The Puzzle Maker: Cebba’s Odyssey Review

The Puzzle Maker: Cebba’s Odyssey is a grid-based puzzle game developed by Arcaneworks, made in the GameMaker engine. Admittedly, this game caught my eye because you don’t really see older women as the face of a game’s cover art, and I was itching to play something that relied more on my brain than my ability to think fast or bring more firepower. So, let’s check it out and see if the gears in my head can still turn.

Who is Cebba, exactly? Well, she is the titular Puzzle Maker, a brilliant woman who has been making the most devious of riddles for her entire life. However, for a few years now she’s been looking for a successor. Many have tried and failed, but maybe you will be different. You’ll need to solve all 200+ trials in order to take her place as the next great Puzzle Maker. Along the way, you’ll learn more about Cebba and her life as the puzzles are based on her experiences, and eventually, you’ll find out why she’s doing all this.

I think the story is fine, but not exactly the most compelling. It provides a reason for introducing the various puzzle elements that get introduced throughout the game, and it does make for a nice respite from racking my brain, but it does feel skippable. Actually, you can skip over the story and get back into puzzling with a few button presses. I liked the graphics and music more, with good sprite-work that gives life to pawns and a soothing soundtrack to help you think, and you will be thinking a lot throughout your playtime.

Puzzles take place on a 7x7 grid and will have two types of units: player-controlled Agents and static, predictable Enemies. In order to solve a puzzle, you must use your agents to destroy all the enemies. It should go without saying that this is easier said than done, as agents only have two actions: movement and a unique skill, and there are various obstacles that can either help or hinder you when solving the level.

While simple on the surface, these puzzles will really test your brain on setting up the right chain of events needed to solve it. As you learn more about the Puzzle Maker’s backstory, more and more elements are introduced like spikes, pushers, and new types of units and terrain. At times, you will need to make some sacrifices in order to solve a level, such as attacking your own units to push them into the right spot or letting them die so that an enemy takes out its own ally. 

These levels can be seriously tricky to figure out, even in the initial grasslands where you start your journey, but you aren’t totally alone. There are plenty of helpful tools to get you in the right direction, such as undoing your moves and hints which you can disable if you want to solve it yourself. The hints provided are good enough to get you started and understand the methodology but don’t give you the solution outright. It’s all on you to work out the steps, even if it means blankly staring at the screen for several minutes until something clicks.  When it does click, it’s very satisfying to see “Puzzle Complete” appear after you’ve masterfully used every piece, and maybe even find a more efficient solution than what’s expected. If you’re really stuck, though, you can skip the puzzle and come back to it another time. There’s no punishment as far as I can tell.

However, what’s a Puzzle Maker if you can’t craft your own brainteasers? That’s why there’s a Puzzle Editor. It starts off locked until you beat the first chapter but once you do, with each chapter beaten, you’ll unlock the introduced puzzle elements to make increasingly more advanced levels. You can, of course, share your levels with interested parties such as your friends or upload them online. Now, the editor was in Beta at the time of review, but apart from a few things I wanted to explain a little more (like how to rotate units), it’s easy to use and quick to understand, so the only difficulty using the editor is how to make a properly challenging puzzle.

Now, let's get into the nitty-gritty. Now, Puzzle Maker shouldn’t put too much stress on your system so you should have a smooth time all throughout, however, I did encounter a few issues. For one thing, when I first started up the game, I took a screenshot of the title screen as I usually do for a review and it crashed. Also, for whatever weird reason, when I used my controller, there was some sort of artificial stick drift when selecting whether or not to have general hints turned on. Nothing wrong with my sticks, I checked afterwards, it just did that. Finally, Steam achievements didn’t unlock despite triggering the in-game achievements. An update did address this, but nothing changed for me.

The Puzzle Maker: Cebba’s Odyssey is an excellent puzzle game that will challenge and surprise you throughout all its levels. Solutions are elegant and satisfying to figure out and it never feels unfair. The only issue I have with the game is that it needs a little more time to polish it up. I definitely recommend picking this up if you want to really test your mind in setting up the pieces and watching them fall into place.