Recent reviews by BinarySplit

This is my GOTY for 2023.

TTP2 is more great puzzles of increasing difficulty like TTP1's (or The Witness's, or Relikta's, or Portal 2's), but where it truly shines is in its story. I found TTP1's story was kinda meh, like distant philosophers yelling parables at me. TTP2 puts you right in the middle of a world where the philosophical and pragmatic arguments matter, and you have every reason to engage with its questions. It has actual characters and societal problems and diverse opinions. It never feels like it's forcing a narrative. It poses some very timely questions on the future of society as our technology progresses, and gives you a lot to think as you're solving the puzzles.

On to the details - the worldbuilding and graphics are jaw dropping for a puzzle game, the sound design is superb, all characters are fully voiced, the puzzles are well done and most engage my brain without ever making me feel completely stuck, and the pacing is perfect - just as you feel there's a lull, there's a new twist to keep you interested.

IMO there's no need to play The Talos Principle 1 first. Maybe it's even better to play TTP2 first to give you a reason to listen to the story in TTP1.

It took me 35 hours to do all the puzzles and get the good ending, needing only 2 hints. You could finish it in 25 hours if you were willing to skip puzzles, but who plays these games and skips puzzles?

If you're reading and looking for a game, at this price, you'd be insane not to insta-buy it. It's a masterpiece, utterly packed with high quality content.

0 Deer Soft is in a league of their own when it comes to escape room puzzle games on Steam. Their quality, quantity, and price-to-game-ratio are unmatched. I've enjoyed every game they've made and eagerly await more. They consistently invent new kinds of puzzles that I haven't seen in other games. They're challenging, but always fair.

This is one more in a series of great games. Play this, then check out all their others.

This was fun! A good variety of puzzles. I had to break out pen & paper a couple times, and one puzzle almost had me stumped, but I pushed through and finished without hints and with about 8 deaths.

The timed death system makes you consider every movement you make, but it's not bad like the other reviewer said. There's an in-game checkpoint system (putting keys in the clock) and you only lose progress if you don't use those checkpoints. Tip: There's no bonus for using fewer checkpoints.

Price-wise, it feels like it should be more around the $10 mark to match other games in the genre. At that price I'd recommend it for escape room enthusiasts.

Surprisingly polished: awesome world design, fair puzzles, great difficulty progression. I enjoyed this. It gave my brain a good workout.

Compared to other games, I'd say this is a bit expensive, but on a 50%-off sale it'd be well worth it.

On to the bad side: though the puzzles are polished, there are a lot of technical annoyances: as soon as you start interacting with puzzles your mouse sensitivity drops massively. It feels awful. Some puzzles had me picking up my mouse to move back to the other side of the mouse pad several times just to drag something half-way across the screen. Also, performance is bad: In some areas even a 3090 TI will fall below 50 FPS when shadows are set to High. Switch to Medium and suddenly it's smooth 120+FPS. The game physics seems to have a different frame-rate. Sometimes the graphics were at 120FPS but half the things on screen were juddering as if it were sub-30FPS. Sometimes I would enter the right input for a puzzle and it wouldn't be recognized because something was invisibly slightly out of place.

Also, if you know anything about electronics or quantum computing, you'll find it a lot easier as the puzzles mostly resemble textbook exercises from those fields. I still enjoyed the brain workout despite it not introducing any new concepts to me though.

It's a great game, full of interesting characters and engaging gameplay. Even among other RPGMaker-style games set in imaginary worlds Omori has built its own unique niche... But I have to vent: It's too damn long.

I loved it up until the ~18 hour mark, and then Humphrey happened, followed by the black space key hunt and collecting memories along the highway and suddenly at what was supposed to be the most emotionally impactful part of the game I felt bored out of my mind because the story points were interspersed with highly time-consuming linear segments. Furthermore, the last ~20% of the game disregards most of your effort so far (the RPG side - side quests, character advancement, overworld exploration) so the only thing motivating you to get to the end is to wrap up the story. This part is just hours of walking from thing to thing hoping the next interaction will advance the plot.

Recommendation: Play it, but be prepared for it to slow down near the end. If it gets boring, don't be afraid to stop playing and watch video analyses of the endings. You won't miss anything. The endings are all very linear did not need to be so long.

It's remade but not improved.

Do I recommend it? Yes, but only because the original was already great and this version is faithful to it.

Am I disappointed? Yes, because this had the opportunity to go so much further, either updating the game design to make it more fun, or going full ham and making the gameplay even clunkier in a tribute to the original. This version is essentially an HD mod of the original.

TBH I recommend playing System Shock Enhanced Edition first. Even though it's objectively harder to play (horrific mouse controls), the retro style let my brain overlook all the jank and I actually found it more immersive, scary, and fun.

It has very few actual puzzles. The few puzzles it has are very straightforward. Nothing builds upon knowledge you gained from previous puzzles. Many of the puzzle-like scenes actually just require you to brute-force something to figure out the sequence. I think only about 20 minutes of my playtime required my brain to wake up.

The vast majority of the game is pointless interactions, and they're not even satisfying in a The Room kind of way. It's very linear - there's usually only one or two things to do at any point in time. You don't feel like you're exploring, the game just hands you key-like objects one at a time and you have to figure out where to put them. The limited camera angles force you to only look at relevant places. It's just busywork.

I enjoyed THoDV1, but this just felt like a completely different game. As if they streamlined it to push the story, but in doing so cut all the fun parts out.

If you're looking for mental engagement here are some games that do this style of puzzle box/escape room interactions better: Gordian Rooms, Machinika Museum, the First Class Escape and Escape Memoirs series, and The Inheritance of Crimson Manor to name a few.

Incredible Immersive Simulation. It's so much fun looking for clues, figuring out ways to track people down, burglarizing, messing with people and sneaking around.

I'm really looking forward to the mod support - it's already a very fun game and worth its full price, but it's also such a great sandbox that could be taken so much further.

About 90% of the puzzles were fun, and 10% were either annoying (exact color-matching - was tedious with full color vision, probably impossible for someone with colorblindness) or I couldn't figure them out even after seeing the hints (the 5 stars - how do they indicate quadrants?). But the important thing is that there is a good in-game hint system, so you won't get stuck for long and will get to enjoy the 90%.

The story's pretty unique, most of the puzzles are good, it's free, takes about 90 minutes to play. Definitely recommended if you like this sort of game.

It's short, but good for a free game. Fun puzzles. Took me 40 minutes to beat.