Naboki - Thoughts

Would PUSH have been a better game without the fixed perspective? Naboki serves as the answer to this question, continuing its predecessor's penchant for tedious clicking—but this time in the thiiiird dimensiooon! There's actually a little bit of every one of Targoni's puzzle games here, letting you shift, rotate, and align blocks, all while taking into account the physical space these puzzle cubes occupy. It's a clever game that is unquestionably better than PUSH, however it bears an unfortunate flaw: Naboki is too short.

Now, I understand that complaining about the brevity of a Marciej Targoni game is an oxymoron, like whining about a Team Ninja title being difficult; the alleged foible is the appeal of the developer. But whereas PUSH and Up Left Out provide complete experiences, Naboki feels as if it was cut short, lacking 10 puzzles or so. Perhaps it's just my imagination—klocki lasts just as long (50 minutes) yet I didn't ding it for its length—but I still would've liked to see maybe a little more from Naboki. One or two more mechanics would've really hit the spot, or a couple more levels that utilize every mechanic you've learned thus far.

Although in hindsight, perhaps it had enough mechanics by the end; puzzles in Naboki become so convoluted that you can't help but bumble your way through. I wouldn't go as far as calling it "trial and error" but Naboki borrows from PUSH's tediousness, delaying your victory with a checklist of switches that need flicking. Thankfully, Naboki counters its predecessor's failing by offering the player freedom—in the form of the third dimension. Whereas PUSH was designed around clicking on stuff in a preset order, Naboki centers itself around exploration. You're expected to spin its puzzle cubes as inquisitively as a tot at daycare, hunting for the right spot to begin chipping away. While it can feel a bit plodding at times (especially when there's half a dozen switches on screen), Naboki manages to remain more playful than dull, largely because progress is never ripped away. Every step you take towards the solution is permanent; every block removed gradually reveals your victory.

Naboki can be a bit cumbersome at times—particularly if you struggle with object permanence—but it's still a fun game to spend some of your downtime on. I found Targoni's description of it as a "disassemble puzzle" to be quite apt, evoking the same strange catharsis found in unraveling a Lego structure brick by brick. Naboki is patient, humble, and sadly brief; give it a go if you like seeing your puzzles crumble.

Death's Door - Thoughts

[contains minor spoilers]

Acid Nerve taking a second shot at a combat-focused Souls-like was a gift I never knew I wanted. I left Titan Souls feeling that it was unremarkable—and as time has passed, forgettable too—but there's no way I could say "no" to seeing what a follow-up might look like. And from the reveal trailer, Death's Door knocked it out of the park: it had a charming art style, meatier combat, and no longer hinged upon getting lucky with a single attack. Acid Nerve took inspiration from The Legend of Zelda and Hyper Light Drifter while avoiding the pitfall of creating a copycat of either. After finishing it, I can say that Death's Door is all that and more—but perhaps most crucially, it's just a straight-up good game.

Before I go any further, I must confess that my experience with Death's Door is bizarrely tinged due to playing it soon after finishing Tunic. The comparisons are inescapable—both are isometric RPG-slash-metroidvanias featuring melee-oriented combat supplemented with various ranged attacks. But whereas Tunic has a stronger focus on world cohesion and puzzles, Death's Door is centered on arena brawls and stage variety. Coincidentally, the pros of one game happen to be the cons of the other: Tunic has flimsy and unrefined swordplay while Death's Door lacks any kind of meaningful discovery. There are unexpected secrets in Death's Door to be sure—the entire postgame is built on that premise—but you won't find the same variety of secret paths or unpredictable twists that are sprinkled across Tunic. Death's Door prefers to play it safe, adhering strictly to a "hub world > upgrade level > boss level > boss" formula, doling out abilities that will be all too familiar to fans of Zelda.

Thankfully, Death's Door manages to astound in spite its faults. The combat in particular is a lot of fun; imagine Hyper Light Drifter but slower and more methodical, pitting you against quirky enemies that you'll need to corral rather than decimate. I also enjoyed the levelling system, which allowed me to choose the stats I wanted to focus on first. I'm usually a big dumb STR player but this time I dumped my early level-ups into magic so I could pelt my foes from afar with ethereal arrows and piercing fireballs. Naturally that playstyle paired well with the lightning-fast daggers, letting me refill my mana reserves in a flurry of emerald strikes. While I found the weapon variety to be mostly lacking (every weapon feels carved from the same template), I was impressed by how different the magical attacks were, each of them filling a particular niche (well, after being upgraded). Tunic's combat eventually became laborious but Death's Door kept me enthralled all the way to the end. If anything, I was bummed out whenever I wasn't fighting.

Though Tunic takes top spot in the exploration category, Death's Door will still set the player wandering aplenty. I rarely get lost in video games but my internal compass sure was tested in this title; you'll stumble upon so many looping pathways and unlockable shortcuts that losing your sense of direction is unavoidable, especially whenever you return to the cemetery hub. On one hand, the labyrinthine nature of Death's Door is forgivable because you never really need to backtrack to finish its linear story. But on the other hand, completionists will see their playtime doubled—if not tripled—due to the numerous laps you'll run looking for goodies you could've sworn were nearby.

Yet even if you get lost backtracking through Death's Door's vacant estates, you'll have some great music and gorgeous visuals to accompany you. I think Tunic's vibrant aesthetic is more my speed, but Death's Door feels similarly handcrafted and cared for, designed to look soft without ever sacrificing detail or energy. Enemy design is also spectacular, managing to walk that thin line between being eccentric and familiar, letting you marvel at what you're fighting while intuitively understanding how to fight it. And atop all of this is David Fenn's emotive, majestic score that conveys the history of a setting a thousand times better than dialogue windows ever could. Lastly, the story and characters are quite charming—an impressive feat, given that the gloomy inevitability of death that underpins the entire game. Expect some surprisingly touching moments here and there, but know that Death's Door prefers to make you smile rather than weep.

One of the best aspects about Death's Door—something I didn't realize until writing this entry—is that it comes across as its own thing. From the story, to the art style, to the enemy design, bosses, and friends you'll make along the way, the game has a lot of personality. And it's not as though Titan Souls was lacking personality per se, but that Death's Door feels so much more polished and expressive. Acid Nerve not only learned a lot from their previous title, but have somehow captured that elusive artistry of marrying passion to workmanship, innovation to foundation. Death's Door isn't perfect, but it doesn't need to be—it's beautiful, fun, and memorable, a trifecta most games rarely achieve.

PUSH - Thoughts

Out of all of Maciej Targoni's simple puzzlers, I found PUSH to be the least appealing. It's not a terrible game per se, but it demands a lot of recalling and spatial manipulation, neither of which feel engaging to exercise. PUSH is one part memory matching game, another part code breaker, and a third part tedious fiddler—and it's the "tedious" part you'll experience the most. It's admittedly callous to criticize the game so harshly—especially considering its infinitesimal cost—but if you're looking for a nice, chill puzzler to soothe the brain-aches, Targoni himself has plenty better to offer.

PUSH starts off as simple as can be, requiring the player to click on matching buttons to solve each puzzle. Soon a pink knob is thrown into the mix which can rotate the object you're looking at, granting access to buttons hidden from your fixed view. The game carries on like this for a while, occasionally throwing a new gimmick your way like alternating black & white buttons or operating a jelly cube to push buttons you cannot. For the most part it's mildly entertaining, but a nagging suspicion will creep up the back of your neck, whispering that all you're really doing is mindless busywork.

Hook similarly suffered from this problem, the issue here is exacerbated in two ways: not only does a single incorrect guess reset a good chunk of the puzzle (if not the entire thing), but information is often concealed from the player, requiring constant rotations of the puzzle polyhedron. This isn't a big deal early on—so long as you can recall a handful of shapes—but the deeper you go the more the game tries to confound your memory. Eventually you'll be flicking switches faster than a mad scientist, checking each side in the hopes that you haven't forgotten a concealed button somewhere that could unravel the entire sequence. Understand that PUSH's hardest puzzles aren't its most complicated but rather its most obfuscated, where the solution veils itself in a surfeit of viewpoints.

Halfway through, PUSH doubles down on this approach, introducing buttons that must be pressed in a precise order. Thankfully the game denotes which button to start with, but deciphering the right path can still be an irksome experience. PUSH arbitrarily discounts buttons hidden from view, sometimes penalizing the player for forgetting a hidden button, yet other times discounting the hidden button entirely as part of its solution. You'll eventually grow accustomed to the game's strange reasoning, but it won't come with that special epiphany that defines the greatest puzzle games. Your comprehension will be a lukewarm "I guess" as you start over, trying to remember which button among the dozen hidden did you in.

Again, I don't think PUSH is a bad game; if you're a fan of Targoni & Hamster on Coke's work, you won't lose anything by ambling through PUSH. It's short, cheap, and at times kind of pretty in a minimalist way. But for me, it's just a little too unengaging to require the amount of memorization it asks of the player. Hook is for folks that like untying knots, Up Left Out has a huge variety of sliding tile puzzles, and PUSH... well, all it brings to the table is the feeling that you forgot your car keys over and over again.