Infini review for Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One

I don?t even know where to begin reviewing Infini. It calls itself a psychedelic puzzle game, but I don?t think that description even begins to fully capture the weirdness that is this game.

Take this description of the game that comes from the developers: ?Challenge your mind in a psychedelic journey of puzzles and meaningful encounters with Time, Poetry, Memory, Technology, War and Fatality.”

All of those things are…beings (?) that you meet at some point during your time with Infini. There are dogs and fish and people with guns for heads. The game is, I think, trying to make some kind of deeper philosophical point.

Also, you basically spend the entire game falling down the screen. Just falling down and down and down. You hit the bottom of the screen, and re-emerge at the top. Your goal is to reach an exit, which takes you to the next screen, where again you fall down and down and down. You can speed up, and slow down, and move off the side of the screen, and avoid falling into walls or fish that make the screen go all wonky.

I don?t know. It?s weird.

It?s also really ugly. In some respects, Infini kind of reminds me of Terry Gilliam?s Monty Python cartoons, only crossed with visuals that look less classical and more modern. Everything looks like a grotesque pastiche, and the busier the screen gets the weirder it gets — which is saying something, because it starts out pretty darn weird.

Admittedly, if you strip away the weird visuals and the philosophical concepts, you?re left with a pretty straightforward puzzle game. So it?s quite possible — probable, even — that I?m allowing Infini?s aesthetics to distract me from what?s really only a series of weird-looking spatial logic puzzles. Then again, here?s Infini?s launch trailer. Trying to frame it as only a puzzle game does it a pretty big disservice.

As I said up top, I don?t know what to make of it. For better and for worse (and I honestly don?t know where I fall on it, apart from being creeped out by the art), Infini is a…unique puzzle game. If you like weird, you?ll like it.

Nakana.io provided us with an Infini code for review purposes.