Dimhaven - The Lost Source

7/10! A lot of really solid puzzles, with only one or two that I was genuinely stuck on without help. The visuals are absolutely delightful throughout, and the writing is good up until...well, the reason I can't give this a score higher than a seven. I thought the ending was extremely disappointing. I'm not necessarily opposed to an "all's well that ends well" like this, but I feel like the game just wraps up way too quickly. I wouldn't have minded a few more areas to explore and secrets to uncover along the way. My biggest complaint though is that the game veers straight into unironic "ancient aliens" territory by the end. It instantly depleted most of the enthusiasm I had for the experience up until then. It is 2026, I thought we were over doing stories like this. Still, really great fundamentals, would recommend if you like puzzle games and aren't a performatively woke pedant like me.

[h1]The good[/h1] Dimhaven is an intriguing puzzle game that easily competes with classics like Myst and Riven. Some of the puzzles are very hard, but I wouldn't have it any other way. If you get stuck, there is a hint system that allows you to get progressively bigger hints. The puzzles are highly varied and never felt boring. They went with an intentionally pixelated style but otherwise realistic 3D rendering. The design is beautiful with lots of attention to detail. Also great music, voice acting and story writing. The game ran smoothly for me with no stuttering. [h1]The bad[/h1] There are a couple of annoying teasers, like gates indicating that you need a key to get through, but there isn't actually a key, so you can never explore those areas. Maybe it was cut content. One particular puzzle [spoiler](the first one with the sun mask and the eye)[/spoiler] caused me some agony. They give you a list of three steps to follow, but the first one is supposed to be interpreted in a different way from the rest. Eventually I swallowed my stubbornness and turned to the hint system which quickly set me on the right track without revealing too much. In hindsight it was really quite easy. I just wish they had used the same syntax for all three steps. The game was a bit short. I wish there were more zones/chapters. I am definitely hungry for a sequel, prequel or dlc [spoiler](maybe a trip to the lighthouse or that huge structure with the partially collapsed bridge)[/spoiler].

Amazing

Un jeu d'énigme narratif très sympa, les puzzles sont bien dosés pour la plupart, la patte graphique est plaisante, et le tout se fini en une dizaine d'heure.

I liked playing this game but the ending was disappointing and confusing. You were so focused on the puzzles that you forgot to finish and fill out the story. The puzzles became so abstract at one point that they didn't relate to the story at all. Overall the ending felt very rushed like you couldn't be bothered with it.

I enjoyed the game, but had to use the hint system a good bit, and it felt like there were leaps in logic in the story that weren't well conveyed. The way certain characters appear was jarring at times. There were fun puzzles, an interesting story, and it was mostly well done, so I would recommend if you're looking for a fairly short game.

It's getting Mysty all up in here! What was great: - The game is absolutely gorgeous. It's as beautiful as a good walking simulator. - It is, at the same time, as interesting as a good puzzle game. No hand-holding or annoying inner monologues. I took a couple hints, and I feel ok about that: some things are not easy to solve. - Wonderful music, no annoying dialogues and inner monologues. - No hand-holding! Well, almost: there were a couple suggestions from the inner voice, but only a couple. - Good internal hint system: I took a hint, and it really helps you but not revealing too much too soon. - The game has some normal objects and actions as well, not solely weird complex House of Da Vinci style contraptions. Sometimes you need to think practically. What I didn't like: - Just wish it had been longer. Kind of had a feeling I'd get to explore more of the island, like those hiking trails, but alas. - The overall story isn't particularly interesting, or revealed in a particularly suspenseful way, so I didn't follow it that much. But the puzzles were quite enough to hold me entertained.

Fun and complex puzzles, definitely worth a play

I can definitely recommend the game, but admittedly it falls very short of Quern and the other greats of the genre. There are so few games in this genre that it's kind of a no-brainer to pick this up, but I do hope the devs can take the valuable feedback in the other critical reviews here to heart and yeah, hopefully pop off with something truly spectacular in the future. The gameplay here is so buttery smooth and fluid, it just "feels" so good to play. The world feels palpable with tons of interactables and appropriate animations. Hits - Puzzles: Most of the puzzles are fun and somewhat challenging and a lot of these puzzles are actually intuitive, which is nice. Tools: You're given a lot of note-taking tools to help you along the way, it's really cool to be able to draw colored notes on photos that you take. Misses - Puzzles: Unfortunately, there is one particular immersion-breaking puzzle in a completely different style than the other puzzles, and it makes absolutely zero sense - the game literally locks you into it by surprise in the middle of exploring and you can't do anything but look up a guide on how to solve it (or you just brute force your way through it with a hundred guesses). I'd wager not a single person actually solved this puzzle legitimately, which is really sad. I'm also sure a good portion of players rage quit at this point as well because getting locked inside such a weird gimmick for no reason whatsoever makes zero sense (it's not a physical lock, the game devs trap you inside invisible walls and force you to perform weird interactions and solve a puzzle with zero context clues). Tools: Unfortunately, the "journal" just becomes obnoxious after a few hours, after capturing 15 pages of notes, it never seems to open anywhere near where you want it to. It usually opens at the beginning and you have to tediously flip through all the pages to get to your most recent notes, so it's just easier to use a real notebook in real life for most of the puzzles... despite some of them greatly benefitting from the in-game sketching tools. Story: Yeah, it's just terrible. It's cliche and plays on common themes. The characters are forgettable. The place is super interesting as you fly in during the opening and there are a few comedy elements, but once you leave the starter area, everything goes downhill. Nothing really feels fully fleshed out. There's only a very small amount of lore to discover, which allude to only a couple of interesting things, like villagers hallucinating and solar eclipses, but we never see anything like this happen or play out. There's a bunch of posters in the starter area and it has a ton of environmental detail which makes it feel real, but the rest of the game is borderline empty, and empty of the comedy elements too. It feels like the devs spent 75% of their time and effort on the beginning area and 25% on the rest of the game, and unfortunately the starter area is 15-20% of the time you spend in the game. All in all, I enjoyed it due to the interesting, intuitive, and somewhat challenging puzzles. There's around 10 hrs of content. It's short, sweet, but unfortunately pretty forgettable. I really hope they patch out the few moments that made me want to rage quit (for real), so that future players don't have that experience.