Dimhaven - The Lost Source

Dimhaven had the bones to be a modern adventure game classic. Unfortunately, it’s just excellent. So what happened, and what’s the game like? Dimhaven is a modern variation on the Myst flavor of puzzle adventure games. It is set in an incredibly interesting and atmospheric world, absolutely chock to the brim with genuinely engaging puzzles. The puzzles really are the highlight of the game. I can’t remember the last adventure game where I actually sat back and positively reminisced on the puzzles I’d just cleared without a walkthrough. There’s only one mediocre-to-bad puzzle in the entire game, and you can brute force it if need be. Graphically, Dimhaven is gorgeous with its pixelated vistas and 1980s technology. There was a wide variety of inspirations for the layout design from older adventure games, but it never felt like a pale imitation of some better source material. The sound design is great. Sound effects and ambiance establish a comfortable balance between a cozy, light-hearted mystery, and eerie moments where the isolation becomes more clearly felt. As for the music, you’re not likely to seek out the soundtrack on its own, but you won’t feel inclined to turn it off either. All of what I’ve described sounds excellent, and it describes maybe ⅔ of the game experience. The issue is the final third and the things you notice as the game wraps itself up. It becomes clear that the scope of the game changed during development. There’s several locked gates/doors across the map that feel as if there had been intent at one point for them to be an explorable area. Additionally, several puzzles from the trailers did not make it into the final product. I’d have been fine with that because the pacing is good for most of the game, but the ending soured me slightly. Everything accelerates at lightspeed in the final twenty percent. It suddenly feels like the game is fast tracking you to its conclusion and you start to really notice the weak dialogue. Maybe it’s just how the protagonist and one other character are written, but nearly every time they spoke it felt stilted. I suppose, given the ending (which I won’t spoil), it makes sense why there wasn’t a deeper exploration of the concept or more answers given, but I think it really would’ve benefitted the experience as a whole. It’s a shame that Dimhaven doesn’t quite reach the heights that it’s capable of. But is it worth the full price for admission? Yes, it is.

I was disappointed with the lack of quality graphics. I'm on a MacBook Pro M4 Max so maybe the Windows environment is better but there is no comparison with graphics in Quern, Riven or Obduction. Photos were not as clear as when viewing the original and I was unable to enlarge when using the hand hold option to see/read the content. Finally, and more importantly, many of the puzzles are far too obtuse with hardly any crumbs of clues available to help. Even the hints often stopped short. I guess I'm too old but I think the developers were so close to the puzzle solutions that they failed to provide logical progression for newbies to solve them. I had to constantly cheat to progress. I'd also say that Zack has a hard time with clear communications - he must live in a fog. Based on reading most of the reviews by others I'm in the minority but IMO the game's execution could have been so much better.

This game is very challenging. I loved all the places it took you. It started out like it was going to be one thing then took you completely somewhere else.

Excellent game. On my second playthrough, I finished it in less than three hours. Of course, I had a bunch of notes from my first playthrough. I'm a little disappointed by the fact that there were no randomized puzzles, nor was there any "big choice" at the end, like with Quern. It didn't have any alternate endings that I could tell. Other than that, it was an excellent game. I hope the creators make more like this one in the future!

Vraiment hardcore niveau énigmes (genre vraiment) Mais quel beau jeu !

One of the best puzzle games I played in the last years. I found the puzzles to be quite unique, interesting and satisfyingly difficult at times. The game ended very suddenly and much quicker than I anticipated, since there seemed so many more places to explore. However, it took me 15 hours to complete and this was a good value for the price.

Incredible puzzle game. I disagree with the negative reviewers saying that many puzzles were incredibly vague and expected you to know more than you should. It is a skill issue. There was really only one puzzle I wish gave a little bit more direction, but everything else was perfectly solvable (please add a 1 to the top of the cabinet puzzle chart.)

Maybe you're smarter than me. There's a very real possibility. If you are, by all means, go for it. There's a strong basis for a game here, and yes, it warns you upfront that it's hard, but there are some puzzles, especially early on, where there is more than one logical solution, but unless you stumble upon the one the designer intended, you cannot progress. There are assumptions made (such as whether partners in a game of cards sit next to or across from each other, or I guess what "wraps around" means) that I did not find in evidence. Look, maybe I missed something, but there were at least two puzzles so far that I feel are not inherently solvable with the information provided. I had to find a walkthrough video for one puzzle, and I still don't understand how my answer was wrong. I say all of this with the humble acknowledgement that maybe this game bested me more than once; I am human. But I love puzzle and logic games, and either this one is too hard for me, or it is flawed.

It has been a while since I played Quern, and I can say coming from it that I really enjoyed this game. The beginning of this game is absolute cinema. The music and artstyle were my favorite parts. The voice acting was also really well done. Some of the puzzles had me stuck and I had to use hints to figure out how to proceed, but you felt satisfied when you beat them. The only thing I'll mention is that I think the ending could have been a bit longer because it feels a bit rushed. I'm really looking forward to Zadbox's next game. Thank you for this gem :)