Faraway: Director's Cut

This is the 1st in a series of 3 (so far) satisfying first-person puzzle games.

Production values are not very high as these games were also released for mobile devices, but they work very well for the gameplay. The music is pretty and calm but unfortunately repeats itself for the entire game. It would have been nice to get more variety, perhaps a track per level. The "story", really just the piecing together of notes you find, is barely there and has nothing to do with the gameplay. A missed opportunity to provide depth. The game engine is a bit buggy: sometimes the in-game camera doesn't work, producing all-black photos. You can use other methods to take screenshots instead. By the way, this paragraph is true for all three games in the series.

But you've come for the puzzles! And they are nice, of medium difficulty and mostly fair. There are a few annoying ones that require quick action. For those you absolutely want to play with a mouse and keyboard, even though the game does support gamepads.

All the games have at least two puzzle-solving components. The first is just completing the levels. The second is searching each level for three notes. The first note is always in plain sight, the second is hidden, and the third involves solving an extra puzzle. Finding that third note can be tricky, often those are the most difficult puzzles in the game, requiring you to think outside the box.

This "director's cut" adds two more gameplay components: secret levels that you need to unlock by finding hidden puzzle pieces scattered in the levels, and... Steam achievements. These are both annoying, though the extra levels are nice, if easy. I strongly recommend using a program called FarawaySaveAnalyzer by mastan-rus, available on GitHub, which will tell you exactly what you're missing to get the coveted 100% completion.