I picked up a couple of games for free and gave them a try. Region of Ruins (RoR) was a surprise hit for me. The Search was thankfully short (finished it in about an hour).

The secret recipe for a game to hook me is to, apparently, present me a map with something akin to a fog of war and tell me to explore it. I was afraid of the 10 hour (min) playtime for RoR, but ended up playing much more as I felt the need to explore everything. It started off difficult (on the easy setting, no less), but less than a third of the way in, I managed to OP my character with some combination of armor and weapons. Then it got enjoyable.

The mechanics are a little confusing at first, but it is essentially a hybrid exploration-building RPG. You have a “home base” and the first few introductory “quests” help you along. You can explore circular areas on your map to uncover stages (ruins, farms, towns, caves, etc.). The further away from your home base, the more food is required to uncover that part of the map. The majority of stages require killing off all of the enemies in a side-scrolling view. There is some platforming, both in terms of reaching enemies as well as solving puzzles, but in most cases it was not too tricky.

Some stages you can rescue dwarfs or, in one case, an undead. They will join your home base or you can assign them to farm resources from the stages you have cleared out (hence the need to kill all of the enemies). The resources are used to build a collection of buildings for your base (e.g., storage, blacksmith, etc.) as well as upgrade them for extra bonuses.

One thing I did not like was the rune system. There are over 100 stages and one stage may vaguely send you to the north to explore some ruin or another to figure out what the rune pattern is. Then you come back and apply it to open up a coffin for treasure. Probably the best thing the developer did was create an online map with solutions to save you the hassle.

Nonetheless, I had fun playing RoR. The stage mechanic lets you easily bite-size your playtime (or suffer the “just one more” syndrome and wonder where your last two hours went). The challenge curve was a little wonky, though stable for about 75-80% of it, but it wasn’t too frustrating that I put the controls down and said that was enough. The old school pixel graphics might put you off initially, but if you end up enjoying the gameplay, it adds a bit of nostalgic charm. Worth the money? Yes.

On the other side was The Search. This was a game where I was glad it was free. It felt like a undergrad honors/masters project done by an art student (I think the developer was actually an artist). The game presents the player as an artist who has entered a world, though it is not specific how. The narrator does not seem overly worried that she is not in her usual surroundings, either. Which I find weird.

The “puzzles,” once you understand the basic formula, are repeated in each act of the game. The most frustrating thing is to provide hints of “tall trees” and leave the player searching all of the trees they can identify, but somehow manage to miss the one that contained an item the player needs. Yep. That was me. Same for the hint about the door with photos. There were two doors with photos and you needed to look at both to figure out how to continue. I only looked at one.

Each act has a small area of space to navigate in. The game means to play like Myst and provides a very detailed world–trust an artist to lay out each scene. One of the tools at your disposal is a (polaroid-type) camera. There are visual cues to take a picture. When you do, you have the photo as well some text from The Invisible, a character that guides you on this self-reflecting, soul-searching journey.

The photos as well as small notes that The Invisible leaves for you prompts your character to monologue into some philosophy by Carl Jung and another one I’ve forgotten. It helps to get a sense of the character you are controlling, but it did come across as preachy to me. Having written a research thesis twice and having to draw odd relationships between two seemingly unrelated subjects–this struck a oh-I’ve-been-here feeling (and my memories aren’t a good one, so perhaps I am a bit biased).

Several years ago, my sister got me into hidden object games. They were a nice way to wind down. In a way, The Search is partly a hidden object game as each act requires acquiring at least three items. What made it frustrating was the way the character progresses in stuttering steps. Combined with the ability to rotate 90 degrees means it is easy to overlook something, like that dang tree or “door with photos.”

Towards the end, you are liberated from that navigation control. Thankfully that part of the game is pretty short because while it’s great I can control the character and look around without being locked to a specific frame at a time, the mouse sensitivity was so high I was making myself dizzy. I rushed to the end of the room because I was feeling nauseated and very much done with the game.

If it is ever free, pick it up then, but don’t bother spending money on it. As an artistic, invoke deep thoughts attempt, it was artistic in the sense that it made me feel emotions (frustration mostly) but not so much the deep thoughts. A variety of philosophic views tied into a common theme may have made more of an impact rather than continuously bringing up the same two people.