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Recordkeeping: Varenje Chapter 1 COMPLETE
Well this was a steamy hot mess. Uh...
Imagine you crossbred Machinarium or Samorost with a hidden object game. That's what you get from Varenje, a free-to-start, buy-our-chapters game over on Steam. In other words, you get a charmingly-drawn game where your objective is always to find the 9 whatsits buried in the scenery and then to use them for an obtuse purpose. A few of the puzzles then briskly solve themselves, like the Pipe Dream maze where you can't actually create a link that would fail the maze.
This game frustrates me a lot because we can do better. Hidden object games don't have to be this obtuse and unfriendly, puzzle games don't have to solve themselves, adventure games don't need to incorporate some of the poorer design choices of the genre.
There are some interesting ideas and concepts here but they're sunk in deep. I went in really WANTING to love this and came out feeling let down.
Also the framework story on the Steam page doesn't... seem to have anything to do with the game itself, at least not in this chapter? That's honestly the most minor of issues.
There are seven more chapters of this thing. I really have other stuff to do.
Imagine you crossbred Machinarium or Samorost with a hidden object game. That's what you get from Varenje, a free-to-start, buy-our-chapters game over on Steam. In other words, you get a charmingly-drawn game where your objective is always to find the 9 whatsits buried in the scenery and then to use them for an obtuse purpose. A few of the puzzles then briskly solve themselves, like the Pipe Dream maze where you can't actually create a link that would fail the maze.
This game frustrates me a lot because we can do better. Hidden object games don't have to be this obtuse and unfriendly, puzzle games don't have to solve themselves, adventure games don't need to incorporate some of the poorer design choices of the genre.
There are some interesting ideas and concepts here but they're sunk in deep. I went in really WANTING to love this and came out feeling let down.
Also the framework story on the Steam page doesn't... seem to have anything to do with the game itself, at least not in this chapter? That's honestly the most minor of issues.
There are seven more chapters of this thing. I really have other stuff to do.