Lake Ridden

I bought this a few days ago and just finished it. If you are looking for a puzzle game with decent logic puzzles you will find it here. Some puzzles towards the end I needed some assistance with but for the most part a sound logical mind will have no worries progressing through the majority of the story. Expect about 10 hours out of the game. The story itself didn't interest me much but I play for the puzzles anyway. If you enjoy the likes of Syberia and Myst you should buy

Lake Ridden is a walking simulator with some puzzles that doesn't really shine in any regard. The story is nebulous, the world smallish without any exiting architecture or world design, graphics are mediocre at best plus it's usually dark and hazy. There is some voice acting (very few female voices, not a single male one) which is OK most of the time but gets weird when a woman intonates the diary/letters of a male as if she was that guy. There's an autosave system which doesn't work 100%. E.g. I stopped playing shortly after leaving a cellar which I had to unlock to get in but not to get out. When continuing later, I was in the cellar again and the door was locked. Still, Lake Ridden has its moments when you search a haunted basement or try to get some machine to work. Then again, there are not many riddles and most of them are weird, really badly designed or simply totally illogical. Like they are designed them from solution to clues and not vice versa. Plus there are tons of repetitive puzzles to open boxes etc. that are not related to the story in any way. Stuff like remembering key/music sequences or pressing buttons that changes only their neighbors. Stuff you've seen a thousand times in other games like this. I guess it would have been OK to have one puzzle of each type, but having to so the same crap over and over again is just annoying and a cheap way of increasing playtime without much effort. Towards the end, there are super-annoying puzzles where you need to draw lines on monoliths, but again they made it totally tedious by splitting the sequence in multiple parts, letting you choose between several monoliths etc. It's just that you get the feeling that they did everything to make the few lame puzzles as tiring as possible. So after I reached the bland and disappointing end after ~7h, I was kinda happy it was over. So yeah, don't spend much money on this and consider it only if you have played through all the good walking simulators.

I have not yet finished the game, but I really like the puzzles. And so far it has not been of the sort in so many point and click adventures: Bring item A to point B and use with item C from faraway place D. The puzzles are rather logical in nature. I also like that I am allowed to solve some of the puzzles in random order. The graphics is really beutiful, as is the music. They do not distract from the game, which is rather slow paced. The voice narration is also well done. In total it all adds up to a soothing experience with relaixing puzzles. Gameplay 7/10 Graphics 9/10 Replay value doubtful. Sound 9/10 Total 8.5/10 -> four stars

Lake Ridden is a great looking game when it's daytime but unfortunately that's not often and most of the time is spent in a dark and misty environment yes it's atmospheric and still nicely detailed but I felt it wasn't always neccessary there are lights to turn on and you have your own lantern but strangly you can't use it outside when it's dark? The storyline has some depth but it's not entirely clear what has happened in the past but that's nothing new for a game, obviously there are lots of places and things to search maybe too many as often there is nothing to find, there are some good interesting and visually rewarding puzzles but one type of puzzle I felt was over used but refer to the spoiler alert at the end for more info, the voice acting is quite good and the music suitably atmospheric but a little too quiet even at full volume. My biggest issue with the game is there is no manual save only autosave points which sometimes trigger when you accomplish something but at othertimes don't so if you don't have the time to keep playing (as I often don't) until you get another autosave you lose your progress and this brings me to the other issue of not having a map or a compass to help you find your way around so it can be a bit repetitive and tedius trying to find where you were previously especially as the outside lights I turned on for a guide were often turned off when I returned there later, it may have been a certain charachter messing with me, whatever it's annoying. There is an error in the game I won't say spoiler alert because I don't think it is but at one point in the game your objective is to go to the old well and says it's in the courtyard but it's actually inside the building opposite the old school entrance, I spent way too much time looking for it! I like to play simple P&C games on a big screen TV using a pad but this game does not support pads but works ok using Xpadder and a PS4 or Xbox pad. SPOILER ALERT. There are two types of puzzle boxes in the game one that you turn the handle to get a sequence of buttons to press these you need to open to get items to continue the game but they are easy, the other similar boxes just have buttons to press in a certain sequence to open there are quite a few of these and it can get quite tedius trying to open them all but you don't need to open any of them, there is nothing essential needed in them to finish the game.