The Entropy Centre Review (gedankenkind)
The Entropy Centre is a puzzle game by Stubby Games that, despite having no portals, does feel a lot like the Portal games. I don't usually like to make comparisons this clear, but there were times where I felt like it was Portal 2, and overall it felt a lot like the Portal Mods I've played. Both the environment and quite a few puzzle elements were very similar, and I don't necessarily mean that as a bad thing. I guess many of the players interested in this game are people like me who are always trying to fill that portal-shaped hole when a new puzzle game releases anyway.
The Entropy Centre is still its own game with its own story and twist, and it is really well crafted. It ran smoothly and I didn't find any bugs, visuals are pleasing, the environments are nice and voice acting is good. The story is nothing spectacular and somewhat predictable but still good, really fits the theme and I enjoyed it. Overall, now that I finished it, I loved playing The Entropy Centre and would have liked for it to last a little longer.
There is really nothing I dislike about the game (other than the fact that I spent a lot of my playtime just walking around in fear of missing something and still didn't find all terminal messages! But that's on me). However, there are some aspects that I have some mixed feelings about.
First and foremost: the puzzles. To be more specific, the difficulty of the puzzles.
While I do like the concept of the mechanic, and of most of the puzzles, and while I was a bit afraid it would get veeery complicated at first, it fell a bit short in the first half. I felt like the difficulty remained pretty much the same for quite a while.
But just when I was starting to even feel a bit bored because I found the puzzles too easy, they got more interesting. That was also the point where I got really immersed in the game and didn't want to stop playing anymore – it was always „just one more puzzle“. They didn't really get any more challenging than that second stage of difficulty until the end though, at least for me. So overall it felt like beginner levels and intermediate levels, but not much more than that.
Now, I am not even sure I mean that as a bad thing. I still had fun. Maybe just a warning to the more experienced puzzle game players that you shouldn't expect that much of a challenge.
Many puzzles were still satisfying to solve. They just weren't as mind-bending as I had hoped (or feared, not sure). The protagonist says once or twice that her brain hurts, and mine didn't at any point. Since I do love puzzle games on the one hand, but am also quite impatient on the other, it might just as well be a good thing, as the game never got frustrating. There were only two puzzles that annoyed me, where I knew pretty early on what I had to do but still took about half an hour or more to finally solve because I just couldn't get the execution right. But it was just two of them and I can't say they affected my overall experience too much. So, in conclusion, puzzles are good, but a bit more of a challenge would have been nice. Take that with a grain of salt if you are (relatively) new to puzzle games though.
Then there are the action sequences. Whenever I encountered them I really didn't want to do them. They weren't really fun for me, but I also think it's important they are there. They create that feeling of urgency that would get completely lost otherwise, and that I do think is important for the story. Also, they usually don't last that long.
The last aspect I wasn't too happy about is that you can't save your game manually, but you also don't get any indication during the game as to where the checkpoints are. Most of the time it wasn't that much of a problem, but I had to redo some bits that I felt I shouldn't have had to redo considering where I died/stopped. Once or twice I quit to main menu, just to load the game again for a moment to make sure I would start where I intended to the next time I'd continue playing.
So, all in all, I was a bit sceptical in the beginning, but The Entropy Centre managed to draw me in eventually and I really enjoyed it. Especially considering it was to a large extent made by only one person as far as I can tell, it is an amazing game that definitely belongs among my favourite puzzle games that are not Portal, there aren't that many of them that I enjoyed this much. So if you like puzzles, portals (even though there aren't any here), cubes (there are quite many!) and the likes, I absolutely recommend The Entropy Centre. I also recommend it if you don't really know what I'm talking about here and it's your first or one of your first puzzle games because I think the difficulty allows for less experienced players to maybe have a harder time but eventually enjoy it too.