Publisher: Nementic Games
Developer: Nementic Games
Medium: Digital
Players: 1
Online: No
ESRB: Not Rated
As much as I’d like to think that I value originality in games, if I’m being honest, I probably like brevity more. I mean, quality is important, obviously, but if I have the choice between finishing a game in a few hours or only making a small dent in a game that’s big and teeming with ideas, I’m probably going to go with the former most times.
So keep that in mind when I say that I enjoyed A Divine Guide To Puzzle Solving. Is it original? Absolutely not. Is it short? Very!
As far as originality goes…well, there isn’t really any. You don’t need to look very hard to figure out where A Divine Guide To Puzzle Solving gets its inspiration. It’s not quite a Portal clone, since it takes place in an outdoors environment – which means that if you were to call it a Portal-meets-Talos Principle clone, you’d basically be dead-on in your assessment.
Which, honestly, doesn’t bother me all that much, since – to go back to what I said up front – A Divine Guide To Puzzle Solving also has the advantage of being fairly short. You can race through its 16 levels in about 2 hours (or, if you really race, an hour). You get introduced to the basic mechanics of swapping blocks in the first few minutes, and then the game doesn’t vary all that much after that. You’ll occasionally need to pause for a moment to think something through, or you’ll need to restart a level because of a misplaced block, or you might just want to meander a little while listening to the murderous deity narrator mock you, but, generally speaking, it’s the kind of game you could probably beat in a single sitting and still have time to get deep into something else.
To be sure, you probably shouldn’t pick it up at full price (though, at the same time, getting 90 minutes or so of solid entertainment for $8 isn’t exactly a terrible value proposition, and you’re supporting an indie developer). But if you’re a fan of Portal-style puzzlers, you should buy it all the same.
Nementic Games provided us with a Divine Guide To Puzzle Solving PC code for review purposes.