AuroraBound Deluxe Reviews

Well-colored, simple and relax puzzle. Seems good to me.

its quite relaxing keeps the mind alert being as i am an older person.

the meditative quality of the music plus the soothing colors makes this a calming go-to pleasure.

Bought this while it was on sale and it is the best £3.49 I have spent, really having a lot of fun workingmy way through the puzzles (currently up to set 11), some are more challenging than others but it's a blast playing them and I am really glad I bought Aurora Boound Deluxe, can not recommend it highly enough.

For those who are fans of quiet, zen puzzlers, this beautiful gem is an absolutely must to have. Lovely to look at with simple dynamics for rotating or moving the playing pieces, it's neither too easy, nor, at this point on Level 14, too hard. I did complete a randomly generated max difficulty with only rotating pieces and didn't find it at all frustrating, though the playing pieces were kinda tiny on my laptop screen. So happy to be able to support this developer who created a game that's relaxing and a joy to play. Worth the modest price.

The game is ok, but there are other similar games out there that are clearly better: I'd suggest people go play Loop instead, it has a similar aesthetic without being aggravating.

[u]In short:[/u] AuroraBound Deluxe is a casual puzzle game relying largely on visual patterns instead of hard logic. In many ways it's a one-trick pony but if you don't mind tons of clicking it can be a fairly meditative experience - at least for the first 16 or so worlds (2-3 hours of playtime) until it transitions from hand-crafted levels to procedurally generated ones. The level generator (especially on higher difficulties) is pretty terrible and really ramps up the frustration. This is a tenuous recommendation largely based on the very low price, but especially completionists/achievement hunters should think twice before picking this one up. [u]In long:[/u] The [b][u]gameplay[/u][/b] consists of placing or rotating square tiles on a grid. Placement and rotation are mutually exclusive to each other and the only interactions the game offers. A tile may have up to 4 colours (one per edge) and the goal is to fill the grid in a way that only same-colour edges are next to each other. There are some very light elements of logic to it, but mostly you can turn your brain off and just click away. Multiple valid solutions are not uncommon for levels. The easiest way to solve most stages is actually to recognize and follow the over-all visual pattern, rathern than trying to find forced moves (which are not guaranteed to exist). Depending on what you're looking for in a puzzle game this will land anywhere between "dumb and primitive" or "nice and meditative". There is a lot of [b][u]content[/u][/b]. The game comes with a "campaign" of sorts where you move through different "worlds" (small level packs) and levels gradually and smoothly ramp up in difficulty and complexity. Or you can turn to the included level generator with adjustable difficulty and the ability to apply a weight between the rotation and placement mechanics. So far this sounds awesome, but not all is well. There is no world select menu; once you've completed a world or a level there is no way of going back to it. The first 15 or 16 campaign worlds were well-tuned with pretty patterns that kept me busy for around 2.5 hours. But around world 17 I was baffled by a sudden and sharp drop in quality paired with a big spike in difficulty. From reading the forums it appears the developer only included a limited number of hand-crafted levels as an introduction and then made the game silently transition to randomly generated levels. The trouble being - the level generator is not particularly good. On higher difficulties it loves throwing completely empty boards at you, asking you to place 120+ tiles with nothing to even hint at how to start off. The visuals - the defining feature of the game and the main mechanic - are often not something a human would recognize as a repeating pattern either. The "hint" system is basically just an auto-solver where you can tell the game to correctly place any number of tiles. So it's not just that I'm missing the pattern - you can have the game assemble the solution and often I couldn't identify a pattern from that either. Setting the level generator to low difficulty values produced some enjoyable results, but higher difficulties are just awful and poorly balanced. Sadly the achievements ask you to beat several worlds on max difficulty which is where the vast majority of my playtime was spend with quite a lot of frustration. The [b][u]UI[/u][/b] has some neat features, but also some glaring shortcomings. The level transitions are lovely and I like how the worlds are pattern puzzles themselves. LMB and RMB rotating in different directions is very helpful, as is unsolved tiles being shaded a little darker. Every colour has a distinct pattern for seamlessly built-in colour-blind support. The sound effects are a little on the jarring side but overall fine, the ambient music is very nice and subtle. But for a game built around visual patterns it never really gives you time to marvel at your work - the moment a level is completed, the game automatically moves to the next. For the more complex (especially generated) levels where you quickly run out of forced moves and need to try out some placements an undo functionality is desperately needed and missing. The level generator could have used more in-depth settings (like decoupling size from difficulty). Besides click-drag to move you can also click to select a tile and click a second time to move it to a slot, which sometimes unintentionally swapped tiles for me. Maybe save-slots or any way to replay the hand-crafted levels would have been nice too. The [b][u]technical aspects[/u][/b] are exemplary and leave nothing to be desired. The graphical settings are excellent (resolution drop down, fullscreen toggle, texture quality, anti-aliasing). Music and sfx volumes can be adjusted via seperate sliders. Never had any problems, bugs, or crashes. Good stuff! In [b][u]conclusion[/u][/b] you get about what you pay for - a very simple, click-heavy pattern puzzle that is nice and enjoyable for a few hours. Depending on what you want out of this you'll find it somewhere between meditative and primitive. Level generators are always a welcome addition but the quality it produces is severely lacking and frequently missing any kind of recognizable pattern. This fairly frustrating endgame experience is easily salvaged by the very low price point (especially for the bundle, Line Loops is a much better game). Only achievement hunters should beware - some achievements require you to play randomly generated levels on the highest difficulty without using hints, which can take hours of trial-and-error to solve.

This is a tough game. 9 hours in and I've barely scratched the surface. It's a beautiful game. For a logic game (which it is), it's just pleasing to the eye, calming, and not too distracting. There are some levels that I wish they'd give you a starting point. There is a hints thing you can turn on, but there's also Steam achievements for NOT using hints. So, if you feel like being extra-challenged, try going it without any help at all. Hours and hours of game play on this one, unless you're a genius who'll breeze through it. :) Give it a go!

This is another 'background' game for me. I've been playing it while binge-watching a show and really enjoying it. That said, I've still got two achievements I haven't gotten yet because my brain is going cross-eyed.... Haha! Really though, it's a fun and surprisingly difficult puzzle game, that never seems to end! Definitely worth a play if you like puzzles. :)

[b]aurorabound deluxe[/b] is the precursor to the excellent [url=https://steamcommunity.com/id/dohi64/recommended/1068540]aurora hex[/url], but with squares instead of hexagons. it's a relaxing jigsaw-like with colorful patterns and the only 'mechanics' are placing and rotating tiles. there are [b]a bunch of hand-crafted levels[/b]. according to the developer, about 200 in about 20 worlds, but it's actually less, as most of those packs consist of fewer than 10 levels. still, there's a good amount and each world is a puzzle of its own once every level is solved there. then it turns [b]generated until the end of time[/b]. worlds unlock one by one, but every level adjacent to a solved one is available within and [b]current level progress is saved when you quit[/b]. unfortunately, [b]there's no level select or level numbers[/b], which are two of my pet peeves, non-generated levels should be easily replayable. since it's a very simple game, it [b]doesn't really matter if you're playing hand-made or generated levels[/b], so I let the lack of such basic necessity slide just this once. [b]custom puzzles are unlocked from the start[/b], you can set difficulty, the palette and the ratio of rotatable and regular tiles, then play as many of them as you want. controls are simple: click and drag or click to place, left/right click to rotate in both directions. colorful and relaxing minimalist presentation, separate volume settings, resolutions, windowed mode, some graphics settings, many languages, also available during levels, the only thing missing is a static background toggle. there's also a [b]hint button[/b] if you get stuck, lets you set the number of hints to use at once, which is pretty neat. setting the maximum will simply and quickly solve the whole level for you, though there's not much point in that. while being practically identical, I prefer [b]aurora hex[/b] because I love hexagons, but this is good too, except [b]without level select I can't recommend it at full price[/b].