Obelisk _ Review

https://orcolom.itch.io/obelisk

If you’re searching for an original puzzle game, you should definitely look at Obelisk. Based on a simple 9x9 grid, it’s your job to guide your hero(es) from their starting block to the worlds-fair-style globe. You do this by switching blocks around and rotating them, while navigating across drawbridges which connect your blocks.

What I love about this game is that there’s two complementary elements to it: a static puzzle involving reorganising the blocks to open your path to the end, and a dynamic puzzle where several sequential reorganisations may be required to open that path, in-between which you have to have moved your characters, and maybe rotated some blocks. It can make seeing the solution very challenging, even in such a small game space.

The game starts with a couple of tutorial-like levels, introducing some basic concepts, and then rapidly gets hard. That difficulty comes from the rising complexity of the solutions, as the number of degrees of freedom you have at any one time can be quite large. Hats off to the level designers for conceiving and implementing these, and ensuring there isn’t more than a single solution.

As an entry to Ludum Dare there are some bits that are rough around the edges (like, don’t play it in full-screen mode, or you can’t get out), and this reviewer would love to see a polished final version. In the mean time, though, you should play their version on itch.io, without a doubt.