AuroraBound Deluxe Reviews

[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 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. :)