izigame.me

My favourite of the three games so far. Great vibes, intuitive "spatial puzzles" and fetch quests. Definitely recommend!

The central hub world with its branching rooms works really well and never feels overwhelming. The use of the lens to go on short journeys is really nice, and you never have to worry that you've missed something there.

Building off of Room 2, the vibes and locations are excellent. In particular the use of the zoetrope and mechanical Turk were really nice.

I needed hints about once per room, and the hint system is pretty great. The first hint usually just tells you what area you should be in, without giving much away.

Two places that could be improved

1. It's hard to tell when you're missing an object vs just doing it wrong

There are a bunch of puzzles that you can only interact with in a very specific way and it feels bad to get stuck, look up a hint, and then it sends you back to somewhere you've already looked and tried to interact with. For example, the telephone only rotates clockwise, so when I tried to moved it counterclockwise, it didn't move, so I figured I was missing some handle or something. Even adding a bit of "wiggle" if it's moved in the wrong direction would help. The gear puzzle in the courtyard is like this too.

2. The ending(s) need to be reworked

* Solving the same ending puzzles over and over to get the additional endings is tedious, and not fun. Keep the projector up and just allow players to add the final artifacts. Or open multiple different doors lining up with the 4 tarot cards.
* The post-game material is mostly frustrating because of the clock puzzle and the chandelier/safe puzzles gating the rest. These two puzzles are so unlike everything else in the game and require the player to interact with objects in counter-intuitive ways. The post-game puzzles could be more like "expert" versions of what we've done earlier in the game to make us feel smart and that we've grown.
* The lack of (formal) hints for the post-game is fine, but I'd love to have more "in game" hints (e.g. blue lens "paint", or themes to the artifacts like "sound", or the craftsmen's key hums/glows when you get closer to the relevant puzzle). As it is I just had to look up guides on steam (which is not ideal).