Shy Eye Labyrinth: The Incredible Mystery Reviews

boring gameplay

A puzzle-platformer made by a small Czech studio of four, with a greater emphasis on the platforming than the puzzles. Although it's not the prettiest game, I'd describe it as "competently made." A lot seems to have been done to make the platforming more forgiving, in a good, non-frustrating way. The game features the full suite of control customization options (which is sometimes too much to ask for smaller studios), as well the minimum of video options that you'd expect from this type of indie game. The one exception to this is FOV. The default FOV feels disorientingly narrow to me, even after having played the game to completion. An FOV slider would've been much appreciated. The game takes a minimalist approach when it comes to its visuals, especially when it comes to its user interface and set dressing. It feels like a lot of the same assets are reused throughout the game, and the environments tend to made up of a lot of these regular, geometric shapes, forming a visual style that's much more functional than attractive. A big thing that keeps the game from becoming visually stale is the diversity of its environments. The screenshots and trailer on the store page show just about every unique environment in the game, and as you can see, it's quite colorful. I should mention that the game you get is slightly less bright and colorful than what's shown in the screenshots, but it's not a super noticeable difference. It's important to reiterate that the game is more of a platformer than a puzzle game, and even then, the platforming isn't the kind of platforming you'd see in a game like Ghostrunner or Mirror's Edge. Shy Eye Labyrinth is, above all else, a casual game. For me, the process of exploring the game and learning about the world it takes place in was its most interesting facet. The game has a dismally anticlimactic story in the grand scheme of things, but in moment to moment gameplay, it does a good job stringing you along with bits and pieces of lore. It creates the illusion of a deep story to uncover so that you constantly feel compelled to progress. Although I do wish the game had a more interesting story, here's what I'll say: A lot of video game writing is terrible. All a story needs to do is give the player a reason to continue playing, and Shy Eye Labyrinth's story does just that as inoffensively as possible. Overall, I liked the game. Some casual games can be extremely repetitive and take 20 hours of investment to start getting interesting. Shy Eye is short and sweet, with maybe around 4-6 hours of content. It's not a great game, but it's not terrible either. If you're looking for a thrilling game that'll keep you on the edge of your seat, you're better off looking for a Halo Infinite or Metro Exodus. But, if you're just looking for something casual to play over the weekend, Shy Eye is as good an option as anything.

"Completing levels grants you the option to try your best in time challenges, which will prove if you are worthy of ascension." Ok. Credit to the developers, they do say on the store page, briefly, that the time trials are required to complete the game. It's my fault that I didn't notice that, and I made it through the first batch of 3 time trials. You know what they don't say though? That there's another, long level after that, which you do not have the option to try outside of a time trial environment, with a timer that is not particularly lax. Any failure can be catastrophic in that level as you can easily lose multiple minutes of progress with a single mistake, costing you the run. You also have to solve puzzles during the level, so you end up wasting a bunch of time figuring out what you need to do, and then trying to memorize the sequence; on a serious attempt you have to already have every step memorized. Only people who enjoy speedrunning are going to see the end of this game. I do not enjoy speedrunning. The story is... whatever, it's mostly occasional dialogue from the eyes and echoes, which are basically collectible audio logs. They mention a choice at the end, but I doubt I'll actually see that end. The sound is fine, soundtrack is functional. Visuals are pretty uniform but they do a good job of using color, level design and some unique objects to differentiate the areas. Headbob is aggressive but I got used to it quickly. There is no borderless windowed mode and the game defaults to 720p. All things that are easy to handwave if you like the game. You know what I bought this game expecting? Puzzle platforming. You know what I got? Platform speedrunning with like, a handful of puzzles. There is such a huge disconnect between the first and second halves of this game that it's unreal. I don't like being extremely harsh on indie projects, but in this case I think it's warranted. If you wanted the speedrunner audience, you needed to put that front and center on the store page, not in a throwaway line at the bottom. If, somehow, you are in the venn diagram of puzzle and speedrun enjoyers, the game might be worth a look.

I've not yet finished the game and will update once I do, but so far, it's excellent. This is a platform puzzler - I was worried because I'm not so good at the platform part of that combo, but 3 hours in, and I'm enjoying that part as much as the puzzles. And the puzzles are A+ so far - start out easy, and get much more difficult. There's also an intriguing story attached as you sort through the memories you run across and try to figure out exactly what is going on.