Markov Alg

Excellent bite-sized brain teaser in the vein of Baba is You, though easier than it. Not really much to say about it - puzzles are smart, steadily increasing in difficulty and without any dirty tricks, with a few stumpers close to the end of the game.

Markov Alg is a good, short puzzle game (let's say 2-3h) with an interesting Matrix-style hacker aesthetic. The game mechanic is a mix of sokoban puzzle game and executing extremely simple predefined programming instructions of the form "'initial_string' becomes 'final_string'". Later on you can also adjust those strings, or manipulate where you execute these instructions, or selectively break them so they aren't executed. Other reviews mention a similarity to Baba is You, and I guess I can see the resemblance, but this is a tiny game, not a puzzle epic like Baba. Level progression is reasonable: you can skip individual hard levels, and have access to the ~3 most recent unsolved levels. The first ~40 of the 63 levels are mostly very easy, but the game eventually picks up the challenge. My one complaint is that the game caused a constant minor noise in my previous PC monitor, and a bit of GPU coil whine in my GPU, so I figure there must be some problem with the scanlines in the game's art style or something. That said, some of these issues disappeared when I forced VSync on in my GPU driver settings. Oh, and there are zero game settings except for a fullscreen mode. [quote]For more puzzle game reviews, news and everything puzzle-related, follow [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/25928931-Puzzle-Lovers/]Puzzle Lovers[/url] and check out our [url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/puzzlelovers]Steam group[/url].[/quote]