Puzzle Agent impressions!

[omk3]

Okay, just finished it and...

I LOVED the atmosphere, the artwork, the gnomes, the soundeffects, the mysterious twin-peakish story, all of that. (Loved how gnomes would interrupt and disrupt puzzles - just brilliant!)

I also love puzzles. I loved for example Pandora Directive (ah, the nostalgia) because it was full of puzzles, and more recently Safecracker, which actually was just a series of puzzles bound together by a flimsy excuse of a plot. I was very excited about the game exactly because of the puzzles.

But.

Most puzzles were too simple. I spent next to no time solving them. The few that had me baffled, it was more because of the rules than the puzzle itself. I thought some of the puzzle rules were not very clear. Take the elevator puzzle: It was not clear that all the elevators would move at the same time, following the same command, or even that they would move one square at a time. When I read "an elevator will stop when it hits a wall", I assumed it would keep following an "up" command until it found an obstacle. Maybe it was me, but there were a few other puzzles that could be clearer in their description in my opinion.

Other puzzles, like the object arranging ones or the jigsaw-style ones, almost allowed you to cheat. Many objects clicked together while I was trying to rearrange them to have a better look at them! So what might have been an engaging puzzle almost solved itself.

All in all, I would really really love to see a whole season of this game. (Did I tell you how much I loved the atmosphere and the artwork?) But I believe it needs some serious rethinking in the puzzle design department.

[Simara]

The game is great, really well spent at 10 USD, the music, the characters, everything, just a few comments, story + puzzles + ending = great game. Make a full season please.

The room key puzzle was really hard for me, like really hard, had to check a walkthru only for that puzzle (only puzzle in the game that was that hard for me)

There is way too much gum available, I ended with plenty surplus.

I had to use real paper like crazy, we need some sort of drawing surface or something for it. I dont complain I love using paper for the puzzles.

The game felt short, sort of linear. The puzzles that required to form a shape are definetly too easy with pieces snapping into each other.

I really liked the setting, the world, the characters, everything, need more. This is the first time since the original Castle of Dr Brain that I love so much a puzzle game, but this one has an amazing story, but easier puzzles.

[Eco2525]

I'm really enjoying the atmosphere and humor, it's one of the best iPhone games I've played so far, and the puzzles are mostly pitched perfectly for my level of ingenuity ool. BUT - sometimes i find myself working out an answer which then proves to be incorrect not because of problems with my logic or working out, but because of the unclear wording of the instructions. I just flew into a rage upon finding that I'm only supposed to count the crows, not all the birds, in the Quorum of Crows puzzle. I was particularly enjoying that puzzle, too. The wording is not at all clear and caused me to fail the puzzle mutliple times, until i was forced to look for a walkthrough.

Poor show.

Eco.

[JohanShogun]

Good game, liked it was a few hours of fun play time. Nice music, nice story (the nordic people really spoke to me ). Would love to see more episodes, only thing which dragged the experience down a bit was the interface on the ipod/iphone where the string drawing was hard to do since it didn't always draw the string and the fact that the quit and submit buttons sometimes where on top of the puzzle field causing you to press them accidentally.

Over all a great game though 4/5

[Lucio Luiz]

Thank you for give this game free in the BTTF pre-order. I didn't buy Puzzle Agent before because I wasn't sure about how exactly was the game. Now, I'll certainly buy every other chapter of Puzzle Agent you publish

[OnkelStuart]

Hated it.

Yes, I solved all puzzles, that's not the reason.

The story is boring, the insane number of puzzles annoying, the graphics horrid (yes, I know why, but that doesn't help the fact that it IS a major eye-sore) and the interface is just plain lousy.

Nice music, one or two laughs, but that's it on the plus side.

Good thing it came for free with the BTTF pre-order, otherwise I would've been very angry for the waste of money. :P

[lombre]

Originally Posted by OnkelStuart

the insane number of puzzles annoying

May I ask why you're upset at the fact that a puzzle game has lots of puzzles?

[Giant Tope]

Originally Posted by OnkelStuart

the graphics horrid (yes, I know why, but that doesn't help the fact that it IS a major eye-sore)

Uhm, the graphics are fantastic. They match the art style of the cartoons perfectly. If you don't like the style, then there you go, but that doesn't mean the graphics are bad.

[tarasis]

I got the game with BTTF (don't remember why I didn't jst buy it when it came out, I'm sure there was a reason) and have played it a little so far. Its certainly interesting and I think I would quite happily see more episodes of it. My only "complaint" so far is that having the pieces click together in the initial jigsaw puzzle guides you too much.

Oh yeah and the first few puzzles don't really set you up for the room key puzzle (where I've stopped for the moment). Its like it goes from easy, fairly easy (does the snow bike turn on the square with the log or before it, does pass traffic lights mean go over them or simply near by) to hard (room key puzzle).

[cactusval]

I also thought the feel of it was great. Made me think of the movie Fargo. The puzzles were very simple but they were pretty decent. I would do more of these episodes if they start to solve what happens to the foreman and develop some more characters. I wouldn't pay more than $4.95 for an episode though. These are no Monkey Island. But they are pleasant in their own way.

[FitzoliverJ]

Well, that was mostly fun, though I don't know if I'd necessarily want to play through an entire season of it. Perhaps if episodes were spaced out more than every month or six weeks....

One recommendation I would make, though - the hints were usually no help at all. Either I solved the puzzles without them, or was still none of the wiser after all three. (And why "hint" at soemthing that's either irrelevant - like 24 hours on a 12 hour clock - or which is obvious from what's in front of you anyway?!)

[Tokito]

Just finished playing Puzzle Agent and I loved it!

All of the puzzles were really fun. Some I found very easy and others very hard, but I feel they balanced each other out and solving all of them was very enjoyable. Also I found the hint system really useful, I liked that you had to collect gum to use them and I often found I only had to look at the first clue to get my brain jump started; Helpful without being too obvious and spoiling the fun.

Annable's artwork is great and really complements the great story and characters. I would so buy one of those critters to stick in my window

Really great voice acting as well. Bjorn in particular got me roaring with laughter all the time. Yep.

[AbelX]

This game is really wonderful! Graphic, story, music, atmosphere, puzzles... all excellent. Hope to see more episodes. =) I need it!

[Leifern]

I completed the game a couple of weeks ago, and it's still lingering in my mind. The story, characters and atmosphere are/is FANTASTIC. I absolutely LOVED the game. As much as I've enjoyed the other TT-games, this is the best, i think. Although some of the puzzles got a little repetitive, i still loved it.

Please make more..

[Canard]

Late arriver to this game (meaning I got it free with BTTF pre-order) and so have only just finished it.

I REALLY enjoyed it, but when the credits started rolling at the end, was it just me, or did anyone else expect them to suddenly stop and the game to continue? (a la Guybrush in Curse of Monkey Island when he "dies" on Blood Island). I expected him to basically ignore his boss and go back to Scoggins on his own steam and solve some more puzzles to get to the bottom of what really was going on there. Maybe that was the idea for Season 2 though... (hint, hint)

I would have liked to see more logic type puzzles and less 'move pieces around to fit a shape' (found that just by randomly clicking and dropping you could get pieces to attach to others automatically and solve 70% of the puzzle like that - the rest was then easy), but that might just be me.

[crfh]

Loved the game, especially the artwork, the atmospherics and the music. I was incredibly frustrated by some of the puzzles because -other people had said it as well- the instructions are not clear at all in some of them. For example, in the lifts puzzles, I had no idea what to do, because I didn't know all the lifts would move at the same time. In most cases I'd know what to do after the first try was rejected, but of course that hurt my rating, and

Game was too short for my taste, imho too

[Ted E. Bear]

I really REALLY liked this game. Wanted to buy it after trying the demo, but I was still hoping for a XBLA release; now I gave up about Telltale's support on Xbox 360 and renewed my PC, got The Devil's Playhouse and preordered BTTF having free access to Puzzle Agent too.

The full game really intrigued me, I enjoyed every moment, good locations, wonderful art style, perfect music and atmosphere... Loved the characters, the dialogues, everything is both eerie and magical, creepy and funny, always coherent and without dead zones.

Beautiful concept and design, something different from both a puzzle game and an adventure game, the way puzzle-solving is being stuck into the story is so witty!
Puzzles are quite easy but not on the silly side, they're always honest and never stop you too much from enjoying the events; you actually WANT to solve them to see what happens next... And you usually get out gratified.

Sure there are possibilities to improve the experience, differentiate puzzle, adding more characters and locations, customize global difficulty and so on, but I've been impressed from the good quality of this pilot and would definitely buy a full series.

[Mr. Siegal]

I absolutely adored this game. My only complaints were that the puzzles were very inconsistent in difficulty (some would have me staring at the screen for more than an hour, while others could be solved at a glance) and that the ending could have used a bit more resolution. I understand the ambiguity, but a tiny bit more would have been swell.

[DrakeFox]

Thought the game showed promise, also thought it nice to see a different artstyle. Too bad I, like so many others, never got past the second puzzle. Planned to pick it up when I'd make my next larger purchase here, so quite happy it was given with the BTTF pre-order.
So...yeah, impression is it seems like a nice game, too bad it's broken beyond playability and made me hold off getting the Poker night at the inventory till I could check out if it had similar game breaking bugs.

Bit of a pity really since I've got so many other Telltale games which I hadn't had trouble with. Problems with bugs never really crossed my mind.

[Liquid.Tension]

I got the game with BTTF pre-order. I sincerly was never going to buy a game called "Puzzle Agent", i'm not a puzzle fan, so i have installed it because i was bored, and it was free. Well, now that i've finished it in few hours i totally love it! The atmosphere, the music, the graphics and the characters were fantastic! I can't wait for the second episode, good work telltale!

P.S.: That gnomes will be in my nightmares