- February 3, 2019
- Nonsense Arts
ETHEREAL
Platforms
About
ETHEREAL is a single-player puzzle game featuring sensational mechanics and pretty visuals. Winner of the Audience Award at IGF 2019, it offers a non-verbal narrative through its beautiful minimalist art style and awarded music and sound design. Explore 4 different worlds with 24 hand-crafted levels, taking your time to solve puzzles and uncover secrets.



- The game features beautiful abstract aesthetics and a unique visual style that stands out.
- Puzzles are cleverly designed and progressively increase in difficulty, providing a satisfying challenge.
- The sound design and music are exceptional, enhancing the overall immersive experience.
- The lack of guidance and maze-like levels can lead to frustration and confusion about where to go next.
- There is no option to replay levels after completion, and finishing the game results in the deletion of save files.
- Some mechanics can feel finicky and lead to softlocks, detracting from the overall enjoyment.
gameplay
55 mentions Positive Neutral NegativeThe gameplay is characterized by its clever mechanics and gradual introduction of new elements, creating a satisfying yet sometimes frustrating puzzle experience. While the game features unique and aesthetically pleasing designs, some players found certain mechanics to be unclear or cumbersome, leading to moments of confusion. Overall, the gameplay is engaging and rewarding, with a good balance of simplicity and complexity, though it may require patience to fully appreciate its depth.
“The mechanics are really interesting, and it's fun to think about how they apply to the game's world.”
“Incredible little game, the puzzles are well designed and the introduction of new mechanics is done in an easy to understand and natural way.”
“Every puzzle and mechanic is so elegantly designed, making for slick gameplay and non-stop moments of euphoria and allowing it to keep things fresh even to the final levels.”
“It's not that I didn't have fun at all, but the maze aspect combined with mechanics like the rotation can render everything rather tedious and even frustrating sometimes.”
“My only gripe with the game is that although it introduces new game mechanics one by one, it was on several occasions completely unclear to me what the new mechanic was and I only stumbled upon the new mechanic by accident after much trial and error.”
“The primary mechanic of the game mainly serves to make basic movement slightly harder and more confusing without actually making the puzzles more interesting, which compounds the fact that the keyboard controls aren't great.”