The Puzzle Maker: Cebba’s Odyssey

Intriguing concept for a puzzle game! The mechanics are both challenging and engaging. The only reason I stopped playing is that I got stuck and couldn’t figure it out, so I'm hoping for a "skip this level" or "more hints" option to be added.

I’ve been slowly whittling away at this game for a while and it’s so much fun. I’m not done with it yet but I heartily recommend it. It’s got that perfect level of puzzle game challenge where it tutorializes very well before setting you loose to figure out the tougher puzzles. The visuals are lovely too!

A collection of very well thought out puzzles that builds on itself and its systems to great effect. Coupled with the titular puzzle maker so you can mess about with the systems yourself. Held back a bit by some technical issues but otherwise a great puzzle game. The game is presented as a series of grid based “single turn puzzles” where you need to use your available unit’s actions to wipe out every enemy on screen. Every unit has one unique action or reaction tied to them that you must use to put yourself in the ideal position. There are 5 worlds with 40 puzzles in each for 200 total puzzles. Each world introduces new tools to play with and gradually integrates them with the tools from the previous worlds. After the first world you also unlock access to the puzzle editor and every world (excluding the last) unlocks its components for use there once you’ve proven you are familiar enough with them. Any puzzles you make can be published for other users to play although at time of writing they're aren't that many to pick from (either down to the game's obscurity or technical issues I will mention later) so do keep that in mind if user created content is your main draw. Hints in this game are 3 tiered in a sense and later tiers are only available if it seems like you are struggling (ie done a bunch of undoing and resetting). There is Clue, Hint and then straight up skipping the puzzle. The clues generally give more of a blanket idea on what to do while the hints give you more concrete directions on some of the actions that need to be done to finish the puzzle. I never skipped a puzzle but I assume that’s fairly self explanatory. [h2]Pros:[/h2] - The puzzles themselves are incredibly well crafted. There is a lot of care into the puzzles and how every tool at your disposal is introduced, expanded upon and continues to be used in different ways throughout the entire game. Every ally, enemy and obstacle can be used in so many different ways and it really shows as the game progresses further and further. Most puzzles are quite quick to solve once you know what to do and I found the loop quite satisfying. - The game is very nice to look at with strong character designs and well done sprite work for characters, areas and portraits that make solving the puzzles that much more enjoyable. - Making puzzles is also quite fun to toy around with. The tools are easy to understand as the process is quite simple on the surface but very robust if you wish to dig into it. [h2]Cons:[/h2] - Some elements of the presentation lacked polish in comparison to the high quality of the spritework. The pixel font option is somewhat selective on which text it changes (ignoring the clue and cutscene text but affecting everything else), I counted two times where storybook lines repeated themselves and there is a strange graphical glitch with units standing on teleporters that was a tad distracting at times. The game also for some reason never saved window scale settings. - The actual Puzzle Maker itself, while great at actually making the puzzles, had some pretty major issues: At least on my end, attempting to rename them through the designated option froze the game and it would crash any time I attempted to publish a level. They were still added to my workshop but never showed up with the rest of the user created levels. (Caveat being that according to the game itself, the maker is still in Beta so if this get’s resolved I will amend this section) -While rare and don’t often affect playing through the game, There are a few strange or bugged interactions I did come across. [spoiler] The main one to look out for is on Desert 30: One interaction (when you teleport onto a tile next to a recently deleted pusher (via occultist) that would otherwise have pushed you into a hole) caused a softlock situation where you get frozen on a teleporter and can’t do anything other than quit the game. This is the only one I found in the main levels and is not part of the correct solution but is worth mentioning.[/spoiler] Overall I definitely recommend this one to puzzle game fans. Going through the 200 puzzles was a great time and tinkering with the editor after every world was very relaxing in its own way.