanced-focused; it’s just not my genre. However, when looking through some of the games I’ve picked up in Itch.io bundles, Changeling caught my eye for a couple of reasons. First, being about high schoolers was a fairly good indicator that it would be light on graphic sexual content. Secondly, while romance is part of the story, and the final choice you make in the common route locks you into a single romantic interest, each route you play through gives you more and more information about the overarching mystery surrounding the protagonist.
Still, I wasn’t too sure that I’d get invested, but I figured I’d dedicate an evening or two and see at least one story arc before I decided whether or not to continue. I went in completely blind, so the path I ended up taking was not the one I would have chosen if I had realized the decision was one about which boy I’d be spending time with, but I just went with it.
Despite coming to a very dismal end with Corvin’s Route, I was undeterred. I figured I’d try one more route, and see how much the story changed. Now understanding which decision determined the storyline, and having gotten to know the characters better during my first playthrough, I was better prepared to choose a love interest with whom I might actually be inclined to make “best ending” sort of choices.
I did not – in fact – make best ending choices, but I got a better ending with Elliot than I did with Corvin. More importantly, I learned so much more about my character and about what was going on around her. I wanted to see the rest of the stories. I was hooked.
Normally, however, I don’t have the patience to get through all the repetitive clicking to get back to a choice point, and when I started out, I hadn’t yet mastered the visual novel pro-tip of saving often. Very often. On the upside, Changeling‘s skip feature is phenomenal – it takes you to each decision point quickly, and without a whole lot of manual clicking.
I really didn’t have strong feelings about the art style, which may be a make it or break it for some visual novel fans. The writing was solid throughout, which is perfect for me as a plot-first reader because the world building and story is really interesting. The romantic scenes – at least the ones I’ve encountered – are sweet rather than sexy, which I very much appreciated. If I had any complaint, it’s very minor – the side characters (non-love interests) seem to fall neatly into the boxes of either being sympathetic and likeable, or are kind of broadly painted with the antagonist brush. That wasn’t really an issue for me, though, it might read a little dramatic but who among us wasn’t dramatic in high school?
Probably the strongest praise I can give to Changeling is this: after losing access to my original save file, I went back, and manually clicked my way through to be able to start all six possible love interest routes. I’ve found the Steam guides to all the best endings, but I don’t know that I’ll necessarily use them. I kind of want to find out just how bad I am at dating sims, and admittedly, I’m in for the story more than I am for the boys.
I don’t know yet if I will play them all, but I also pretty sure I want to know what happens on the other four routes. I’ve played for about six hours now, reached two of the god only knows how many endings, and I’m still eager to read more. I expect future progress will be somewhat slower since I’ll no longer be able to play on my Steam Deck in bed, but I don’t doubt there will be future progress.
(Bear in mind, I do read rather quickly – the developers estimate most people will need about 4-6 hours per route to reach an ending!)
I don’t know how this stands up againt games loved by visual novel enthusiasts, but if you’re curious about visual novels, and you are interested in a YA supernatural drama with a side of cute boys, this might be a good one to try out. Changeling was part of the Itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality back in June of 2020 as well as the Itch.io Bundle for Ukraine from March of 2022. It is also available on Itch.io and Steam for $19.99.
I picked up Strange Horticulture almost a year ago, on the strength of the demo I played back in October of 2021 during one of many Steam NextFests. Originally, I had planned for it to be one of the last games I covered for the #JustOnePercent project, before I decided to stick to only games that actually released in 2021. So, in reality, I could have played this anytime over the last year! Thankfully, I decided to get back onto the Community Game Along train, and January is #PuzzleGameMonth, so it was a good excuse to stop putting it off and actually play the damn game.
You have inherited a botanist’s shop from your uncle, and the game dumps you right in the middle of a story in progress. Your customers will come to you asking for plants, sure, but they will also be dropping tons of news and gossip over you counter as well. However, none of the specimens in the shop are labeled, so you’ll need to closely examine the plants and compare them to the notations in your herbalism book to figure out how to fill customer requests. You’ll also have ample opportunities to explore the wider world to acquire even more plants for your shop. Some hints will come directly from your clients, but you’ll also get your share of instructions by mail to help you find every strange plant that can be found.
Although the plant-identifying puzzle makes up the meat of the gameplay, it’s not the only kind of puzzle Strange Horticulture has to offer. Make too many mistakes, and you’ll be tasked with a reassembly puzzle or a key matching puzzle. Sometimes, your directions for exploration are straightforward, but many of them require figuring out what that scrap of paper someone pressed into your hand could possibly mean.
Making too many errors will force you into a different type of puzzle. I got two different ones during my playthrough, but it’s entirely possible there are more types I didn’t see.
In the early days, your book is fairly small. Completing orders or talking to people out in the world will often reward you with new pages. It is possible to – sort of – soft lock your progress if you get stuck on one of the map puzzles; more than once I had a customer come in and ask for a plant I didn’t yet have. Since there’s no way to refuse a customer order that I could find, you may need to either break your mind (which seems to restart the day, and open up the possibility of a different customer order) or water the plants you do have until you get enough Will to Explore to go out and try again. The hint button can be useful if you’re not sure if you already have a plant in your possession, but it certainly isn’t going to figure it out for you.
It took me just over four hours to play through and reach one of the possible endings. A not insignificant portion of that time was spent rearranging my plants in hopes of having a more logical order to things, which would quickly be undone by the discovery of new plants. When you pick up new plants, they’re tossed somewhere on your shelf, and with 77 plants to find, it doesn’t take long for any organizational system to fail. Thankfully, you are given the tools to label each plant as you figure out what it is, or if you prefer, there’s a setting to auto-label any plants you successfully identify. It’s an opt-in system though, which I am happy to report I discovered before I’d manually labeled more than half a dozen plants.
Once you reach an ending and get credits, the game isn’t quite over, however. No, one of your regulars comes in for a post-game opportunity to obtain any remaining plants and identify them all. It gives a nice bit of completion to the game, and I appreciated the opportunity to “officially” identify everything.
The only part of the game that – at least to me – felt a little half baked was the making of elixirs. The ability doesn’t unlock until about halfway through the game, and even once it does, you only have occasion (and the recipes) to do so a few times. It wasn’t that it felt out of place, so much, as sort of unfinished. However, it also really took nothing away from the game play experience to only have it matter a few times, so it’s a small gripe in an otherwise really solid game.
I’ve focused mostly on the game play, because it’s nearly impossible to talk about the story without spoilers. It’s dark, it’s gritty, and at times, it’s delightfully cryptic. Even the dialogue with the less important customers is interesting, and also? You can pet the cat pretty much whenever you like. There are a handful of times where you’re given a choice to make, and those choices do affect the endings you’re eligible to receive on that playthrough. Although there are several different ways for the game to end, I don’t see myself replaying this one anytime soon, but there’s definitely lots more to do if you’re a completionist.
Overall, I enjoyed Strange Horticulture a lot, and played the entire game over a single sitting. This was partially because I was so captivated, but also in part because I was worried that if I didn’t get back to it right away, I would be completely lost. Your mileage may vary on that one, but it was definitely a concern for me. Still, a four hour playtime isn’t unreasonable for a single sitting game, and what a fascinating sitting it turned out to be.
For someone who has literally thousands of unplayed games in her library, I find I still am concerned about the longevity and/or the replay value of games when I’m shopping. So although I enjoy escape-room style puzzle games, I rarely buy them outside of bundles because I feel like more than most genres, these are one-and-done kind of games, and they’re usually fairly short as well. When a triple pack of escape room games from mc2games showed up in Fantatical’s Holiday Diamond pick-your-own bundle alongside a couple of other titles I’d been meaning to pick up, I figured getting three of these games for roughly $5 seemed like a good deal.
I’ve now played one of the three – Palindrome Syndrome – to completion, and although I enjoyed the game for what it was, I would have felt 100% ripped off if I’d bought it at its retail price of $10. I played on the Steam Deck over two sessions, and it took me just under two hours to complete the game. Calling the story of the game mediocre is probably a bit generous, but if you’re playing an escape room style puzzle game, you’re probably not in it for the story.
Full disclosure: I needed to look up hints twice during the game. Once to figure out what the puzzle was asking me to do, and the other because I was totally flummoxed. Both of these were in the last of the six game areas. Up until that point, I made steady, non-frustrating progress through the variety of puzzle types (although most are recycled a time or two throughout the game). The game does give you all the information you need to solve every puzzle it puts in front of you, however, sometimes, doing things out of order will leave you feeling like something was left out – just keep looking. It’s all there.
Instead, any frustration the game might have earned comes from design and user interface decisions. This was maybe made a little worse by playing on the Steam Deck, but it felt like the interactable areas were very small, and oddly placed. More than once, I only discovered something was interactable on my third or fourth lap around the room. I wouldn’t quite call it pixel-hunting, but the experience definitely could have been improved by increasing the size of the interactable areas. There are also a couple places where color is integral to solving a puzzle, and the color choices definitely could have been handled better – in one memorable place, there’s a purple and blue that look very similar, and in another, the clue is yellow, but the choice in the solution is much nearer to a green.
The other gripe I had was with the way notes were handled. Several times, you’ll pick up bits of written information that go into a notebook you can open to refer to them. However, you cannot open the notebook while actively attempting to solve a puzzle, so if you need to refer back to the information that the game has given you, you have to close out of the puzzle, open the notebook, find the correct document, and hope you remember everything when you get back to the solving part.
While I wouldn’t call Palindrome Syndrome a good adventure game, as a pure puzzler with some set decoration, it’s worth a playthrough, but certainly not at full price.
Normally, when you start a game, the first question you ask yourself is “How do I win?”. But when playing At Eve’s Wake, it’s likely that before too long, the question you’ll be asking is “Do I want to win?” and you may discover that the answer to that question is no.
Which is not to say that you won’t want to play, but you need to be a fan of visual novels because the gameplay is – in its entirety – making choices. Whether it’s how to respond to dialog prompts, or which storyline threads to follow, there are no shortage of decisions to be made. Thankfully, the story (at least as far as I’ve gotten) is fairly well written and full of compelling characters.
Now, I haven’t played too many visual novels, but what set this one apart for me was that you’re frequently given the option to change your mind. I stubbornly stuck to my gut reactions throughout my first play through, even when things went in unexpected directions, and – in the end – terminated the story prematurely. However, that lead to the discovery of the next really interesting thing about At Eve’s Wake – it’s taken influence from time loop games and your character will remember things that happened in past playthroughs. Which is great, because there are a lot of ways to screw it all up, and lots of interesting things to discover.
It does heavily rely on a common trope – your character is missing big chunks of memories. You’ve also suffered quite a bit of tragedy in your life, you father died in a car accident, and your mother has – at least somewhat recently – died in a household accident. Now you’ve received a letter letting you know that your grandmother – who have no recollection of – has passed away and offering you additional information about the other deaths in your family. The game starts as you approach the castle in which your grandmother’s wake is to be held, as is another event, The Convergence.
You will have to choose which personality trait defines you, and it does have an impact on what you are able to do throughout the remainder of that play through. You can choose from being tough, observant, or charming, and when you inevitably start a second (or third, or fourth) play through, you can choose another personality trait to open up other avenues in the story. Choices that you are able to make due to trait you’ve chosen will show up in the corresponding color throughout the game.
Once the stage is set, on each day, you’ll be able to choose different parts of the estate to explore, allowing you to learn more about the other characters. You may choose to side with one faction or another, or you may keep on trying to go it alone, but it will definitely be difficult to figure out who you can trust and who will stab you in the back as soon as you turn around.
The artwork and music fits the mood of the story quite well, and the first twenty minutes or so are quite a ride. I’ve managed to survive to the end of the story once, although I did not win, I also was not trying to – in a lot of ways, the information gained by losing is perhaps an even better reward. The tone and genre of the story are particularly appealing for me personally, and I can’t wait to dive back in to figure out how all the pieces fit together.
SteamDB estimates that At Eve’s Wake has sold between 400 and 1,100 copies on Steam. It was also part of Fanatical’s Stand with Ukraine charity bundle from March of 2022. Most of the handful of reviews that have been left for this game have been favorable, but it’s likely that the niche genre of visual novel and the relatively high price have stunted its sales. It is ranked 2354 out of 10,967 games released in 2021.
Developer: Dead Idle Games Release Date: September 21, 2021 MSRP: Free with optional supporter pack ($3.99)
Given the size of my gaming library, it probably isn’t very surprising that I don’t often hunt around for free titles to play. I’ve picked out a handful of free titles to play as part of this project, and I’ve been mostly pleased by the quality of these games. In fact, I’ve had more success overall with games that are freely available for download than I have with some of the bargain basement paid titles I’ve picked up over the past several months.
If you enjoy point and click adventure stories, gothic horror, and pixel art, you should go and immediately download If On A Winter’s Night, Four Travelers. The game is fairly short – I finished in under two hours – but it’s very well put together. I played on my Steam Deck, and there were only a couple of parts where it was fiddly with having to manually activate the onscreen keyboard, and two instances where the item I was trying to find was almost too small to see on the reduced screen size.
The game is set on a train where people who don’t seem to know one another at all are exchanging stories of the last things that they remember. Clearly, this is not your average train trip; in fact, it appears to be some sort of masquerade affair, as the characters are all masked. As you play through each character’s flashback, you learn a bit about their backstories.
To say too much more about the story would definitely spoil the game, so I’ll refrain. However, I do want to make clear, this is, in a lot of ways, a horror game. There are a few very shocking scenes, and in a couple of places it’s almost unbelievably gory considering the art style.
The game play is pure classic point and click adventure, full of puzzles and pixel hunting. Unless you have a good memory, there are a handful of places that having a pen and paper (or taking notes in another window) will come in handy. There are no wild adventure-game-logic leaps you’ll need to make, but you most definitely will benefit from touching everything you can and keeping track of the information the game gives you.
If On A Winter’s Night, Four Travelers is the first title from Dead Idle Games available on Steam, but their two prior games can are available on Itch.io. Even with such a compact story to tell, I think the game certainly could justify a small purchase price, and there is an option to purchase a supporter’s pack to give a few dollars to the developers. Overall, this is a pretty solid title for a two-person team, and worth a play through for anyone who enjoys dark adventure games and has a couple of hours to dedicate to it.
SteamDB estimates that If On A Winter’s Night, Four Travelers has been downloaded between 24,800 and 68,300 times on Steam. More impressively, it’s only gotten a small handful of negative reviews. These few folks have pointed to rather trite writing and a recycled plot, as well as pacing issues. It is ranked 138 out of 10,967 games released in 2021.
Developer: Johan Scherft Release Date: September 7, 2021 MSRP: $1.99
Milo and the Magpies is a game that I almost passed over entirely after playing the demo back in 2020. Partially it was because I struggled with figuring out what I was supposed to do, but I admit, part of my hesitancy was that I basically expected the game to be priced far above what I would have been willing to pay for it. However, when I spotted that it was half price during the most recent Steam Summer Sale – and that the full price was only two dollars – I decided to give it another chance. I’m glad I did. It was a short, but very lovely experience.
You play as Milo, a cat on his way home across the rooftops – it’s just a normal day until you get scared by some birds, and have to abandon the roofs and make your way home through the yards of the neighborhood. Each area is it’s own chapter – you need to figure out how to get across the yard safely by manipulating things in the environment, solving some puzzles, and avoiding the magpies which seem to be trying to hinder your progress.
The backgrounds are detailed and beautiful, but they ended up making me switch over to my PC, rather than playing on the small screen of the Steam Deck as I had planned. It was hard to see all the details on the Deck, and the details very much matter. You are only occasionally allowed to zoom in on things, so at least for me, this was a game much better suited to a large monitor than a handheld system.
It’s also not always readily apparent what you can and cannot click on, nor is it obvious what clicking on things will do. For example, instead of moving Milo to a place of your choosing, clicking on your kitty avatar will cause him to move in a scripted pattern, which may have be nowhere near where you wanted him. This wasn’t a problem once I got used to the idea, and took my hints from those movements instead of trying to solve puzzles independently.
There are “secrets” to be found in each chapter, and I managed to get a few, but I’ll admit that I didn’t spend much time hunting for them. I would have liked to see an in-game hint system rather than being directed to a video walkthrough or the game’s Discord, and in the end, I settled for a text guide from the Community Hub on Steam when I found myself stumped, which was less often than I expected to. Overall, there’s only a couple of obtuse puzzles – most of the game makes sense, at least in that “adventure game logic” sort of way.
If you like adventure games, and you’re looking for something charming and (mostly) family friendly, Milo and the Magpies might be right up your alley. There is one scene which small children might be frightened by near the end, and there’s one pretty blatant drug reference in one of the yards you pass through, so bear those things in mind if you plan to play alongside children. The whole game probably won’t take much more than an hour to complete, but it’s really a very lovely hour.
SteamDB estimates that Milo and the Magpies has sold between 34,200 and 94,100 copies on Steam. Reviewers have almost all recommended it, and with the gorgeous art, adorable main character, and low-risk price point, it’s not hard to see why. It is ranked 38 out of 10,967 games released in 2021.
Developer: Mighty Yell Release Date: August 31, 2021 MSRP: $14.99
I’m not sure what exactly is driving this wave of 90s nostalgia, but The Big Con is here for it, and goes all in. Full of neon colors, and almost-but-not-quite point-and-click adventure tropes, you play Ali, a high school student who is supposed to be on her way to band camp, but instead embarks on a crime-spree road trip to save her family’s small video store from a mobster who wants to sell it to a big corporation. You and your new partner have just a few stops to come up with nearly $100,000, which is an awful lot of money for a teenager just learning to pick pockets.
I’ll be honest, as far as mechanics go, The Big Con is nothing special. There’s the pick pocket mini-game, where you need to click when the indicator reaches the small colored section of the bar. Hit it at the wrong moment, or take too long, and you get caught. Get caught three times, and you’re going to be rewinding video tapes. Yes, you read that right. The punishment for failure is having to rewind. Unfortunately, this doesn’t clear anything – anyone you failed to steal from is still going to be suspicious of you, and if you want that loot, you’re going to need to find a disguise and try again.
You can – however – turn on an option to auto pickpocket, which relieves the game of a bit of tedium and annoyance, but also the only real game play mechanic in the whole game. Everything else is rummaging through trashcans, talking to people to find out what they want, and figuring out how to get it for them. The puzzle elements are not particularly challenging, and most of the time if you just touch everything you can, you’ll eventually get what you need to move forward.
The game isn’t overly long, if you aren’t trying to do absolutely everything. All in all, it took me about four hours, and even that was perhaps a bit long for the story it’s telling. And make no mistake, the story is the reason to stick around. Sometimes I’d get a moment or two of feeling very clever when I managed to find the thing I was looking for, and use it to extort the maximum amount of cash from my mark, but mostly, I was routing for Ali to foil the mobster and save the video store.
It certainly didn’t hurt that the entire premise gave me big Empire Records vibes.
All in all, The Big Con is a charming little heist story, albeit not a very challenging one. If you like light puzzles, neon colors, and the vibe of the mid-90s, you will likely enjoy this one. Completionists might find the single save system to be a bit frustrating, as if you miss something in an early level, your only recourse is to delete your save data (which you can do from the options menu) and start a fresh playthrough. I enjoyed the game, but not enough to want to replay the entire thing for nerdpoints.
SteamDB estimates that The Big Con has sold between 6,100 and 16,700 copies on Steam. It’s a niche title, but because the description is pretty upfront about what to expect, there’s been almost no negative reviews. It is ranked 175 out of 10,967 games released in 2021.
Developer: Silver Lining Studio Release Date: August 25, 2021 MSRP: $12.99
I find more and more lately that I enjoy games that are a compact & satisfying experience, but I am still struggling to shake off my tendency to value games by the quantity of their content. Knowing that the release version of Behind the Frame: The Finest Scenery could be easily completed in under an hour, it wasn’t a title I was likely to purchase unless it hit a really deep sale. However, when I noticed it was available on Utomik, and I still had several months on my annual sub, I figured that would be a perfect time to check it out.
Everything about this game is beautiful aesthetically. The animation is movie-quality, the sound design is immersive, and it leads you through a heartwarming little story. However, if you prioritize gameplay, you may find yourself disappointed. This is definitely a game that wants to take you on a journey – the puzzle aspects almost feel like an afterthought.
You play as a young painter, trying to finish up her submission for an art program, but finding herself distracted by everything from missing paint colors, to feline break ins. You needn’t have any artistic aptitude yourself in order to play – the sections which require you to sketch and paint can be a little fiddly, but you don’t have to be particularly accurate in the details, merely the correct color and approximate location will be enough.
As your character notices things, it is on you, the player, to finish making those connections. You can always check your journal in case you’ve forgotten precisely what you’re supposed to be looking for, and I found myself sometimes opening and closing it repeatedly to compare details I needed to solve puzzles. In the whole game, there was only one puzzle I found to be a little frustrating – most of the time, it’s pretty obvious what you need to do to progress.
The base game has six chapters, and will likely take about an hour to go through them all. It’s a self-contained story, but the developers recently released a free DLC with additional story content. The Utomik version says it has been updated, but I couldn’t figure out how to access the new content, and after fiddling around in menus a bit too much, I somehow managed to reset my progress completely, and could only play through from the beginning again. I elected not to.
Behind the Frame: The Finest Scenery is not particularly challenging, even for people who don’t go in too much for puzzle games or point and click adventures. Some bits were a little fiddly, but nothing was obscure enough that I felt like I needed to seek out a walkthrough. However, it’s a great argument for games as art in and of themselves. While I’m very glad that I made time to play it, I’m also not disappointed that I don’t own it, as I don’t see any circumstance in which I would feel the need to play it again.
SteamDB estimates that Behind the Frame: The Finest Scenery has sold between 67,900 and 186,700 copies on Steam. Reviews are almost entirely positive – it’s not an easy game to dislike – with the few detractors focusing on its length and lack of challenge. It is ranked 77 out of 10,967 games released in 2021.
I’ve been in a bit of a gaming slump lately, so when you combine that with the fact that I’m trying out about a dozen games a month for the Just One Percent Project, I haven’t really made too much time for playing games just because I want to. In fact, I hadn’t expected to get around to Escape Academy (which was available on its release day on XBoX Game Pass for PC) for awhile.
Then, a few days ago, I decided to load it up and play a room or two. Before I knew it, I was about halfway through the game, so I decided to see just how long it would take me to play through to completion. The answer was just under 4 hours. I definitely had a blast playing through this one, and I’m guessing it’d also be pretty enjoyable co-op, but all the rooms have set solutions, so there’s absolutely zero replayability, which in my book, is a little skimpy for a $20 title.
The first few challenges are pretty simple to get through if you have any idea how escape rooms tend to work, and probably very doable within the time limits even if you don’t. After that, the difficulty does ramp up, and I found myself relying on hints a few times when I got stumped. The game is fairly generous with the hint system, and using it a couple of times during a challenge doesn’t even confer too much of a penalty to your solve rank.
Each room you complete in time gives you a report card, rating how well you did, and then a detailed breakdown of how you were expected to figure everything out. There’s no penalty for doing things out of the intended order (although frequently you need to solve one part of the puzzle to be able to access another). If you’re really bummed about how you scored, you can replay any completed area from the bulletin board in your dorm room to improve your time & reduce deductions for using hints, but as much as I like gold medals and high scores, for me that felt like it’d be a bit tedious, as the solutions to puzzles don’t change at all.
There is already a season pass available for purchase for $14.99, which promises to basically double the length of the game in two DLCs over the next year or so. If you don’t have Game Pass, and you’re not in a rush to play, it might be worthwhile to wait until all the content has released and try to grab the complete package on sale. As it stands now, the playtime is on the low side, and the challenge is fair, but puzzle aficionados aren’t likely to run up against failure, so I’m not 100% sure the value is appropriate to the price, but it’s a pretty decent game nonetheless.
Nerd Girl Thoughts 