Wise Garden

This game looks gorgeous, the art, atmosphere and soundtrack are impressively good. There are some original ideas as well in terms of puzzle design. For example, boss levels at the end of each section require you to solve the same puzzle in multiple panels that are impacting one another (akin to some multi-panel puzzles in Witness and Taiji, but with a different take) However, I can't really recommend this game to thinky puzzle game fans, primarily because of how the core puzzle mechanic works and how the puzzle interface doesn't provide the means to think deeply about the levels. The gist of this puzzle mechanic is: you're given a grid of 5x5/6x6/7x7 and you need to draw a path from the entrance to the exit satisfying certain conditions like a specific number of turns, etc. However, you also need to place different types of stones on the grid first, and this is where the puzzles' search space explodes exponentially. Earlier levels where there are only a few stones you can place in each level are actually quite fun. But when it asks you to place 8 different stones on a 7x7 grid before you can even start drawing the path makes it really hard to reason about the puzzles. Each stone has ~30 spots you can place them and even through a process of elimination, you can only narrow it down to maybe 10 positions each, resulting in millions of possibilities. And the game doesn't even let you start drawing the path before you place all the stones. For that reason the main puzzle solving experience for many levels here are, (1) place all the stones in places that feels okay, (2) try to draw the line, and prove that it's impossible, (3) try any of the million other configurations to place the stones, then try to draw the path again from scratch and so on. It's a very feely approach as opposed to thinky, which sounds intentional, but still it makes the game ridiculously difficult and not in an enjoyable way. For many on the advanced levels, it's fun to try to draw the path, but definitely not fun to think of all the possible configurations of stones. Where the game shines is in some later stages where the main challenge is drawing the path as opposed to placing stones. For example, there are numbered towers that you need to collect in order or teleportation through walls, which bring forward some really cool puzzles within the grid itself, without needing to bash your head to the keyboard trying to place stones. The hint system is pretty cool since it completely eliminates the main issue of the game, by placing the stones where they belong. However, this unfortunately makes almost all the levels too easy. I would have preferred maybe hinting stone locations one by one rather than giving it all away. Overall I would look forward to another game by the developer, since it's a very cool looking game with good ideas. But I must be honest that I didn't really enjoy most of the puzzles here, and would have appreciated a better playtested set of puzzles.