Viewfinder Reviews

Started out as a great game, I was willing to give it an 8/10 but then the last level... Why is the game all of a sudden on a timer? It's a massive spike in difficulty and it's too frustrating to complete. Thank god they added an option to turn the stupid timer off because when i turned the timer off and finished it took me 12 minutes. There is no way in hell i was going to ever make that 5 minute timer. The amount of trial and error for me to achieve that in under 5 minutes is ridiculous. It's either that or look up a guide and use a speed runner strat because that's all the last level was... Just speed runner nonsense. It would have been fine for an optional end game map but not for the last level. After the nonsense of the last level i was left feeling bitter with the game and i couldn't give a shit about the story anymore. Game is a 5/10 Waste of time, Story goes nowhere and so does the gameplay.

Really cool concept, but the game games itself was pretty underwhelming. $25 for less than 3 hours of a main story. All of the puzzles were extremely easy. Required very little thinking outside the box or creative use of mechanics that it had established. NPCs and story were pretty uninspired.

It didn't have much to offer the puzzles were all very easy and straight forward, the story was just pointless and could have been replaced with any insert meaningful/mysterious type thing here. But for all of it's shortcomings, it was a pretty cool and creative little puzzle game.

A really nice game - not to hard levels but makes for a relaxing puzzle time. A lot of fun things to discover on each map, and a bit emotional story.

I absolutely love the art style. Puzzles are mostly simplistic, but still I had fun with them and I only wish the game was longer.

I actually really enjoyed this! The environments were really nice and relaxing to explore, and the puzzles were quite unique and interesting, I think if anything my only real complaint was some of the puzzles feeling a bit too easy, but the ones that were harder were quite fun, especially the one with the melon... I hope to see more some day! With harder puzzles and maybe some more of the outside world too. Great game, check it out if you like puzzle games similar to Portal and such!

eh. certainly novel idea w/ the perspective thing but idk. wasnt hooked in the story and the puzzles are fine? wasnt hard or anything, theyre fine i guess?

Finishing this game, I set it aside and am left with a feeling of profound disappointment. The levels are beautiful, the core mechanics are well done and visually striking, there is a playfulness to the scattered secrets that is enjoyable, but... the puzzle design is exceptionally lacking. The game introduces a new mechanic, gives 3-4 levels of basic introduction to how the mechanic works, and then... introduces a new mechanic right away with another 3-4 levels of basic introduction to how the mechanic works. It does not linger on any mechanic long enough for the player to really get creative with it, and rarely does it require the player to apply what they've learned in any way that is not immediately obvious. That is not to say that there are not good puzzles buried in here, a few of the optional levels were quite enjoyable, but for every one puzzle I liked I felt like there were five that were just wasting my time. The story similarly missed in a way that was all the more disappointing for coming so close to something I could enjoy. It was a neat set up, it was interesting to try and piece these character's lives together from the bits and pieces scattered throughout their work spaces, but there were a couple of points that just made the whole story fall apart for me. I feel like framing the story inside a simulation rather than the real world had some implications that were poorly thought out. The CAIT guide could have been lovely, but it's praise for the more simple puzzles felt patronizing and its personality didn't really match that of the character that supposedly programmed it. I also think that, were I living in the environmental catastrophe that the game's 'real world' apparently is, I would have wanted to scream at CAIT for its patient questioning of how important this research really was. It came close to being good but it isn't, at least not in my opinion. Also, light travels faster than sound. I know this isn't supposed to be an educational game, but it was such a weirdly jarring thing to be playing and have one of the geniuses confidently claim the reverse as part of their monumental breakthrough.

Absolutely addicted to this game. It's a perfect length where it's long enough to feel satisfied, and short enough to where I didn't get bored, challenging enough to where it's not just a walking simulator, and easy enough to where it is still relaxing

I really wanted to like this game - it seemed to have a really cool concept. But I just couldn't. It's trying way too hard to be meaningful and inject a climate change message, but it just falls flat because there's not much substance beyond a few conversations and some straightforward gameplay. None of the characters, who you mostly meet by voice recordings, are especially likeable and there's not a lot of meaningful observation or dialog. It just feels so empty and short. It gives the impression that it was designed by a bunch of theater art majors who played The Witness and The Talos Principle and desperately want to make something meaningful, but just don't know anything about game mechanics. The gimmick of turning photos into reality is honestly pretty cool and they probably spent a lot of time getting it working, but it goes stale extremely fast; the sub-elements add very little variety or challenge, and most puzzles you can solve the first time you see them, even the optional challenge ones. It's not a really bad game, I just don't think it deserves its "very positive" current rating when neither the story nor the gameplay stand out from other games of this type. Let's just say it's no Portal.