The puzzles are only difficult at first because they're not puzzles, they're pixel hunts for answer keys. There's no thinking involved, you just have to click around randomly until you find the button that makes the note pop out. Between the godawful color schemes (which are too dark and have way too-low contrast for anything demanding pixel hunts; several of the buttons and items blend in so well with the backgrounds it's impossible to tell they're clickable) and the complete lack of direction, the only difficulty is the pixel hunt, and once you get used to the pixel-hunt logic and learn to tell the difference between "inventory item" and "background fodder", there's no gameplay anymore. There's no story and no point, just another boring, cliche, maybe-it's-sci-fi-but-since-there's-no-context-it-doesn't-matter setting with a creepy, tense atmosphere that never actually builds up to anything. That being said, the graphics are pretty good, color choices notwithstanding, and the music definitely supports the unsettling ambiance very well.
Reviews for "Eien"
The game is pretty and the atmosphere is interesting, but it is not enough to make a good game.
This game cumulates two huge problems:
1st one, puzzles that aren't puzzles. You don't guess the solutions in this game, you literally just read them on walls or on pieces of paper. In a good puzzle game, the player should feel intelligent when he manages to solve a puzzle. Here I just felt as if I followed instruction without thinking, which is not at all rewarding.
2nd one, "welcome player. To continue your adventure, you'll need to gather 3 blue spheres. Oh… you only have 2 ? Well you'll just have to go all the way back from where you started to find the 3rd one, because you aren't going anywhere without it". This problem (or should I say, this cliché) is frustrating enough in classic point and click adventures, it really didn't need to be implemented in a game that empty.
To summarise: pretty game, bad core gameplay.
Okay. I give up.
This is why I hate adventure/puzzle. They are so often designed piss poor. I solved the first in a snap after find the clue but I can't get the second puzzle. It's just a grid of red dots with nothing to apply a pattern, but the real main problem is that you can't tell where to click.
They so often in adventure/puzzle games just throw you into a place with no rhyme or reason and no clue how to go forward. It basic become "click every inch of the screen until a thing happens".
This happened at the first puzzle, but I click away to the solution and pasted the first test only to slam into the red dots of durr. I've clicked everywhere and found nothing and there are alot of other games out there.
This is to everyone in the world who makes games. Stop designing them so poorly. Especially adventure games.
Good puzzle, i managed to do it without looking for any walkthrough, but the ending really disappointing.
I'm not sure it works. After I "skip intro", I get to this screen with a picture of some weird architecture, and nothing happens. It looks like a loading screen, but I've waited for five minutes and it hasn't gone to anything else.
Speaking of which, are there instructions? Obviously we can't play without instructions.