Review of Lake Ridden by Khan4

Overall a pretty good game but to me what keeps it from being great is a little lack of ambition (or work? or resources?) on the sides.

The main puzzles, the “story” ones are good and are a very strong point of the game.

But there are three other types of puzzles that keep repeating themselves (while varying in difficulty/solution) and have a casual feeling.

Some “doors” puzzles : although very simple, there aren’t too much of these, so it doesn’t matter much.

The “bonus boxes” puzzles : they are the only ones not needed to complete the game, so it’s not that bad but many gamers will want to crack them anyway, so their sameness is a bit of an annoyance (their nature too, to me).

The “Simon” puzzles (repeating a series of sound sequences) : those are mandatory to progress and don’t change a bit apart from the patterns they play.

It would have been nice to face different challenges, even simples ones, in place of these repetitions, and the game would have felt more full-fledge. It seems like they didn’t want or couldn’t put in the extra effort to do it.

Those side things could have been so much more and could have added some length and feeling of coherence and realism to the game, as they are supposed to have been created by a mad inventor.

There’s also some unecessary walking through the same paths again and again near the end. A minor flaw but one that reinforce the feeling of unfinished work, whether it is due to time, or resources constraints.

But even like that, the game won’t disappoint those who like puzzles well integrated in a story, and a nice setting.
Totally recommendable.