I nearly doubled over in my chair, overwhelmed with the emotion I felt trying to make sense of what had transpired. Those seven all-caps letters exploded out of the emptiness I'd just exposed by solving the final puzzle. Although not the best title in the series, it offers an enjoyable albeit brief foray into that unique world.Platform: Windows PC (reviewed), Nintendo Switch, iOSĪfter my last click of the mouse, the screen went to black, with only the word "Gorogoa" flashing. In other words, taking the time to find all of the achievements is unfortunately not really worth it unless you enjoy that extremely brief moment of excitement when you recognize a recurring character.Īs a spinoff title, The White Door breaks somewhat from the established gameplay mechanics of previous games, but still delivers some of the oddness that distinguishes the bizarre universe of Rusty Lake. Only one or two of the achievements actually add to the narrative and very minimally flesh out the story. Others will only make sense to those who have played previous Rusty Lake games because their sole purpose is to cameo prior characters. Some of these achievements simply add a bit of fluff to the game and don’t really have any other point. I honestly don’t know how a person could possibly discover them all without either seeking assistance online or spastically clicking on every portion of every screen as if they’d ingested two gallons of coffee. The White Door also offers 14 hidden achievements. But taking an extra 10 minutes to complete this ending really pulls all the pieces together and creates a more memorable experience. To fully understand what’s happened to Robert, you need to uncover the secret ending, which isn’t really so secret. So in addition to perhaps feeling ripped off, you might also feel unfulfilled and even confused by the story. However, completing the game that quickly undoubtedly means that you missed some hidden nuggets. You can breeze through The White Door in an hour or two though, and some people might find that too short for the price tag. The fact that players might be left wanting more is not necessarily a bad thing. Many of the Rusty Lake games are relatively short. I’d say the real weak point of the game is its brevity. So their lack of complexity only slightly detracts from the game’s overall assessment. The puzzles just provide something entertaining to do while you uncover the tragedy of this moment in Robert’s life. However, contrary to some puzzle games, the mystery and story are the high points here. At the very least, it would have made the game a bit longer. This could be seen as a weak point in The White Door, and it is unfortunate that the developers didn’t ramp up the difficulty just a tad. I had no problem with most of them, and I’m not particularly adroit at unraveling puzzles. Very few require more than a few seconds to solve. The puzzles in the game are not stumpers by any means. This elegant navigation method makes for a refreshingly intuitive and uncomplicated mobile UI. For example, if Robert uses the PC on the table in the left window, a closeup of the computer screen displays in the right window. The right side of the screen dynamically changes depending on what Robert interacts with in the main window. It displays the entirety of Robert’s hospital room and allows you to navigate freely around that space. The left side of the screen can be considered the main window of the game. The game instead offers a third-person split-screen view that seems to take at least some inspiration from the delightful 2017 puzzle game Gorogoa. Simple and Pleasantīesides not quite reaching the level of eeriness typical in Rusty Lake games, The White Door also breaks from the familiar layout of previous titles. In doing so, you will uncover the sorrowful reason for his troubled mind. It’s up to you as the player to ascertain how and why he came to be there. The game begins with the protagonist Robert Hill waking up to find himself locked in what seems to be a room in an asylum. However, it’s not as pervasive as gamers familiar with the series might expect. The White Door is more simplistic in style than its predecessors but still creates a general atmosphere of unease. From this stems a large part of its charm. It’s a place where things tend to follow their own peculiar logic. The Rusty Lake world is eerie and surreal, to put it mildly. While the games share a common theme and setting, they are disparate enough that you don’t need to have played any of the previous titles to enjoy The White Door. Conveniently and perhaps confusingly, Rusty Lake is the name of the developer, the name of the second series of games they created, and also a prominent setting for many of the games. An atmospheric, narrative-driven point-and-click puzzle game from the creators of the Cube Escape and Rusty Lake series, The White Door is the first spin-off title set in the Rusty Lake universe.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |