Kredolis

Well. I appreciate the years of passion went into the project, and there's much to be proud of in the result. It's a very short but coherent puzzle game with enchanting level design. The Myst and The Witness inspiration is quite obvious.

Alas, it does not work very well as a game.

The puzzles are just not very satisfying. A few are too tedious, involving trial and error, rinse and repeat. And two pattern-matching puzzles made no sense to me at all. Worst is the need for pixel-perfect clicks. For example, I spent half an hour trying things again and again in one area, to no avail. In despair I looked up a walkthrough and discovered that something I clicked on multiple times had to be clicked on from exactly the right angle. Maybe some players will get it right, but I'm sure I'm not the only frustrated one.

There are also technical issues. Right from the start I could see that the settings menu was buggy. I was unable to set my 4K resolution and ended up playing at 1080p. That's within expectations for indie games, unfortunately, but it was not a good sign. I didn't encounter other bugs, but the discussions have several bug reports. After a few responses, it seems the dev has retreated and they won't be fixed. It's probably not fun to continue working on what you consider to be a finished project.

The story, too, is disappointing. It feels like there was ambition to do something much bigger, but we are left with a handful of fragments, gaping logical holes, and an abrupt ending.

Maybe Kredolis could have been something good with a few more years of work.