Treehouse Riddle Reviews

Tons of challenging puzzles. I loved it!

I see no reason to play this when there are like eight Layton games. The puzzles are all super famous (how fast can you solve the Tower of Hanoi? Or Four Queens?) or they're rote busywork. The rare puzzle that isn't is usually clunky and indecipherable. Worse, the puzzles are all that's here. The story is barely present, and when it is present, barely felt; a real bread sandwich of a narrative. The sprites 90% stock RPG Maker assets, and 10% unhappy little accidents that look like they were rushed out in MS Paint. What else even is there? I guess the non-sprite assets look nice. That's kind of it though. Also, the translation feels a bit rushed in places. Hardly unplayable, but I expected better from FBF. :(

I had a lot of fun with this game. Your character gets trapped in a few rooms and you must solve a series of puzzles to escape. The puzzles have a difficulty ramp, in that when you first see a certain kind of puzzle, it is fairly easy, but it's good practice for later when you encounter the puzzle again but it's significantly more challenging. The story is melancholy and there's only a little bit of it. * Vague Spoilers! * Most of the puzzles are charming and a lot of fun and can be figured out by playing around with them enough without hints, but a small number of the puzzles are a little sketchy since I can't imagine solving them without hints. One of them needs a calculator because the calculator you're supposed to use doesn't work right in that scenario, and another doesn't accept a valid word you can figure out from the story, because it wants the non-specific synonym of that word instead. The first dice puzzle doesn't make the unique part of it obvious enough so when you set the dice down it just looks like it has poor snapping and you may not realize it's an important part of the puzzle. Most of those issues aren't a big deal though because you'll still be able to finish them with the hints, so I still had fun. Overall, I really liked this game and am glad I picked it up.

This is a hard review to write. On one hand, the game is rather charming, tells a heartfelt, if somewhat bland, story with a good message, The puzzles are interesting enough, and some of them are quite interesting ideas that I have never seen before. While a lot of it looks to stock assets, the original sprites and art look very nice. On the other hand, some of the puzzles just aren't good. Specifically, the final puzzle of the main story is absolutely ridiculous and feels more like a scavenger hunt than a puzzle, and some puzzles have issues where the rules just aren't presented very well. The hint and skip system helped with that, but with the game being best compared to Professor Layton, I wonder if they should have just described what the puzzles are looking for rather than just "have fun". On one hand, I really enjoyed my time with this game, but on the other hand, I think everything it does is done a lot better by every single Layton game. Furthermore, with what is here and how quick you can get through the main story before going to the bonus mode, $15 is asking a lot. I paid like $10 on sale, and while I think it is worth that, it is barely worth it. In total, if you are a Professor Layton fan who played through all the games, and can manage to get this on sale, then I recommend it. However, if you haven't played all the Layton games and either have a DS and the ability to get Professor Layton games, or even just a smartphone new enough to run the recent HD releases some of them have had on the appstores, your money would be much better spent on those.

This game is actually very charming and peaceful. The puzzles are all very Professor Layton-like (though no matchstick puzzles!) and the game provides you with two hints per puzzle. Hints are free and there is no penalty for using them. Everything in game goes at your own pace and you can try each puzzle as many times as you'd like. There is a timer running in the background of each puzzle so you can challenge yourself to see how fast you can solve each one! The story is pretty simple and told through quick little scenes. The game focuses more on the puzzles than the plot which is fine. It is a puzzle game after all and it's not the same depth as a Layton. This took me 8.7 hours to complete though depending on how well you do on some puzzles, especially the challenge "boss" ones, you may take more or less time. I'd say for the price it's okay but you may want to wait for a sale unless you really love puzzles. I do think it's worth the price but your mileage may vary depending on how much you like this type of game. The puzzles themselves are solid overall. They are a bit like Layton puzzles in that sometimes you may need to use some logic to do things you wouldn't think to do given the board you have. Some involve unconventional uses of pieces and others you can brute force if you really get tired of them. I would say the amount of puzzles that actually frustrated me are pretty low - most of them being pure math puzzles since, well, I'm bad at math. It somewhat scratches a Layton itch but doesn't quite hit that high for me. Either way, I had fun and some of the puzzles I found to be pretty clever. Overall, I enjoyed this game and am very happy a studio out there is making stuff like this!