Reviews by Phibble

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The Big Scoop, by Johan Berntsson

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

Not Spectacular, but Not Bad, June 15, 2011

It's not bad, per se, it's just ... nothing spectacular. The puzzles didn't seem to be particularly challenging or inventive. The descriptions, writing, and characters seem to be completely bare-boned, with nothing that really makes me care about them. If the characters had been more three-dimensional, I think I would have liked it a lot more. The "mystery" part of the game disappears after your first fail (and you'll probably fail the first scene many times), and that took a lot of the experience away from me.

As is, it's not a bad game to wile away some downtime if you feel like relaxing and not reading too much, but don't expect to come out with a fresh perspective or anything substantial like that.

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Square Circle, by Eric Eve

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

Very Enjoyable, June 15, 2011

by Phibble

The plot was amazing, and I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered that solving the titular puzzle was only the beginning of the plot. The interactions with NPC's were lovely, and the puzzles were logical and stimulating. Overall, it was very nice gameplay experience.

The only complaint I would have is that, for me, the ending came too abruptly.* The story really began to pick up for me after you find out your identity, and I had hoped that it would be longer, and that there would have been an epilogue or appendix that showed you the results of your actions. Or maybe there was one, and I just completely missed it.

Either way, it was a thoroughly enjoyable game, and the biggest twist in it really made it for me. I recommend this very much.

*NOTE: This is probably due to personal experience. I have a friend who's a coast guard and sails around the world for a living, and he's talked to me many times about (Spoiler - click to show)shapes on globes and how you can have all sorts of seemingly contradictory shapes if you're drawing on a sphere. In addition, I've read about this in a physics book before, so I had a really clear idea of how to draw the square circle, and only needed to figure out the little hindrances before getting to the globe. Therefore, probably the most challenging and time-consuming puzzle there was ... I finished very, very quickly, resulting in my feeling that the game was short.