A Divine Guide To Puzzle Solving Review

A Divine Guide To Puzzle Solving is a first-person puzzle game developed by Nementic Games. You play as a mortal chosen (read: forced) by the God of Puzzles, Tobla, to solve her latest and greatest puzzles, where afterwards you might be able to go back home. Easy, right?

Let’s get this out of the way first. You can’t really escape from being called “Portal-like” when the first thing you do is put a cube on a button. Plus, the all-seeing observer of your actions constantly chiming in to give some humorous dialogue, and may or may not be trying to kill you at the end. Yeah… not exactly the most unique storyline, but the actual writing itself is fairly good. Give some love to Jessica Osborne, she really killed it as the almighty puzzle deity Tobla. Her voice has just the right amount of haughtiness with the underlying feeling that she thinks she’s doing what’s best for you.

The main mechanic in this game is swapping. Mark two objects, and they’ll exchange positions in a snap, which is necessary as some objects cannot be carried. This leads to some really good puzzles with elegant solutions… with one notable cheese solution that made one level a little less frustrating. Since it’s the only mechanic, the puzzles are rather straightforward, but I had a little trouble executing the solutions, especially ones that involved rolling a ball. Still, the physics are nice and consistent, so you shouldn’t worry about anything going too wild. Here’s a tip: objects retain the momentum and direction they are going in after swapping. That little fact should make some levels go by a little smoother.

The levels themselves are good to look at and don’t really hide anything despite the more natural look it goes for. There are only three types of areas, though, and one of them is the area for in-between actual levels. It doesn’t get samey due to the short playtime, but it would’ve been interesting to see a little variety. This isn’t a complaint, just something to note.

Onto performance issues: there weren’t any I noticed. No glitches I encountered or anything, and it ran completely smoothly. I had one issue, and it was that the last level was notably of lesser quality than the rest of the game. Also, it is really short. I beat the game in under three hours and even got all the achievements. However, upon doing a little research post-game, you could beat the game in just an hour. Still, I found it worth my time, finding that it doesn’t overstay its welcome.

A Divine Guide To Puzzle Solving is a nice little puzzle game that is worth its low asking price of £6.69 (at the time of writing). I think it could’ve done a little more, but that’s probably for the best. You’ll leave with a nice feeling rather than a dead look after staring at a puzzle for way too long.