Zof Reviews

A short but great puzzle game! Had a great variety of puzzles inside, mostly involving some trick or interpretation you needed to understand to figure out how the puzzle works, but I enjoy that sort of thing. The environments are gorgeous too in my opinion. Deffo worth trying the demo to see if you like it, I certainly did and liked the whole game too! ^w^

Zof is a multi-level puzzle-based game, set in hugely varying & often stunning graphical environments (seas, aerial platforms, space, woodland glades, deserts, snow, etc) and architectures/machinery (stone towers, toy buildings, tombs, mazes, steampunk, drones, lasers, etc). Puzzle levels are self-contained and standalone, and can be attempted in any order (though the game nudges players towards levels in order of increasing difficulty). At the end of every level except the last, the player returns to a central zone of floating islands, on which beacons must be identified (with increasing complexity) and then followed to lead the player to teleport gates, each of which can access two puzzle levels. There are no explicit instructions about puzzles; instead, the idea is that, through looking for clues in the environment, and by trying the various mechanisms and observing their effects, players can gradually work out what needs to be done. I found that I could do this for some puzzles, but not for others where I needed a starting reference from the invaluable official guide - this gives a series of suggestions and hints for each puzzle level, while encouraging the player to read as few as possible. Another omission is the complete absence of any kind of overarching story or lore - puzzles are solved solely for satisfaction and to reach the next ones. I thought that this lack of context would detract from the game, but actually I don't think that it did; I would rather just have a good series of graphically pleasing and varying puzzles, than have a half-hearted lore uncomfortably lumped on top. There are no jump scares or dangers (other than an occasional bug of getting locked onto a particular spot which requires leaving the level and returning to it - thankfully little progress is lost - and this happened to me in the Woodland Ruins level and twice in the Sky Walker level. Nor is there any music for most of the game, but there are lots of atmospheric operational sound effects such as switches operating, doors opening & closing, metal bridges being walked on, and so on. But, ultimately, the most amazing thing about this very enjoyable game for me is that it is apparently the creation of a single developer - what an achievement! Edit: I thought that I ought to add that some graphics quality settings would be useful, as the fan on my graphics card had to work very hard (and noisily!) when playing Zof; a slight reduction in graphics intensity would make no difference to the game play. Also, that the hardest puzzles for me were mostly the sound-based ones in which a higher volume and a greater difference between pitches and/or rhythms would have aided my old ears!