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Relicta Review - A Fun & Frustrating Magnetic Puzzle Game
Relicta is a first-person puzzle game that is heavily based around physics and using the attract & repel aspects of magnetism to overcome obstacles. The game has a lot of terrific puzzles and an intriguing story that keeps the player pushing forward, but it's let down by some janky physics that occasionally turns what should be a fun experience into one of frustration.
Relicta is set aboard a station on the Moon, where scientific experiments involving an artifact known as the Relicta have been taking place in secret. The player takes on the role of Dr. Angelica Patel - a physicist on the Chandra Base who is testing a new device that allows the user to manipulate gravity and magnetism. A mysterious accident aboard the base separates all of the members of the crew, including Angelica's daughter, and she must go on a mission to rescue them. The experiments that were set up before the accident are still active, so she will need to complete them in order to continue her journey. The story of Relicta is told across a number of radio conversations between Angelica, the stranded members of the team, and the obnoxious A.I. that is running the base. The mystery of what is happening at the base and its connection to the Relicta is one of the highlights of the game, with the dialogue-heavy storytelling meshing well with the growing sense of dread regarding the fates of the other members of the crew.
The basic gameplay loop of Relicta involves guiding metal cubes to the end of each stage, in order to shut down the energy field that is preventing access to the next area. The player can use the power of their suit to change the color of the cubes to either blue or red, which have their own energy field of the same color. If two cubes of the same color come near each other, then they will push each other away, while cubes of the opposite color will attract each other. The player can also activate an anti-gravity effect on the cubes, allowing them to float in the direction that they're pushed. The game has a lot of similarities with Portal and its portal gun. The "thinking with portals" effect is very much in play with Relicta, with gravity and magnetism taking the place of dimensional doorways.
The majority of the puzzles in Relicta are stellar and there is a genuine feeling of satisfaction that comes with finishing them. Once the player comes to grips with the different physics at play, then manipulating the cubes to move across the room with the aid of magnets or using them to hit switches will come naturally. There is usually an initial moment of frustration that comes with exploring a new area and trying to work out how to proceed, but once everything clicks, then it feels great to send the cubes through force fields and across gaps to complete the puzzles. The game would have benefitted from a minimap that shows the location of cubes & which buttons connect to which devices, as we were often forced to use the free-roaming camera mode to find necessary items in the game world.
The main issue with the gameplay of Relicta involves the floating mechanics. A lot of puzzles involve making cubes float by combining gravity, magnetism, and force. These puzzles feel unresponsive and are more akin to playing pool than anything else in the game. There are times where the player can line up the same move twice in a row, perform the same actions, and have a different result each time. This feels like shoddy design when you're trying to send a cube flying across the room and it takes several attempts of you performing the same action for it to work.
The visuals of Relicta are stunning, with most areas set in outdoor areas with impressive vistas in the distance. The problem is that the levels are a lot smaller than they look, as the player is contained within invisible walls. This isn't so much of an issue with the exterior of the stage, but the invisible walls exist in locations where they shouldn't. This is connected to the fact that many barriers exist that prevent the player from moving forward, just to make a puzzle work as planned. The developers also made sure that Angelica is unable to perform basic actions that are standard in most games, like being able to crawl through a large gap or climb a waist-high ledge, in order for some puzzles to work. These are tied to a larger problem of the game trying hard to prevent the player from completing a task in any way other than how the developer intended. The physics puzzles in games like Breath of the Wild allow the player to experiment in order to complete them, while Relicta just throws invisible walls and obnoxious barriers everywhere to make sure that every task is finished as intended.
Relicta is an enjoyable puzzle game, but some of the stages can more frustrating than fun, thanks to a mixture of unreliable mechanics and the developers forcing the player to abide by a strict set of boundaries at all times. Relicta still offers an enjoyable puzzle-solving experience despite its issues and the mystery of what is happening on the base is enough of an incentive to keep pushing through the annoying parts of the game.
Relicta will be released for Google Stadia, PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on August 4, 2020.
