Logic – Keypad (Early Access)

Logic – Keypad is a brain-damaging first-person puzzle experience of Vietnamese intelligence. The game was anonymously submitted by developer NguyenZ, making the writer very curious. After asking Conan to investigate, I learned that this is Nguyen Chi Nguyen’s first game. According to the developer’s description, the game is merely logic puzzles and does not have the usual background elements for the experience, but you should not believe it. The goal of the experience is to “unlock” every door in the game screen. However, the game possesses some rather confusing designs.

As mentioned above, the gameplay of Logic – Keypad only revolves around puzzles. The player collects hints in the level environment and notes fragments to find the password to open the door. These clues are often vague and sometimes require trial and error to figure out the correct password. If only considering the puzzle element alone, it is undeniable that the puzzles in the game are quite brain-damaging, requiring players not only to observe the surrounding environment but also to brainstorm in the sky and the sea to decipher them properly. developer map.

The reason I say exactly as the developer’s intention is because the puzzle element in Logic – Keypad is often puzzle, rather than giving the writer a sense of satisfaction when completing a puzzle as usual. Part of this feeling is because the game is not built according to the usual standards in design. The game makes it impossible for the writer to clearly distinguish whether it belongs to the usual puzzle genre with minimal storytelling or belongs to the “escape from a closed room” puzzle game like The Room.

From a player’s perspective, the Logic – Keypad experience has more of an Escape Room design feeling due to the rather small scale of each screen. The problem is, in this type of puzzle game, there are usually fixed puzzles in the rooms, players are forced to solve the puzzle before they can open the door to enter another room and continue with new puzzles. . However, in the case of the game, the puzzle aspect is designed in an east-west direction, the clues to the puzzle in this room are often found in another room.

Not zoning the puzzle area like Escape Room games makes the puzzle heavy. For example, the first screen, the writer mysteriously wrote a puzzle and could not solve it forever because he did not understand what the so-called yes and no suggestions of the game meant, especially when it was just meaningless lines. means. Just when I was about to give up, luckily I found the right code another door, opening up an even wider space and more doors. After opening the last door in turn, the writer found a hint for the original door.

This strange design occurs not only in that level but in all levels of Logic – Keypad, making me not understand the design direction. On the other hand, the puzzles in the game are not uniform in difficulty. There are puzzles that are extremely easy to guess without looking for clues, while there are puzzles that are too brain-damaging with clues that are quite “oh my god”. It is worth mentioning that the game’s suggestion system is always from scaring to mocking players, creating a sense of lack of seriousness when there are times when it makes you wait but in the end it says no suggestions.

Counting the time when you need to see hints is also a rather confusing design as it wastes the player’s time unnecessarily and is a design minus point. Because, Logic – Keypad always counts the hours before showing the unlucky suggestion as mentioned above, regardless of whether you have viewed the hint before or not. In fact, in many cases of game experience, the writer often switches back and forth between doors or pauses, so sometimes not remembering the hint of a door is quite normal, but the developer does not seem to think about the fields. that case.

Worth mentioning, the Logic – Keypad experience also lacks continuity, which I think is a serious design flaw. Specifically, if the player accidentally opens a random door to pass the level, the game still accepts it and does not consider other factors, even if the doors should be unlocked to collect clues. has not been opened yet. In other words, players can completely cheat when “rote learning” the password to open the door somewhere, for example, and still get the achievement for all the effort that you have not spent.

The above design makes the Logic – Keypad experience no replay value, because all opening codes are fixed and do not change during plays. An issue that I cannot fail to mention is that the title of the game feels very lost compared to the experience, while this is the element that brings the first emotion to any game. I think the developer should create a title that is both mysterious and curious. For example, I suddenly thought of Keypazzle which is a combination of a keyboard and a puzzle.

The audio-visual aspect of Logic – Keypad has nothing particularly worth mentioning when it comes to just stopping at a basic level, although the configuration requirements are a bit high. The game does not have background music if not counting the cassette player that the player can interact with to open the music in the levels. The element of collecting gold coins is quite interesting when it requires you to be observant and think a little creatively in the approach. However, the writer has a very annoying problem that the game is constantly ‘out of focus’ and jumps to another application window during gameplay.

After all, Logic – Keypad offers a puzzle experience that leaves a rather mixed feeling. The biggest plus point of the game is that the puzzles are diverse with ideas and quite challenging even though they only revolve around deciphering numbers. However, the game has quite confusing designs that make the game experience unsatisfactory if not often frustrating and disrespectful to the players’ valuable time. If you are only interested in the pure puzzle element, this is definitely a name worth considering.

Logic – Keypad is now available for PC (Windows).

The article uses games supported by the publisher.

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