A strenuous, if brief, brain workout – Hiversaires Review

This puzzle was absolutely a joy, delivering a very satisfying experience with the most straightforward controls possible and a handful of simple gameplay mechanics. The ambient music and eerie, long-abandoned look of the futuristic black-and-white world, with its alien symbols and devices, draw the player deeper into the mystery. The different playing mechanics are introduced at the right pace and with the perfect ambiguity to make the player feel smart just for picking up on some of them, as even interpreting the HUD feels like a small victory; however, they're easy enough to wrap your head around that they quickly feel natural. Later, when these mechanics begin melding together, each step begins to feel like snatching success out of increasingly hopeless situations. The wonder and confusion never completely die, but rarely hold you down for long. My only disappointments with the game were in its brevity and rather anticlimactic ending, or at least the ending *I* came to. After only about 45 minutes, I encountered some pretty climactic-feeling environments, only to unlock a very plain door which triggered the credits, which themselves concluded with nothing more than a black screen. This black screen, when tapped, directed me to a slightly random- or maybe cryptic-seeming page on the developer's website, but after restarting the app and being placed back in a room toward the end of the game, I don't feel like anything new has been unlocked or changed, and I certainly didn't learn anything applicable from the webpage. A few intriguing elements still seem completely unused (not least of all seeming to have three slots to hold batteries, but only ever finding two), and the "end" still doesn't feel like a proper end. I shan't give up, as it's a terrible tease in an otherwise expertly-crafted puzzle, and if I discover anything further, I'll be back with an edit and the most well-deserved 5-star rating I could give. Overall, despite a pretty abrupt ending, Hiversaires is still an exceptional and truly gratifying puzzle game set in a deep and haunting world. Very highly recommended to any lover of unguided mysteries.
Review by murdur1 on Hiversaires.