BlueDemon's Archive

[This is a Mini Review, shorter and more direct] Penumbra: Requiem is a first-person, adventure puzzler expansion for Black Plague. Developed by Frictional Games, published by Paradox Interactive, and released in August 2008. Six months after Black Plague's release. /// Premise An expansion pack focused on strict puzzle-focused levels, absent of survival horror mechanics, with bits of lore that further explore some underdeveloped side characters. /// Is Requiem is Episode 3? I gotta get this out of the way. People often confuse Requiem as Penumbra 3, or Episode 3, when it is just an expansion DLC for Black Plague. "Requiem won't be the 'third episode', though. It's less the series conclusion, and more the epilogue. I consider the story to have ended with Black Plague" - Tom Jubert, lead writer of Penumbra series. 2008 interview with RPS. /// Structure Penumbra: Requiem is an abrupt switch from the survival horror genre to a horror-themed puzzler. It consis...

The Talos Principle is a puzzle game developed by Croteam and published in collaboration with Devolver Digital in December of 2014. When I first added Talos Principle to my wishlist back in 2014, I thought: Hey neat, a puzzle game made by the Serious Sam dev team, maybe I will check it out someday. And so I did, 7 years later, in 2021, I finally bought and booted up the game. I was expecting yet another simple game puzzle game trying to emulate Valve's Portal series, like the many out there. I was wrong. It has clear inspirations from Portal but it is a rare beast of its own. In The Talos Principle, you will take a journey through the ruins of ancient civilization, solving puzzles in a non-linear order, involving multiple types of mechanics. /// Gameplay In regards to puzzle mechanics, you have your usual suspects: cubes, buttons, turrets, lasers, but there are some interesting ones, that breaks the mold for this kind of game like moving landmines, emp jammers, fans, time ma...