Yeah I Don't Even Know

Review by moolatycoon on Monday, September 28th 2015

Hello everybody, and welcome back to another one of my reviews. Today someone featured this interesting, short little game and I decided to give it a try because I always love me a featured ppg game. This game was created by jaybrainpuzzles, a completely unknown fellow who happened to be in contact with Meowmeowfurrycat and apparently the right people saw this game. With no I idea what I was going to experience I delved into the game and after beating it I'm quite interested to see what he can do in the future.

Enough semantics, on with the review!

What an interesting little game this is. Essentially its

a puzzle ppg that has the player doing things in both the foreground and the background in order to proceed to the next level. Generally the levels take about 20 seconds if you have the puzzle solved, but solving the puzzle is whats difficult about the game, leaving you there scratching your head for a good 5 minutes before a face palm after realizing that the answer was there in front of you the entire time. You see, Generally the game has you doing something in the background to give you an answer to a puzzle in the foreground. I can't really go into to much detail without spoiling the game, but in one of the levels you have use clues from the foreground to move a clock in the background to the appropriate time before looking back in the foreground and progressing onward. Although simple, I think this is a really clever mechanic, because jay knows exactly what you will be looking at, and at what you won't, and some of the puzzles are so simple you'll overlook the answer. Of course I feel there is a point where this game gets a little too cryptic (the clock level is pretty confusing, tbh I had to look at Meow's guide for that) and some of the puzzles are just not fair without being to distinguish what objects are in the background, but I still feel as if everything is solvable and Jay gives you the appropriate clues to figure out the level. I probably smacked my head about 5 or 6 times after figuring out the answer, and the game just makes you feel really smart and accomplished for being able to progress. An issue with this style of game however is that you can't really play it again without forgetting completely about the game, but its kind of hard to unsee such now obvious answers, and as a result this game doesn't really keep me coming back. What it does do however, is make me want more. I want to see more of this from him, enough to where I don't have to replay this game to get my fill of clever puzzles. I feel like this game really shows off his creativity and his ingenuity.

If any of you have played contrast it takes on a relatively similar style of aesthetics. You have the silhouette character on a background of grey (though there are different shades to indicate depth, which is crucial to the game). I mean, its not the most creative idea ever but it really works, and the style just kind of ads to what type of game this really is. The enemies, if you call them that, also look excellent as shadows against a neutral background. My one issue is that objects start to be a little too ambiguous and they may be crucial for puzzle solving. Its also a little difficult to tell what I can click and interact with, and what is just background/something I can't do anything with, so instead I just have to move my mouse around the screen until I can do something with a given object. Other than this issue, I feel like he uses the scenery very well to make a contrast between whats behind and whats in front, the decoration is a crucial part to the puzzle solving, as many times it reveals the answer to a tricky puzzle that involves numbers or heights, but its all so subtly done.

Overall I feel like the gameplay and the decoration are pretty cohesive.

So I really hate to end the review here but thats really all there is to the game. There isn't any possibility of getting frustrated because a section is to difficult based on traps, and if I go more in depth into the gameplay I'll spoil the one playthrough of the game you get. So to the ratings we go!

Enemies & Traps: N/a (none)

Verdict:

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=-Decent-=

So overall, I felt like this was a pretty good game. A lack of real substance holds it back from being a masterpiece (i.e it would have been cool to have multiple puzzles working in conjunction) but its a nice little game to play if you are bored and want a nice set of brain teasers.