Power Sink, the debut game of Western Australian developer Winterwire Games, is a set of 3D puzzle platforms located in the depths of the ocean.
You, a nameless diver, live and work in the upper ocean biome. But when the power is closed, you find yourself as follows Make sure the wrong person in the right place finds a way to undo the power.
Along with guidance from archetypes of various characters like veterans and professors (who currently live in fish bodies), he swears he’s not always fish), he needs to solve puzzles that include flavor mechanics for genres such as switches and orbs.
As a fan of other puzzle platforms like Portal and ViewFinder, I was excited to try one set with a biome that adores the biggest puzzle level, The Ocean.
Considering how much we know about our oceans, it seemed like a great place to set up a mystery and really get the puzzle “out there.” Did this happen? Let’s jump in and take a look.
Puzzle out or chat until you pass
Distort puzzle elements in Puzzle Platformer heavier, the game will quickly set the routine for you – New biomes introduce new mechanicsits difficulties and complexity increase until it reaches the final level.
Then we move on to the next biome and mechanic, and the previous mechanics are added again, and there should be something complex and something that should fill the puzzle to complete.
Unfortunately, the game often gets frustrated for a number of reasons, and the first mechanic is an unclear mechanic. A buo orb can be connected to a power orb to float.
Secondly, it can be difficult to track what you need to turn on and leave to light the final tower. A harmless switch from the beginning of the level may suck your attempt if you were forced to go back if you didn’t leave it.
Cameras aren’t always useful. Sometimes you will no longer be able to see the ceiling of a particular platform with an orb hole until you move to a better location or the walls are too big to see everything at once.
Unfortunately, games often fall into frustration.
Rather than having to follow the wires to know where the power needs, the scout mode is great, which allows you to scout without having to worry about falling or jumping the block wrong. And who doesn’t love the robot helper a bit?
Especially when the Obs start to be sent out of reach for obtaining from the character, you need to completely reboot the levels as they place orbs in the wrong order causing soft locks.
Having to restart the entire level is very moralefulespecially if you’re not sure how you were doing in the first place.
There’s a bug here too
Finally, one of the many bugs may require a restart. When you fell I realized I was trapped in the ceiling and deep decorative items.
Considering that the level isn’t that long now and that it’s much faster when you understand what you need, This is not an angry level of nuisance, but it’s not fun to encounter yet.
I know I had to take a break to avoid cursing the screen at least a few times after getting stuck due to soft locks or bugs.
The writing is consistently good, with the central mystery dripping at a nice pace.
Another bug that I was consistently consistent was trying to choose a level for the fourth biome. The game refused to allow you to press one of them to load the level. Instead, I had to enter the mouse control and exit manually to load.
Given that the game insists on playing on a controller from the start, this wasn’t my first idea, I tried out other levels and made the game reload first, which increased my frustration.
You’d have thought it was coming out on a test of the game. Hopefully the patch will be applied soon, but if not, there is at least a workaround.
Strong writing and humor
This doesn’t mean there’s no slight fun time in the game. Writing is consistently good – there is only a little text at the beginning and end of most levels, but the body sings to other characters Well, I offer a nice bit of comedy that made me chuckle.
The central mystery is in IV at a nice pace, leaving enough mystery to play the next level and see what happens.
Unfortunately, bugs start to appear here too, with one expo story sharing the end of the story first and then starting from the beginning at the next level!
This was a huge number of cases of deja vu when it happened, and it made me question whether we were suddenly in a psychological thriller like Memento.
As I advanced into the game, I began to encounter more bugs, but I felt like I was beginning to feel the game was growing along the way due to time, finances and team expertise.
Is it a T-position whale?
The graphics are good enough, but I had to run with a low graphics setting to keep a stable frame rate on the Nvidia 2060 Super.
The graphics do not particularly decrease visually between the three optionsHowever, it was easy to choose to stabilize the frame rate.
Yet another small problem is the fact that I culminate in frustration, but my choice of solution refused to be saved. Whenever you enter the next level, it returns to the default 720p.
Now I don’t even know if it does anything – I couldn’t notice any visual differences, but I would be happy if there was a save and apply button in the settings.
In particular, the third biome, the starry sky is lovely, showing off the ocean full of stars.
A few more options would be nice to modify the graphics to suit my setup. Brightness, gamma, V-Sync, and more are not all in the settings, just like the ability to modify key bindings.
Brightness is especially welcome. When you enter deeper into the ocean, it becomes difficult to see when you lose the light If you’re playing in the daytime.
The changes in the biome give a good indication that you will be deep into the ocean, and the light slowly fades away, giving you a general sense of isolation. In particular, the third biome, the starry sky is lovely, showing off the ocean full of stars.
This will do something to relieve claustrophobia until you get a deep sea crack in the next biome.
Now I’m not sure if I’ll consider this negative or positive, but one of the assets used to introduce the ocean looks like a horror T-pose in the universe. I found it interesting, but I don’t know why it’s there.
Music and Platform: Hits and Miss
Music is the highlight, with atmospheric soundscapes, and the idea is increasingly increasing to actually become 20,000 leaguers under the ocean.
It’s not necessarily that I hummed to like the iconic tracks, but it’s enough enough to keep the music up when using puzzles.
As it stands, the game is at a troubling halfway point, which cancels out style and substance from each other.
Platforms are extremely secondary, and only a handful of levels offer anything in a way that is challenging on floating and disappearing platforms. However, the game takes the physics of being at the ocean seriously.
This means the platform is very floating. That is, if you are trying to determine a jump to a moving platform, you often miss it. This is especially true when you start playing with buo orbs, which will cause big jumps.
Given the atmosphere, I understand the desire for the game to be played at sea, but I think it should have been fixed in the test if it took precedent over ease of gameplay.
Or we had to go further and get inspiration from the Outer Wild. Play physics from water pressure to objects floating according to buoyancy to partially engaging the atmosphere of the game.
As it stands, the game is at a troubling halfway point, which cancels out style and substance from each other.
There is no collectible method in the game, so every level has one essential challenge. That’s all.
You should also take into account that moving while being fired from the air vent or traveler beam will affect the final outcome.
With air vents, you will need to continue moving during firing to increase the distance you travel. Some platforms only reach this by doing this.
In the case of traveler beams, if they actually continue moving, they will slow down, so you will need to stop moving to keep moving. Understood?
Platform Staples
In the case of sequence breakers between us, there are no huge numbers of opportunities in the early games.
However, once you get the Traveler’s Beam and Buoy Orb, the option suddenly opens and you can skip certain bits of the level by correctly timing jumping or following an orb you’re not planning to go to.
Of course you need to press levels or make sure you place the objects in the right order to clear levels, but it’s nice to still feel like you’ve got one in the game.
There is no collectible method in the game, so every level has one essential challenge. That’s all. Now I’m not the one who says every game needs collectibles. By the way, they are often just too messy.
However, gaining additional challenges based on the platform can be excellent at each level, and the bits we get are especially interesting, so we can reward you with some extra lore surrounding the world and its inhabitants.
Currently, the game is not compatible with Steam Cloud Saves or Steam decks. There, you will be transferred to a touchscreen only control. Hopefully this will be fixed. This is because it’s a good game to play on the go while traveling and complete levels here and there.
Close Thoughts:
Overall, if the main purpose of the puzzle game is to provide “Eureka” moments when solving puzzles, then this game will have around 50% success. Also, I complete the level but I’m not entirely sure how I did or I have to get a break from the next level. There’s a good game moment here, but it’s all under the frustrating layer of bugs, mediocre puzzles and another design choice you’d seen during your testing.
