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This is my first time playing this series and I love it.
Its core is rather simple, but level design is amazing alongside awesome art and quality.
It's a very enjoyable game.

It's a good game.
There were some super frustrating fights.
Design lacked a bit in the final chapter, it felt more like spam of hardest enemies than anything else.
Boss fights were okay. Some were really annoying sometimes, due to RNG elements. However they gradually increased in difficulty and were enjoyable.

I kept getting new abilities to the very end of the game, which is always amazing. The game kept utilizing these new abilities in mini platforming puzzles. Small sections with no enemies that require utilizing your special abilities to pass. They were often hard at first, but always had a logical solution that you would get after a couple of tries. Or a dozen more tries :P

But in general it's an amazing game with awesome humor and cool style. It lasts about 5-6 hours on normal mode and it has a lot of hidden content that you can explore.

If you enjoyed Contrast I highly recommend a game called "Shadow Puppeteer". It uses the same mechanic concept but it's a Co-Op experience. That's why I picked up Contrast in fact.

As for the Contrast, it's a short game ~ 3 hours. Gameplay-wise, It feels very polished and it kept bringing new mechanics on regular intervals, which is always good. It would've been nice if it were longer.

There was a bit of frustration with one segment of the game, where character would jump out of shadow even though there was no reason to. But this is the only annoyance that I experienced.

There's no real replayability unless you want to go and collect everything, which I believe can be done by loading certain parts of the game.

Shenzhen I/O Is amazing!
If you enjoyed TIS 100 you will certainly love this game as well.

Like TIS 100, this game will come with a manual that you have to read in order to learn the code and chips.
There are many ways to solve a puzzle, but what really shines in these games is having friends who will compete with you.
You can always optimize your code and get better scores which is part of the fun.

It includes sandbox in which you can even make amazing games or programs and of course, an amazing Solitaire version that is as addicting as the game itself.

An incredible idea that was dragged down by almost every aspect of the game.
But coding is not the primary focus of this game I would say.
It's a mix of exploration, programming, and story. At the end of the day, you will have fun with coding only if you want to. The main tasks won't really challenge you at all [coding wise] and are mostly based on tweaking simplest scripts.

Game for me really felt tedious almost to the very end:
- No logs of any kind. If NPC says what you need to do and you forget it, you're clueless.
- The world doesn't wait. If you forget the location that NPC told you, you're going to miss out on an event. While this is awesome, lack of log makes it frustrating.
- The map is awful and hard to use at the start, combined with the first point you can understand why people take 4 hours to get their hands on coding.
- Coding itself can be so much more enjoyable. Right now it provides suggestions only for the local object that you're editing. if you connect to another object - you're blind. Thus it puts you off because you would have to walk to the object type and look up suggestions.
- The camera can often be awful
- Bugs, I had at least two that were game breaking. Save often.
- The performance was jumpy often, no idea why

Despite all this, I didn't dislike this game. I believe that it's a great accomplishment and I want to see a new game in the series. One that fixes all the bad things and keeps the rest. It was just too tedious for me to recommend.
P.S. The coding manual can be applied in real life coding, as the code that the game uses has real world usage.


*Hack Review
bool RecommendGame()
{
return !game.isTedious;
}
*ctrl + enter

While it does have some downsides, in general, I really liked the game. It's a relaxing experience with an awesome soundtrack and some master-crafted design.

Pros :
- Incredible trickery with the tile shapes and look
Often you might think that you're holding a piece which shows an eye, head, hand or something else. However, it will turn out that it's completely different. The pieces are also shaped in a way which will logically fit the right, for example, but it turns out that it fits the left side or somewhere else. I really enjoyed these moments of trickery and I really see it as an incredible achievement.
- Awesome, relaxing soundtrack
- Really nice art style
- Has about 4 hours of content without the DLC, puzzles can vary from 5-15 minutes
- You don't need to own the DLC in order to get all of the achievements

Cons :
- Tiles are slightly bigger than the actual slots in the puzzle, sometimes causing issues. For example, some parts don't look like they fit in the spots they actually fit
- Some levels have puzzle slots which are hard to notice. So you might end up with leftover pieces thinking that you're done.
- Controls can be a bother sometimes, mainly my issue was with moving the wheel with pieces. It's hard to find the correct spot to drag, without picking up the pieces.

But in general, there's not much bad to say about this game. It's short and sweet with a fair price.
P.S. Thanks Developer for helping out with the HB situation.

You will like this game only if you don't mind a simple "walking simulator" exploration games.

Puzzles are not really puzzles at all. They're very simple and subtle. For example, one of them requires you to repeat a sequence, the other requires you to push the button until you rotate the pillars so that you see the expected and correct image. There's no thinking involved.

Exploration is a part of it as well. For some reason, the first Temple was hard to explore. But the others felt linearish in comparison. Open World is a smaller map that you can explore, and once you do, you can find some interesting things. But nothing more than that. I must say though, at the start of the game there was an awesome sense of exploration. You would get directions like "North and a bit west", and you would have to find the location yourself. But later on, that feeling was gone.

It lasted about 3 hours with all of the achievements done.

Sadly, I didn't really find it enjoyable and by the third hour I got exhausted by "puzzles" and all the platforming in the Temples. As for the story, it's scattered around and requires you to focus and remember things. The ending was not really that good.

So, I'm really torn here. It's not my genre, it's a good looking game with a lot of polish and also at the same time with some flaws. My overall feeling was "meh", slightly above average because of the gameplay. You decide for yourself I guess :D

I just wish I knew this existed before the HB action.
I'm a fan of Shelter so I find this game quite amazing. The concept behind it is incredible.
It's hard to describe how awesome it is to communicate with other players using signs and calls.
Some things can certainly be better. Camera, movement, gameplay ... However even with the mentioned issues the game is an amazing experience.

While it looks very nice and it can keep your attention, it's not really as fun as other games from the genre.
Gameplay is super simple and very repetitive. There are no real hard puzzles that I found and you simply miss that satisfying feeling of achieving something when you figure out how to hack something. Because it's always right around the corner. It's always the same ports, always the same commands, always the same steps.
This brings the whole experience down and it just leaves "meh" mediocre feeling after you're done.

On the other hand, I really liked some of the ideas. Like, the visual representation of RAM, which was awesome. Clickable UI parts came along nicely. Some very decent moments as well, like the first attack on your PC and so on. It does look nice, but I don't understand why was netmap so awfully designed? I was on the edge to quit the game because I had to backtrack servers just because the map was a mess and I couldn't easily find what I was looking for. The story was okay as well with an ending that touched me, even though I didn't really get into the story that much ...

Either way, I can't say I regret the 9 hours that I've put into this game, but at the same time I can't help but think how this could've been so much better game.
But from what I understand, you can make your own extensions, so there's hope that someone will make something really awesome :D

So I'll recommend it with a note :
- If you're looking for a "hacking experience" that will test your brain with challenges and puzzles, this might not be it. If you don't mind super simple "hacking" part of the gameplay, you will probably enjoy this title.

Until the very end it kept throwing new mechanics at me. I was honestly amazed by this. It kept things fresh all the time.
It looks really, really nice and it has awesome SFX. Gameplay is okay.

Puzzles are often very creative. I wouldn't say too hard. They can be exhausting at times but I blame the lack of "Undo last move" button. Once you mess up you will have to restart complete section of the level.
Though, if you do get stuck simply turn on "Hint" mode and it will guide you through an area step by step until you finish the area or stop the hint system yourself.

Full run with all achievements lasted about 6 hours for me. I imagine it could last longer if you don't use any kind of help.

All in all I did love it, way more than I thought I would.
P.S. This was a gift, thanks Miki ;)