Tachyon
- What People Say
This was a fun and interactive puzzle book for the ERA team to play. The game is comprised of a puzzle book with fifty pages and an online hint and answer system. When the player knows the answer, they enter a code into the website and are prompted to continue the story line. For being a paper-based game, having the online hint and answer system was a great way to balance the time with paper and the time with technology. The book and website were clear with good visuals and legible text without being cluttered. We would love to see added to the online website an audio/visual component, whether it be audio recordings or video recordings to help add to the component quality. On every page in the puzzle book as well is a QR code that will take you to that puzzle page code entry online. This is a great way to allow for a portable pause-and-play game that can be paused and continued anytime, anywhere!
We found the story-line engaging to be a part of and it was a very intriguing storyline. As we worked our way through the puzzle book, we felt as though some of the puzzles reminded us of searching through the missing father’s notes to see where he had gone to. The puzzles usually helped to drive the story line and narration well although we would like to see if more of the puzzles could be intertwined into the story narration. As mentioned with the component quality, the use of some audio and visual add-ons for the website would help to immerse the player further into the storyline and narrative. Overall, this was a solid storyline that wouldn’t overwhelm the player. It allows for the player to stop the game and continue at their leisure without having to worry about forgetting many details of the storyline to push the game forward.
The puzzles were a great mix of logic, word, math, and visual puzzles. We found they were achievable and made sense to the storyline and for the game play. There was a great variety and they were not unrealistic to solve. We found that some of the puzzles required some online research to solve. The player enters a code to see if their puzzle solution is correct. At times, this code would then become part of the next puzzle sequence! The hint system was usually effective and was presented in the manner of a discussion forum where other players could add their comments for each puzzle in addition to hints provided by the game creators. Some of the hints given did not reveal what the final answer was. This hint system resulted at times with hints that weren’t necessarily the clearest to follow, but we were still able to work through them to arrive at the answer. We would encourage the website to add a page with puzzle hints and/or solutions only, so players can find what they need with ease.
Overall, we had fun playing through this interactive puzzle book! This would be great for a solo play or a small group play if you had multiple copies of the book around. The storyline was immersive and accessible to continue the game play if you were playing this over many sittings for a few puzzles at a time. Since the game is light on materials, this would be a great puzzle book to take with you and complete at your leisure. For one of the ERA members playing this game, it was their favourite puzzle book experience. We hope you have just as great an experience playing through this puzzle book as we did!
Final Verdict: | 7.1/10 |
