Aethernaut Reviews

A number of reviewers have commented on the somewhat clunky graphics. I do agree with that (especially having played Talos Principle 2 immediately before playing this) but I can forgive that as this was created by a small team that can never compete with the larger developers, and game-play is way more important than any fancy graphics. And it's game-play that brings me on to the major failings of this game... The game premise draws heavily from the likes of Talos and Portal, but these games start with gentle tutorial, usually starting with a cube and pressure-plate. This game however is straight in with at least 10 different game mechanisms, and little or no guidance; you just have to fathom it out for yourself. Also, some of the puzzles are really hard and repetitive. I was doing ok until I hit the time-portal mechanic. Then it got so hard that I got bored and just started auto-completing the puzzles. Looking at the percentage of players that gain each achievement, only around 25% actually complete the tutorial section. And only around 6% manage to get to the final set of puzzles. That's a terrible attrition rate, but I'm not surprised. There was a bug in one of the early puzzles where a door wouldn't open. However, resetting and re-playing the puzzle opens the door. Not only was that frustrating, but it cast doubt in my mind about all the other puzzles I struggled with; did I get it wrong, or is it a bug? I encountered a few other bugs, but they didn't really affect game-play. It's such a shame, because this is so nearly a decent game, but the learning curve needs shallowing-out, and some of the puzzles need to be made easier and/or less repetitive. I'd give this a score of 4/10 as I did actually enjoy a number of the puzzles.