I enjoyed the variety of puzzles and locations in Pahelika, but it did have a few problems that make it less than a 5 star game for me. It was often hard to identify inventory objects. There were no descriptions of objects once I'd picked them up, and often not before I picked them up either. So in puzzles where you're supposed to combine or use inventory, I'd be blindly trying everything on everything rather than making logical combinations. Also, some puzzles had no clues, and you had to "solve" them by trying all possibilities. For example, the lever puzzle in the machine-oriented world was like this -- I had to try all different positions of the levers to discover the correct one. There was another puzzle with red and green lights where the game provided you with clues while you were fumbling with the puzzle. That's not the best solution. Better to have the player find the clues themselves before starting the puzzle. Otherwise it's like having an automatic hint feature you can't turn off. The story was vague and uninteresting, but at least the narrator's voice was pleasant enough and his speeches not too long. Overall the game was fun and I was a little sorry to see it end. If Pahelika is the first game from this developer, it's a good start. Give this Review a KudosReport as Inappropriate
magfan
Posted on Jul 6, 2009, 4:40pm
4 Stars
User Review by magfan
I enjoyed the variety of puzzles and locations in Pahelika, but it did have a few problems that make it less than a 5 star game for me. It was often hard to identify inventory objects. There were no descriptions of objects once I'd picked them up, and often not before I picked them up either. So in puzzles where you're supposed to combine or use inventory, I'd be blindly trying everything on everything rather than making logical combinations. Also, some puzzles had no clues, and you had to "solve" them by trying all possibilities. For example, the lever puzzle in the machine-oriented world was like this -- I had to try all different positions of the levers to discover the correct one. There was another puzzle with red and green lights where the game provided you with clues while you were fumbling with the puzzle. That's not the best solution. Better to have the player find the clues themselves before starting the puzzle. Otherwise it's like having an automatic hint feature you can't turn off. The story was vague and uninteresting, but at least the narrator's voice was pleasant enough and his speeches not too long. Overall the game was fun and I was a little sorry to see it end. If Pahelika is the first game from this developer, it's a good start. Give this Review a Kudos Report as Inappropriate