The Entropy Centre

A very entertaining game; it's comparable to portal and matches portal's charm. The environments are atmospheric, and the gameplay is fun. I was surprised by how good the humour is and found the lore very interesting. Definitely worth a buy, or at least try the demo.

This game feels like a very worthy love letter to the Portal style of games. It has some amazing environments and the dialogue between the two main protagonists is absolutely flawless. The time warping mechanic is fun to use and had enough depth throughout the game to keep me thinking but without stumping me too often. I thoroughly enjoyed my time in The Entropy Centre and would love to return to it again.

The Entropy Centre ist ein sehr unterhaltsames First-Person-Puzzlespiel ähnlich Portal. Es gibt eine Menge vergleichbarer Mechaniken wie Sprungpads, Lichtbrücken, Druckplatten usw.
Der Hauptunterschied besteht darin, dass die Waffe keine Portale schafft und man seinen Schwung nutzen muss, sondern dass die Waffe die Zeit von Objekten zurückspult.

Die Level sind gefühlt schwerer als die von Portal, gerade in Richtung Endgame, aber es gibt viele Arten diese zu lösen. Die Story selber ist fantastisch und versetzt mich zurück zum ersten Durchspielen von Portal.

A lot of people have compared this game to the Portal franchise and I'm here to tell you:

This game is BETTER than portal.

The primary game mechanic, reversing the flow of time for specific objects, creates much more varied puzzles than portals do, but it's not only that! The setting of the game is much more well-designed. it feels like a cohesive place that I could actually imagine myself walking through. It had a feeling of actual architecture, rather than what Portal 2 has, which as it even shows you in the canon of the game, is a bunch of rooms loosely connected, and floating with no apparent support structures in a large void which you're supposed to believe used to be a salt mine. In The entropy center the rooms feel like something which was actually constructed for actual people to actually be in, oddly placed office spaces not withstanding.

The stakes of the game, the players motivations, are more concrete and compelling than Portal. And the story and lore are both more mysterious, and more fun to piece together.

Where Portal 2 has GLaDOS and Wheatley, The Entropy Centre has ASTRA and E. They are not malicious towards the players like GLaDOS and Wheatley are, but are helpful and charming. This is because The Entropy Centre does not need two needlessly cruel A.I. to motivate you to solve puzzles. Its motivations are built into its story! Contrast this with Portal 2 which had many stories being told in the lore and gameplay, none of which provided actual motivation to complete the puzzles. it's always "escape or destroy whichever A.I. is currently being mean to me." Chell doesn't even have another motivation to leave the facility! You don't know if the surface is habitable or if Chell has anything on the outside world worth fighting for/towards. The motivations in The Entropy Centre are both clear, and naturally integrated into the story.

I love the Portal Franchise and it will continue to be one of my favorite game franchises of all time, but The Entropy Centre clearly learned from the mistakes that Portal made and produced a better game. Now onto the things that I felt more neutral or negative about:

There are some sections of the game which involve pseudo-combat elements. In these sections you have to solve a (thankfully more simple than normal) puzzle while actively defending yourself against a hord of enemies. If you get hit 2 times by an enemy within about 30 seconds, you die, and restart the level. I found this extremely tedious, and rarely fun. Thankfully there are not many of these sections in the game.

Being a smaller studio, the levels are understandably not as fine-tuned as portal. this does not often result in significant increase in difficulty, but can on rare occasion. This results in a scenario where you have found the correct answer to a puzzle but must re-try its execution a dozen times to actual solve it. Thankfully looking through their update and patch logs it seems like the developers are actively working on this fine tuning issue, with one such update having been posted one day ago at time of writing.

I felt neutrally about the ending. It didn't have any surprises for me, and was about what I expected would happen for the last quarter of the game or more. Still satisfying, just not exciting.

oh, also the puzzles are very fun to solve, and the graphics are pretty. Recommended to anyone who likes portal, or first person physics based puzzle games in general.

Fantastic game, great visual style, immersive and engaging story line. Great spread of Puzzles ranging from super easy to ones that are quite intricate and take nearly 30 minutes to figure out. This game was quite obviously heavily influenced by the Portal franchise. I would border on saying many of the elements from story, to the way puzzle elements are laid out, just morphed from Portal. That said there is more that is original in this game but it still seems so familiar. Regardless, a fun, funny and engaging game that had me hooked from the beginning to the end. A must have for Portal Fans.

Note: Review contains spoilers, reveal them at your own risk.

While The Entropy Centre does have great inspiration from other puzzle games before it, most notably Portal, the game does more than enough to cement itself as a wonderful, charming, new and different addition to the genre.

The Pros:

Graphics: The graphics are stunning, especially in its flourishes, no matter where you look the game is visually appealing.

Audio: All the music in the game sounds really good, but sometimes feels a bit misplaced and disconnected from what is actually on screen, in my opinion.

Story and Setting: You are in an abandoned research facility on the moon on the brink of collapse, with your only companion being your Puzzle Exercise Assistant, Astra. You soon find that the Earth is immediately undergoing a cataclysmic event, and it is your job to charge the Entropy Device so that you can rewind the Earth, saving humanity from extinction. Diving deeper into the centre, you find the truth of why Aria is there, how truly devastating the cataclysm is, and the Sisyphean tale hidden beneath. The story is well foreshadowed, the character interactions are charming, the humor hits way more often than it misses, and the more you dive into the story with hidden intel, the more you appreciate the game's as it is, especially the ending.

Gameplay, the Good: Puzzles are instantly familiar feeling if you have played similar games in the genre, and are easy to pick up the concept if you aren't. New puzzle elements are introduced well, and the following puzzles develop on the new ideas well, most of the time (more on this later).

The Mehs:

Barriers and Deaths: For the most part they make sense, but there are a few weirdly placed invisible walls. You can accidentally crush yourself on things you are rewinding, and with no safe space sometimes to stand, its slightly frustrating, and while I understand the need for it, dipping your toes into water will result in death in almost every circumstance. While this isn't a gameplay hamper, there are some places where it just doesn't make sense.

Gameplay, the Meh: While the puzzle elements are well introduced, and level design always make sense, the physics leave something to be a bit desired with how objects behave when flung and dropped, and while there was a great attempt at making levels cheese proof, there still is a good bit of cheese to be found, which admittedly is to be expected.

Difficulty: So this is very subjective I admit, but the game never felt like it was pushing the boundaries with what you could do with the objects you are given, as there are only a few puzzles in each area before you move onto the next chapter, so there doesn't feel like enough time given to fully develop and flesh out the ideas you could be trying. The only real difficult levels exist at the end of the game, where even still I feel it could be harder still.

The Cons:

No Customs: I would really love to see what other people could make with the elements introduced, so it really stings when there isn't more of this game I could play. It would even fix the difficulty issue as the really difficult levels could just come from the players.

Personal wishes: While the story is very good, I still have a few questions. Mainly, If Aria alone can fully charge the Entropy Device, why was SHE the only one that stayed behind? Did she not make big enough friends to convince them to stay with her instead of traveling to what they KNOW is their death? . I also kinda want more features to the HED, like forwarding time, launching objects other than the ones that are predetermined to be throwable, or even maybe a portable transformer. Obviously not when you first get the HED, but perhaps as upgrades to it throughout the game? Combat is a bit simplistic, and I wish it was expanded on a bit. You could even make and HED upgrade a combat upgrade maybe? ALSO WHY CAN'T ASTRA KEEP HER HAT? Like please even if its like a small reward for not dying let her keep her hat between acts :(

The Verdict:

Despite my personal grievances with the game, I still love it to bits. Having read the developers insights and responses during their AMA, I have high hopes that most of my issues will be remedied, and I know that there will be more for this game, and I await what comes in the future. This game is a wonderful addition to the collection of seasoned puzzle players, and a near perfect game to new players in the puzzle genre. I can't wait to see where the story goes from here.

For now, until I inevitably give the game a higher rating, it is a solid:

8.5/10

Please, buy this game and support the Dev, if not now, at least on sale.

very portal inspired, puzzles are good, not overly complex, there is room for improvement in a possible follow up game? time manipulation isn't new, but it's presented with a decent mystery and story beat attached.

simple, good puzzle game.

This review contains spoilers. You have been notified.
I should probably start off by saying I hate games with downer endings. The kind of ending where, after you spend hours playing the game, you find your choices made zero impact on the story. There really should be a tag for 'Downer Ending' so I would know not to be too excited about a title.
While the premise of the game is good, the execution is somewhat flat. The puzzles, while not terribly difficult, started to turn into a real slog about 2/3 of the way through the game. By hour 10, I was thinking, "Alright. Finally getting to the climax!" only to be presented with ANOTHER track of puzzles. Games like The Turing Test and SOMA managed to at least break up the constant stream of puzzles with story and world building. Entropy Centre just repeats, "Hurry up! You're running out of time!" (Except that no, you aren't. Even when you're told there's a 20-second countdown, you don't need to rush. Finish the game in a 10 hour casual playthrough or a 1.5 hour speedrun. No difference.)
Speaking of story and world building, the vast majority of the logs you can find are rather mundane and explain very little about what is happening. Yes, some can be put together into a coherent timeline, but the vast majority of them are superfluous "day in the life" bits that made me wonder why I went so far out of my way to find it.
And the layout of the EC itself is, frankly, infuriating! You complete a particular puzzle track and while en route to the next, the floor falls out from under you and you fall hundreds of feet... Directly to the next track.
I love the puzzle mechanics a lot (heck, I even started to like Astra's company), but the game really needed a better story to go around it.

It plays a WHOLE LOT like Portal and Portal 2, but the story was more interesting, and actually seemed like you were doing everything for a reason, and not just because they were there. the fact your character has a voice is an improvement, as well, imo.

One of my most anticipated indies of the year and what an amazing experience it was.

This game has so much charm, such a thought provoking story, and fantastic gameplay.

Calling this game a ‘Portal-like’ doesn’t do it justice in my opinion. It really expands on that idea and adds so much of a cohesive story around it including lots of lore to be missed within the world itself if you’re not looking hard enough. It reminds me a lot of Control in that way.

The characters are relatable and super charming, the sound design and score are great, the visuals are immaculate as well.

It’s so impressive that the entire game was made by essentially one person!

At times I did feel as if there were a few too many puzzles. Yes it’s a puzzle game, but I feel they had something really special with the few action sequences in the game between the movement and rewind systems and wish they used it more!

Overall I had an incredible time with The Entropy Centre. One of my personal games of the year and really think it’s worth checking out for anyone into solo adventure or puzzle games.

I can’t wait to see what the developer does next 🙌

Short(ish) and sweet puzzle game with a similar tone to Portal. I really liked it and very much hope that the developer makes a sequel or some DLC to build upon the world and setting. My only gripe was that the sections with the hostile enemy bots could get a bit frustrating and didn't mesh well with the style of the rest of the game, but they were fairly infrequent and the overall experience was a net positive for me.

In the 15 years since Portal first appeared in the Orange Box bundle there have been many clones and homages of varying quality and degrees of originality. How does this one fair? Well, despite shamelessly ripping off Portal's story and level structure, tone, and even humor, The Entropy Centre does so with considerable heart and delightful detail. If you loved Portal you'll likely love this. I had a great time with it.

As with Portal your task is to solve a series of puzzles using buttons and cubes for a convoluted scientific reason. As with Portal something has gone wrong with the science and the facility is falling apart. As with Portal you have a wacky sidekick to provide hints and comic relief. And there are even cute robots. Really, the only significant difference is in your primary puzzle-solving gun-tool: here you "rewind" time on objects, requiring you to think temporally as well as spatially.

And yet The Entropy Centre is good at all the above. The excellent story has a classic sci-fi premise that fits well enough with the puzzle mechanic. The characters are charming and hilarious. And there's a nice addition of non-puzzle adventure areas to provide a change of pace. As for the puzzles, they are generally satisfying. The increase in difficulty is quite gentle and I found the first half of the game, perhaps even more than half, to be a bit too easy. My patience was rewarded with some juicy challenges later on.

I must mention that the initial release was a bit buggy with some wonky physics here and there and a broken achievement. Since then it has been patched and feels more polished.

All in all, The Entropy Centre is the opposite of groundbreaking. It wants to achieve exactly what another game did and, well, it does.

Wonderful Portal-esque game. Has become my second favorite in this genre, right behind portal.

Very well optimized, constant 144 FPS (i7-9700k + 3080Ti).

I'm looking forward Entropy Centre merchandise... Entropy bot plushes/miniature, Astra magnets/stickers, etc. :D

I expected a fun puzzle experience with some mind-bending twist on physics. A good gimmick.

What I got instead was a narrative I just couldn't stop thinking about. I couldn't put it down. I cried. It was wholesome and made me feel different about my own life.

Highly recommended for anyone, whoever you are.

You like portal? What about Lightmatter? Then you gotta buy this game. Same good feeling with a very new main puzzle solving mechanic that is explored in a lot of ways. The humour is worse than portal, but the story context is much more interesting.

This is one of the few games I've had the pleasure to play so far that leave me with that longing to get to play them for the first time a second time. Unfortunately, I'm not an Entropy Centre Puzzle Operative.

While there are several very noticeable downsides to The Entropy Centre, they may still astonish when considered in context.

Almost all puzzle mechanics felt very similar, if not identical, to their counterparts in Portal 2. I refuse to believe that we have already peaked as a species in terms of puzzle element innovation, so I was hoping to see more new ideas being introduced in The Entropy Centre. However, the game's core mechanic does breathe new life into how these well-known components can be thought about and made to interact with one another. There were a few puzzles that took me a while to wrap my head around, and I think I solved at least one in an unintended way; I was certain that I had to do a certain series of actions but I was missing the third step from the end of the sequence and ultimately went with a different approach that worked but did not feel like the solution the puzzle was designed for.

The environmental design has several gorgeous vistas and evoked -- for me -- exactly the right atmosphere. It did, however, get a bit repetitive over time. This is not a surprise given that a single person apparently built the entire game (now that is a surprise given the quality and scale of it all). I am a big fan of brutalist architecture and like the charm of the office designs of the early computer age, similar to what could be seen in Control.

The third bigger issue for me was the pacing, as the game tries to both put you under pressure with time running out while also leaving you with all the time you need to complete a specific puzzle. This, however, can be seen as fitting the setting of the game, as (spoilers ahead) the Entropy Centre exists outside of the timeline we're accustomed to. Given that time on Earth is being rewound again and again, sometimes by years, Earth might have experienced a handful of decades since the Entropy Centre's construction while Centre has persisted for centuries, and still the everyday technology in the Centre is outdated already on decades-old Earth. Time as we know it starts to unravel and behave erratically at first glance, yet still living in accordance with its own laws, just like we assume it to behave past the event horizon of a black hole. So why should there be a logical conflict between the imminent doom and the infinite time window to solve a puzzle?

In summary, I am impressed by the range of emotions this game managed to evoke, and I am thankful for the occasional chuckles it gave me.

Great for a relaxing few hours of time, motion and traversal puzzles! It is a rather simple premise, and the execution is maybe a bit bland, some of the graphics for the catastrophes are good, but most of the rest of the time you're in gritty and run down 'abandoned moon base'.

I really enjoy games like Portal, and this one is really close near it. However, as much as I enjoy the mechanics and the actual level design, the gameplay however is kinda tedious. There is a nice story to discover and lots of interesting conversation mails to be found, however, it feels like they added a bit too many puzzles and not enough story to enjoy. Puzzle after puzzle after puzzle, a lil bit story, a lil bit run away from the cute killerbots and then puzzle puzzle puzzle puzzlesss, it keeps on going and they keep on going with more new "features".

And again, all mechanics are great, it's getting a chore to complete them. It's a great game to enjoy who loves puzzling like games such as portal, but for those who enjoy a tad more story, feels a bit lacking. The cute conversations between your weapon and the hero you're playing, its all nice and well, not enough imo.

I think i'm about halfway through and it's feeling like a chore to complete the puzzles, rather enjoy the mechanics, story and level design. Unlike the portal games, it feels like the puzzles have been injected into the gameplay instead of building around it.

I will recommend this game, but I do have mixed feelings about this. Great voice acting, interesting story to discover, great portalesque gameplay mechanics, but tedious puzzles and there is no real joy to get after finishing the puzzles. Because the puzzling never ends and sure it might be nice for those who really enjoy solving these puzzles, but for the casual player, it will not lol.

For those who have long awaited another game that captures the feeling of Portal 2, this is it. A game that has excellent story writing and mechanics of its own but also encapsulates that feeling of being inside the old Aperture Labs, and hooks you with a story as interesting as it is exciting to be a part of.

Super visuals, clever puzzles, deliberately took my time playing through so I didn't finish too fast.

Love the interactions between Aria and Astra, and also the bing bong bong background tannoy announcements. Kinda British humour slipping in there.

Can't believe this is a solo developer, bonkers.

Great puzzle game! Heavily influenced by the Portal games but with a very different core mechanic and a very different story covering different themes so it doesn't feel like a rip-off at all.

The gameplay is really good; interesting/innovative core mechanic, tight controls and a good variety of problems to solve(puzzles, mini-arenas, platforming and exploration).

The story is really interesting and the characters are endearing. Leaves you a bit numb at the end but in a good way. A lot of lore is told through the environment and discoverables which I always enjoy.

The look and sound are all solid. Great character and architecture designs, the environmental and effects sounds are all very fitting and the voice acting is solid.

The performance was good. No crashes or stuttering or anything for me.

The only con for me was the pace was a tad slow but honestly that's a nit-pick.

A fun puzzle game, I would like the puzzles better if they were more complex or had multiple parts as they game went on but they stay very similar from being to end. The part of the jokes most landed, I must say I love Astra.

Oh god. another puzzle room. I have puzzle room ptsd. I really want to like this game. i really do. what portal did that this doesnt seem to get is that after a certain point, the puzzle rooms stop and now you use what you've learned to navigate the actual environment. ya its still sorta a puzzle room in a sense, but you arent confined to it. the story doesnt just stop dead because of it. The problem with this is you keep getting stuck in new puzzle rooms right up until the very end of the game almost. there were certain times when, like i said , the puzzle rooms were seemingly done and now you are navigating the environment. but sure enough BAM! 5 go***mned more puzzle rooms. And if you're sick of me saying puzzle rooms, imagine how sick you'll be of them when you keep getting stuck in one over and over and over again.

Amazing puzzle game, very much in the same style as portal, but with plenty to differentiate it and let it stand on its own. Very highly recommend, best first person puzzle game i've played in a while.

Portal meets Moon. Tricky puzzles, great atmosphere, captivating story and an incredible amount of polish for a solo dev.

Ending was a bit of a wet noodle and some of the problems felt a bit repetitive, but a definite recommendation from me regardless if you like first-person puzzle games.

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☑ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☑ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☑ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☑ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Inteligense }---
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☑ I do reviews with template

---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☑ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Parental Love }---
☑ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average
☐ Too much

---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☑ Short
☑ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☑ Worth the price
☑ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☑ 7
☐ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10

This game is brilliant, I can't believe it's not more well known.
Portal 2 is a clear inspiration in terms of narration, characters and even musics but they made their own thing and improved on it.
The Portal aesthetics is what drew me to this game in the first place but it quickly became clear that The Entropy Center was unique and able to stand on it's own 2 feet without relying on Portal 2.
Basically you have to solve puzzle using your Entropy Device, which allows you to "rewind" time for objects and/or scenery. There is a story and it's very well-paced and the ending in particular was amazing and really well thought.
If they're able to improve upon the sequel as Valve did for Portal 2, the sequel might be the new best puzzle/narration game.

In the meantime, if you liked Portal, don't hesitate to buy it.

The Entropy Centre feels like a spin-off from the Portal series with a unique, amazing story.
It has pretty similar puzzle mechanics (similar to Portal) and the difficulty is just right. It didn't feel too easy but none of the challenges had me stuck for too long either. I took about 9 to 10 hours to complete the game (with a lot of exploring to hunt for extras and secrets).

As a side note, after playing the Demo I was worried I'd have to replay the first levels but while many things stay the same they are broken up by some twists as to not get boring. Well done!

The Entropy Centre has filled that ever longing Portal-shaped hole in my heart, and it does so without being just a hollow Portal clone.

The Big Pros (in my mind):
- ASTRA's comedic timing mixed with her factual mannerisms make her a cute, quirky companion that you grow very attached too.
- The mix between Rewinding, Pausing, and Unpausing are very well utilised, and provided a lot of lenience when it comes to solving the puzzles.
- Even when your reaching the last few chapters, new elements are introduced at a consistent rate, and none of it feels too rushed or half-baked.
- The game has a unique visual style, and I loved the varied environments that you are thrust into, and the way the puzzles are not only presented but integrated into these environments as well.
- I was worried the ending wouldn't pay off, but boy did it deliver. No spoilers though.

A few Minor Cons:
- Towards the very end of the game, while I did enjoy these puzzles, the solutions did begin to feel a little same-y and a fair amount of trial and error.
- Rarely the physics are a little wonky, especially when utilising with the conveyor belts.
- Once I finished the game, I did plan on going back and replaying the final sequence, but having to start at the very beginning of that chapter resulted in me getting rather bored (not the game's fault, rather a byproduct of the puzzle genre as a whole), and I didn't end up finishing that run.

Overall, this game was an outstanding experience, and one that had me wanting more at that, only marginally held back by a few minor critiques.
9/10. Do yourself a favour and play this bloody fantastic game.

TL;DR This game plays like a spiritual successor/offshoot to Portal. I was impressed with the varying mechanics and the learning curve at which they were applied. Highly recommend for anyone looking for that satisfying dopamine drip after solving puzzles.

On the Story and dialogue: The story and dialogue was also very good. While the game plays like Portal, the story is in no way derivative of that. I found the interactions between the characters very natural and just heartwarming (a little contrary to the story and it's stakes, but that is excusable).

On the controls and game-play: I tried playing Portal 2 on my Steam Deck and got to the gel sections and didn't like how the analog sticks played with the enhanced movement characteristics so I stopped there. I felt like it would get worse before it got better once I started dealing with fast portal placements. The Entropy Centre corrects this faster game-play for slower, methodical puzzle solving that is much more conducive to the Steam Deck's control scheme. I hope it gets official Steam Deck support at some point.

On the graphics and environment: The graphics provide a fair amount of detail, but there was a significant amount of pop-in on some assets that was distracting. The environmental details felt a little scattered in some spots (random foliage, rock faces, etc.). The game looks a lot like Control with it's forboding architecture, and design of interior spaces, but it make sense considering the location the game takes place.

Closing Thoughts: I like a good game that messes with the nature of time and space. The Entropy Centre joins that small cadre of games I wish I could completely forget so I could play them again for the first time. This is one of those games I probably will gift to my friends to see how they react to it and to support the devs.

A good game if you loved the Portal series of games. Less emphasis on physics based puzzles and more emphasis on sequence and object placement. Allot of the puzzles will involve using parts in the correct sequence (using the entropy gun) and there are allot of different blocks and functions. The atmosphere is very ominous and creepy and there is a surprisingly grim story at the center of the game. Highly recommend for anyone that likes puzzle games.

Equal parts funny and challenging, The Entropy Center is a worthy successor to Portal. Its inspirations are clear, with the puzzle room format being the same, both in terms of esthetic and structure, and a quirky, charming AI motivating players to move ever-forward. Excellent puzzles and an intriguing story make for a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

I loved this game so much! The quests are not too hard and not too simple at the same time, so they got the balance just right.
Graphics and the plot is also great - keeps you interested in the game till the very end.

Thank you devs!

A mix of Portal and the movie Tenet, where it's puzzles involving the concept of time inversion, as in reversing the time of puzzle elements, combined with an engaging story, lore scattered for those that can find it and a minimal cast, this should provide much in the way of amusement, this developer shows promise, based on what they came up with here.

The story was engaging enough that I wanted to keep going and see its conclusion, but the gameplay was painfully tedious.

You can solve the puzzles pretty quickly, but then you have to shuffle a bunch of boxes around and rewind time to actually execute your solution. The "ah-ha!" moment where you feel clever for solving a puzzle immediately turns to boredom as you sit there waiting for the springboard block to slowly rewind into position in front of the exit. And you better not mess up that jump, because you'll have to start over and move all the blocks again if you do. Tedious.

(Spoiler kind of)
100% recommend this to anyone that liked the Portal games. But it's also definitely not Portal. It was about a 11hr game for me (my playtime got reset after a patch). And very entertaining/engaging the entire time. The music is beautiful, the world design is perfect, the puzzles are fun and challenging without being over-the-top difficult, and the story and ASTRA are amazing. I sure hope there's an Entropy Center 2: Escape the Loop.

The Entropy Centre is a great puzzle game using time as his main gimmick. Through the whole game it gave me a "Portal" Vibe which is definitely not bad. Nevertheless the game and its gameplay can stand on its own. I had a lot of fun solving puzzles by using the entropy gun to rewind time and every chapter felt fresh as the game always introduces new gameplay object be it laser cubes or the tall cube and many more things without making the game to complicated but more interesting. Story-wise is the game also great. I loved the dynamic between Aris and Astra and how it developed over time. Two negatives for me were the time when you lose Astra it did not feel emotional enough for me (eventho the trippy mind loop was cool) and the ending felt a bit rushed. In the end I liked the story but wished for a more happy ending.

All in all it is a great puzzler which I can recommend to everyone.

A pretty good successor to the Portal formula with an interesting concept, easy to grasp puzzles, and a good character dynamic between the human (Aria) and her gun (Astra). Not exactly Portal 3 but a game that could fill the itch that Portal can give.

Is the game heavily inspired by a certain popular puzzle game? Yes

Is this game designed and published by Valve? No

Should you be reading any reviews or watching any videos before beating this gem of a game? Absolutely not

It's obvious by playing through this game that it is lovingly made by a very passionate team. The concept of entropy is fascinating and the way this game displays it is remarkable. If you enjoy the FPS puzzle games of yesteryear then this is a must. Be forewarned that I found no silly references or callbacks to other franchises. Do not go into this expecting a sing along with Microsoft Sam either

While it certainly has an "Inspired by Portal" vibe to it, The Entropy Centre has a clearly distinct direction and tone, and doesn't take the lazy option of trying to introduce another kind of hostile, passive aggressive AI overlord forcing you through arbitrary puzzles.

I took about 8 hours to finish, but ended up needing to play over multiple sessions to what I'd refer to as "puzzle fatigue". The puzzles aren't impossible, but most are certainly quite devious, and many will let you get up to the final door, just to realise you missed the action needed to unlock it. It feels like they've tried to include a few too many mechanics in their puzzles, which is fatiguing, but the design of the puzzles doesn't suffer from it, and they are used consistently and effectively.

Portal started something special 15 years ago and The Entropy Centre continues its legacy in its own way. It is a good puzzle game that borrows a few ideas and executes them well. The core element of rewinding objects through time has a decent learning curve and suitably harder challenges near the end. Detours through backrooms, and the external lush biome, serve as energizing breaks between the puzzle chambers. And the lively AI companion, ASTRA, helps to make saving the world a bit less lonely. Although it could have used a trim and polish, there is still eight hours of solid entertainment here. It is definitely worth playing The Entropy Centre, if you get time.

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This is a frankly great game in its own right - although I think the story elements are a bit over-hyped and they're trying way too hard to make the AI assistant endearing - but its physics are not entirely up-to-snuff for what the game is demanding. Early stages with very basic puzzle-solving work fine, and I think most of the polish was put there since most players would be spending a solid chunk of their playtime getting used to thinking around the implications of the rewind function. Incorporating multiple rewinds, pausing objects in midair to solve puzzles, and getting timing juuuuust right feels great. What doesn't feel great is when you're getting into late-game puzzles more towards the end, some of the puzzles just break down and require either chance, in terms of moving objects, or happening across the actual way to solve the puzzle by accident due to how open the level layout winds up being from having the late-game puzzle tools. Player momentum/jumping, how an object falls, how an object interacts with its future path after being rewound, some clipping issues with the bridge cube, and unnecessary precision with things like the laser cube and conveyor timing make me feel like this was an egg which hatched too early.

Overall, great game that I wish I could love more, but it really can't live up to the expectations it sets for itself.

I love first person puzzle games, and felt that it had been a while since a new one had come out. I found this game advertised a few weeks before it came out and waited eagerly since it seemed to fit the type of game I like. The story is interesting and kept me engaged for the most part. Hit some good beats towards the end.

Mechanism-wise, it feels like it took a big inspiration from Portal 1/2 and the Talos Principle. Not that Portal has a monopoly on cubes on buttons, but additionally the laser redirection cube, light bridge, talking assistant similar to GLADOS/potato GLADOS, fans that work similarly to the excursion funnel, bounce pad that works similar to the blue paint, the game hits a lot of similar notes. Combine this with the time record / copy mechanic from Talos Principle and that's what the game felt like to me. Which isn't a bad thing!

The object rewind mechanic is novel enough though and provides for interesting puzzle design and interactions. Some of the later puzzles had me stumped for a bit. Often times I know exactly what I need to do, it's executing the correct sequence of events that ends up taking me some time. Some of the puzzles can be cheesed (in particular, I found myself using the light bridge cube at specific angles and just walking up to the higher-up doors, not sure if any of them were intended), but I like when I can find unintended solutions.

Overall, the game's been a good amount of fun. Not a lot of new FPS-Puzzle games in recent memory, and I'm always glad to play another.

This is a really great puzzle game. You should buy it. It's not Portal; it's new and different. But it scratches the same itch that Portal did.
The core of the puzzle solving involves moving objects and then selectively reversing them through time. It's awesome! It's intuitive, satisfying, and results in very interesting puzzles that Portal could never create.

Most of the Portal design philosophy is incorporated; hitboxes are chunky, and affordances are clear.

Some things could use a bit of polish. Regarding UI, there's zero accessibility features above subtitle scaling, and no remapping for controllers.

In-game, touching water results in unanimated insta-death with no provided narrative reason, which just feels a bit unsatisfying (if it's not acid, why do I still die?). Most test chamber exits don't have fizzlers, but will still delete carried items regardless (without resetting your gun state or displaying a fizzle animation) which feels janky.

There's quite a few uses of invisible barriers rather than contextual environmental blockers. And enemy projectiles are small, fast, and fiddly to hit, which is at odds with the great puzzle design elsewhere.

Overall though this is a great game. It doesn't hit the level of wit I was hoping for; the comedy is rather soft; but it's a super satisfying well-designed 3D puzzle game. I can't wait to play more!

I think the last game to receive the coveted title of "Play this after Portal" was probably The Talos Principle, which is, frankly, pretty shit compared to this.

its a decent game honestly but it just drags on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on.............

basically its like portal, except instead of a story, they tell you "there's story on the other side of this puzzle set!" and then you finish the puzzle chamber and its like "oh oops sorry we meant the after the NEXT set" and then after you finish that one "ok ok one more set" but you just never get there

in like, chapter 3 or something they tell you "you have to go to the reactor!" and you'll spend the next 10 hours going to the reactor with no plot development at all in between. your little AI companion will keep telling you "you're almost there!" "so close now!" "not long now!"

at the time of this writing i just completed chapter 10 and yet STILL have not reached the reactor......

feels like i'm on a long road trip that just never ends

Just finished my first play though. I very much enjoyed this game. Fun puzzles and interesting storyline. The voice acting was superb. I was able to play though the entire game on my Steam Deck without issues.

i just beat the game a few minutes ago. without spoiling anything i'd say i have a mixed opinion on this game. on one hand, it strongly (and i mean STRONGLY) reminds me of several game dev ideas ive had previously; but executed better than i was able to in my attempts...it truly is the game i tried to make on multiple occasions but failed. It also has a really gripping story, absolutely beautiful art direction, and mostly good gameplay...but thats when there are some problems. there were a few sequences that felt hair-rippingly difficult for no reason and out of place for a puzzle game which i feel could have been avoided entirely; and there are a couple puzzles where i admittedly had to exploit bugs to get past (though i am sure there was a more legit way, i couldnt find it.) in regards to bugs, there were a couple that also prevented further progress but the game fixed itself after quitting to the main menu and re-entering. its also extremely frustrating in a few places where i kept dying or otherwise failing and the checkpoints were sometimes pretty lousy, meaning i had to redo stuff i had already struggled through just to get back to where i died.

Story wise, i was dissapointed at the end to find that i had already theorized correctly what it was going to be from a very early point in the game; though that does tend to happen with me because i am very good at inferring stuff from subtle clues.

the final issue is that there was one story sequence in the game that kindof bothered me.. ive never been somebody who likes horror and it got a little too horror-esque for my comfort in one part, so new players should be cautious if they are sensitive to certain topics, such as insanity .

overall however, i still recommend this game simply because of my aforementioned point that it reminds me a lot of my own work. even if im a bit sad i didnt execute the idea first, im still glad it exists and sombody else made it happen in this case. i will certainly be making fan tributes in some form soon!

I want to love this game so badly. Portal 2 was lightning in a bottle; absolute perfection in my eyes back when I first played it and I have revisited that game so many times in the past for its writing, sense of humor, pacing, story telling, satisfying game play, lore, etc. It all just...worked so effortlessly.

The Entropy Centre clearly aspires to those same heights and nailed so many of them that I want to love it just for the clear amount of effort that went into this game.

However, it falls short. Maybe it's just because I can never have that same ignorant, wide-eyed sense of awe once it's experienced. But I think EC's shortcomings are really there.

(minor spoilers ahead)
First off, the good:
Entropy is just such a great game mechanic. It's (mostly) intuitive and its cube and button based testing (one of the MANY indirect references to the creators' love for Portal / Portal 2) is just super well done. They improved on a few puzzle elements that Portal created and lovingly expanded on them.
These enhancements weren't always successful (more on that later) but they were fun to mess around with for the most part.

The story is a fascinating take: a giant entropy reversal beam shot from the moon any time Earth experiences a catastrophe and the in-game emails about the blase` attitude workers (who are quite literally saving the world every day) have about it just works so well. It takes an out-of-this-world scifi concept and grounds it in the everyday bureaucratic nightmare that would surround such responsibility.

It all takes place in a wonderful environment that was obviously crafted with great love and attention to detail, not to mention the efforts to make such a clusterf*ck of a work environment feel lived in.

I still don't know how I feel about the protagonist having a voice (in contrast to Chell being silent in Portal); on the one hand, I love the characterization from the voice actor and the lines are well written enough for all the exposition that happens at the beginning.
On the other hand, after the first 20 minutes or so you know about 90% of the story and can easily guess what the twist is, they run out of useful things for Aria to say. Oh right, and she's talking to an AI interface named ASTRA, who is embedded in their version of the Portal gun, the entropy gun.
You have to be really invested in the story of Aria and ASTRA's relationship, their fun quips to each other, and Aria's agonizingly slow realization of what's happened in the facility.

The Bad:
I'll just say it: the puzzle elements get real repetitive, really quickly. Even as they introduce a ton of new aspects to them, when compared to Portal, they're not exactly memorable or particularly new. It can make it feel like the puzzles are trying to be unnecessarily complex rather than brain teasers that are fun to solve.
Most of the time, I know exactly what to do as soon as I walk into a puzzle room, it's just getting the sequencing right. I became focused on the monotonous ordering of my actions so they played in reverse correctly rather than having a challenge that took effort to solve.

F*ck those damn security robots. They're frustrating as hell when your character only walks. Being able to duck or sprint would've made it more of a fun combat scenario rather than making me feel like a turkey on Thanksgiving.

There's a few glitches as well. I rewound some elements that I thought I was supposed to stand on, instantly died, and thought I made a mistake. Nope, that's was what I was supposed to do, the game just glitched and killed me instead. This happened about 8-10 times. Not enough to be mad about it right after release but it was frustrating.

(big spoilers ahead)
Lastly, and perhaps most disappointingly, the ending. I saw this ending coming from miles away but expected them to subvert it somehow because accepting that you're just caught in a loop of forgetting everything and redoing it as the world is destroyed over and over again, essentially saying the world is doomed and you'll be stuck in a loop trying to fix it forever is so damn depressing.
The story I think tries to hint that somehow Aria makes it into a version of the universe where the world is saved but it's pretty vague from my view (I'm dense and unapologetic about it; explicit storytelling is needed when there's nothing but storytelling left after all the game play is done)

Overall, The Entropy Centre is an experience I am glad to have had. There's real love for the world and the story its trying to tell but the characters, storyline, and puzzle elements fall flat after a while. Yes, I found Aria and ASTRA's friendship genuine and chuckled once or twice but it was a little too...one note?

The game play, mechanics, characters, and concept deserved more humanity and a happier ending. It's a real gem of a game that I wish had had time to fully form into the rare diamond we so desperately need in today's world. Nevertheless, it's a good game and the developers should be proud.

Who knows? Maybe I'll come back and replay it in a few years and completely change my mind. I'm fickle.

Great Portal like game. It is be best FPS puzzler since Portal, with charming character interactions and an interesting story. Rarely do I read story lore in a game, but I found myself reading every line I could in this game to find out more of what is happening. The puzzles start off way to easy, but they do get more challenging towards the later half of the game. Also the puzzles were never as tricky as what I saw in Portal 2, they were all very solvable even as they became more complex. Personally I am still not sure if that is a good thing or bad thing for the game, but I did really enjoy it and I hope for a follow up.

#DLGbump

Portal with a gun that moves things back to where they just were. Basically all you need to know to make your decision.

The environment reminds me of Portal Stories: Mel with the shrubs growing over the old lab. The voice acting is fairly funny and without it the game would be very dry. I am on chapter 4 and the puzzles aren't difficult, but aren't glaringly obvious. It feels worth the money, but I do hope they get more difficult as the game goes on.

As with Portal, huge room for DLCs/sequels/mods. Hope the developer takes advantage of that. I can already imagine a two player version like Portal 2 where either the second player's gun moves things forward in time or the second player's entropy gun has an independent history of where an object has been allowing you to rewind the rewind.

I didn't even completely it tbh, but I just got bored. The puzzles all seemed really easy and very straightforward. Then to top off the ease of the game, they constantly even put helper markers on the ground - at least let us choose to turn something off like that. I just quit after a few back to back simple puzzles with the markers, maybe I'll finish it at some point, but definitely lacking something.

Very portal inspired game with a decent story.

If you're avid about story and lore more than puzzles you will likely enjoy this game as you can read terminals for the lore and throughout the game a decent story narrative. On the other hand if you much prefer puzzles I would look somewhere else. This game doesn't have extremely difficult and challenging puzzles and they're not particularly unique from puzzle to puzzle.

The game does have a demo (at the time of this writing if there is no longer one) so I would give it a shot as it does give you some story narrative and if your interest is piqued then I would get the game.

Great puzzle game, I've really enjoyed playing through it. It does start slow with the first few puzzles, but at some point they start introducing plenty of new mechanics to keep puzzles fresh. The rewind mechanic itself is good, but all the variations and mechanics add up to a great experience

Everything on point. First playthrough just shy of 8 hours, getting 80%~ of the achievements along the way. Enjoyed it thoroughly. Worth the asking price. If you are thinking about getting it, go in blind 100%.

== Slight Spoiler ==
The wife and I were discussing about this being in the same universe as SOMA. This being a prequel, with the hole entropy, and this happening decades/centuries prior to SOMA, changing the course of humanity after this game ends and with everything taken into account, wanting to GTFO into space.

Basically portal 3 but it's a time reverse gun instead of a portal gun. And you solve puzzle to save earth instead of killing a AI (GLaDOS) or sending another AI (Wheatley) to space. even though it's good and works on my crap PC, the glitch where cube, laser cube, bridge cube, etc just fly to the sky when you try grab it from river makes it hard and wasting time (original position of an object moved bc max time is reached). and the laser that shouldn't be there. But it's just released this month so bugs are expected (like flying objects). Overall it's worth buying (for now it will be even more worth it at a bigger discount ideally 20%+ discount). oh and player talks so you don't feel alone or ask someone to dub it. warning: PEA can give you emotional damage with jokes sprinkled on top

As other reviews have mentioned. Heavy portal vibes here (like... hang on did I load up portal reskinned? heavy). It takes the originality out of the game a bit.

The game can be split into two parts. Story and Puzzles

Puzzles : Start pretty easy in my opinion and they do feel repetitive. They do also get satisfyingly complicated towards the end although I'm sure I found a few non standard solutions... There are many puzzle elements, perhaps too many though to be fair it keeps the game fresh while you are progressing through the story.

Story : A great story told over slightly too long a time. The plot feels extended to accommodate the additional puzzle elements and narrative around them. It starts great, gets slow in the middle, but does finish in a great way.

Overall, the puzzle progression could probably be sped up as the learning curve is very gentle, perhaps then the story would shine at that pacing, though it is more than adequate and enjoyable.

To me this is a fine puzzle game. Nothing incredible, but good enough to be enjoyable throughout. I wish they had done more with the rewind mechanic. The puzzles aren't too difficult and many of them have solutions which skip many of the items present in the puzzle.

As someone whose sole experience with story-based games is Portal, Portal 2 and two mods for the latter, I enjoyed this game and the story around it.
A lot of information comes from terminals, which are entirely optional. Not looking for terminals means missing a lot of story details.
I found the last few puzzles to be some of the easiest ones.

It's not perfect, but it's definitely playable.
It never crashed on me and performance is much better compared to the Next Fest demo.
The biggest issues for me were:

• The limitation on rewind length, which made some puzzles more difficult (although in a few cases it looked like it might have been intentional). I had issues with this limit on 1005, 1103, 1104 and 1403.
• Weird collision, the worst example of which was a cube constantly hitting something and being moved into a fizzler while jumping from an aerial plate to get on top of a pillar (not sure which puzzle it was, it had three fizzlers between three pillars and the edge of the chamber, which was partially destroyed, towards the end of the game.)

Good game, I enjoyed it a lot, but there are parts that I really wish had been better crafted.

First, the puzzle. Without giving away too much hints, I feel like the puzzles have about the same difficulty level for the entire game, save maybe for a few ones. I also found some levels to be cheesable, not sure if those were intended (like Portal's time trial solutions), but there are quite a number of instances where you can access out of bound areas, which led me to believe that those cheeses are design oversights.

Second, the story. I really got intrigued by the plot, the build up towards the end was so good, however the climax was a bit underwhelming for me. I was hoping to see a grander ending, I really thought the idea has so much potential.

None of that is a major concern though, would definitely rewind myself back in time and play it again if I could :)

Fantastic game, a hat tip to Portal while doing plenty of unique stuff to be treated as a standalone new game in the "Break Physics Puzzle with Boxes" genre.

The game finds its difficulty curve, coming up with some real head scratchers. It might be the wine though. so far, 10/10 for not charging AAA prices.

A very fun experience! I played alot of portal 1 and 2 when I was younger. This scratches that same itch for a good clean puzzle game! Not exactly the most difficult puzzle game out there, but can still get you every now and then. Lovely story, if rather simple, with some fun characters to break up the puzzles.

A melancholic Portal with a dose of optimism.

The Entropy Centre is a game very much in the vein of Portal. It's a first person puzzle solving game featuring a female protagonist who uses a fancy gun to solve puzzles. However, unlike Portal, The Entropy Centre messes with time instead of space, Further, your character"s interactions with the world are not done in silence. Aria (the protagonist) has a personality of her own and will offer commentary on what is going on. This is done in conjunction with an AI (Astra) that lives in the time gun. The interactions between Aria, Astra, and E (an lovable entropy bot) are more whimsical and optimistic than the witty cynicism of Portal. This optimism contrasts with the the dire situation that the game places you in. This juxtaposition ultimately enhances the bittersweet feeling achieved by the end of the game.

Gameplay wise, this is all the standard Portal fare of using blocks and your time gun to solve puzzles and generate entropy energy that can be used to solve the problem Aria finds herself in. Many of these puzzles are fairly easy to figure out. However, puzzle elements (block types) increase over time and there were a few of the later puzzles that really forced me to think hard in four dimensions.

Graphically, the game is beautiful. The sparse areas are covered in specularity and realtime reflections on top of the ray tracing. The game hitched and crashed on me only once, and there were a handful of times where I would find myself stuck between some crates, or accidentally near the edge of the world, but these were all rare moments that never hurt the experience.

Game length is on par with Portal 2 if not a bit longer. There were moments towards the end where I thought I was about to finish the game only to suddenly find myself in a new set of circumstances that tacked on another hour or two of play time. The game doesn't overstay its welcome, but it does get close. Not that I'm going to knock the title for giving me extra play time. The autosave feature ensures that if you find yourself getting too overwhelmed or bored, you can stop wherever and return to nearly where you left off.

Overall, if you enjoyed Valve's Portal series and would like to experience a time-shifting version of it, The Entropy Centre is well worth a buy even at full price.

Gameplay like Portal with the graphics aesthetic of Control. Game is fantastic but sometimes drags a bit. If you ever get stuck on a puzzle then you might be over thinking things. Some others experienced bugs but I didn't.

Here's my review in an even smaller nutshell: If the end of the game had suddenly burst out that it was Portal 3 I wouldn't have been surprised.

Great game, I enjoyed it. Took me 9 hours to complete the whole story, I missed ~15 to 20 collectibles and 4 of the achievements.

I agree with the negative reviews saying that the puzzles start to feel repetitive, and while the game does add new puzzle elements often, whether its variations of cubes or parts environmental objects like Conveyor belts to freshen things up, and add more things to think about, the game does end up becoming, put cube on button, place cube in every place it needs to be backwards, then play it forward. Because of that, the puzzles start getting really easy. The longest I took on a puzzle was 15.83 minutes (the game tells you after the puzzle room) which was earlier in the game, (I was falling in a pit, skill issue) and the "Hardest Puzzles in the Entropy Centre" I was completing in under 5 minutes.

All of the lore is done though Computers that were left on with their Email open, that you read though as you find them, I want to say there is 72 of them. Occasionally add actual digestible information about the game, and whats happening Aria (MC) and the Entropy Centre, however a majority of the time they are just words to read, and were pretty uninteresting, and I have no intention on playing the game again solely to go find the 15 I am missing.

Don't go looking for Diamonds, so I would wait for a sale, but if you want a game that scratches the 'Portal' Itch this would be one.

Now you're Thinking in Reverse!

The Entropy Centre (tEC) is a set of short puzzle rooms.
Story is almost non-existent: soon after the start you find a smiling/talkative gun, which encourages you to complete more puzzles because... it's for the greater good! Off you go!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2887515843
Puzzles aren't challenging. The trick is.. you must solve them in reverse: holding an object automatically starts in-game recording of the object's movement path. Trigger the gun to rewind the path and pause when need to.
Every 3-5 rooms the story takes a sharp turn - you rush up and forward mindlessly spamming the rewind ability to move falling walls, containers and stairs. However, it feels very imposed and doesn't suit the story. Just unnecessary drama.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2887515860
My first biggest issues with the game:
[list]
• tEC adds new elements just because. Their potential isn't delivered fully. Plus, per room you only get 2-3 items to brainstorm.
• tEC doesn't capture interest. I've completed several alike games (Magrunner, Faraday Protocol, the Turing Test) and these were hard to stop playing! In here I'm literally told "you need to solve more puzzles, then we will see". Alright.
• Finally, physics. It doesn't exist. Zero interactivity with items in tEC world. There are paper folders, phones, monitors, chairs... a lot of debris, but I cannot push, pick up or whoosh it!
Remember that famous game with blue and orange entries where you could throw anything in and watch everything popping out? Can't do that in tEC!

I heavily love the look of abandoned test chambers: neat surroundings and warm colours work really well with aged flora and space peeking windows. Some areas contain hidden monitors with emails sharing background lore (extra puzzle solving required!), but the progression is linear - no sideways!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2883986537
p.s. can I get a cookie for not saying that Entropy looks/plays like a Portal game? Oh no, did I just...

The Entropy Centre is a really well done first person puzzler in the same vein of Portal where instead of 'thinking with portals' it's 'thinking with time, but also backwards' where the puzzles require quite a bit of thought and the characters are pretty endearing and fun—would recommend! And remember: don't give up!

This game is reminiscent of Portal, but with no portals :) It's lots of fun manipulating time and solving puzzles! A great job done by the game developer. Interesting story line and very entertaining :)

Great game, enjoyed it a lot.
If judging it as a standalone game (not comparing it to Portal. or similar experiences), it's really cool, not sure how much time or money it took to develop it, but it's a solid 8-9 hours for one play through.
Puzzles are enjoyable, although maybe racking up in difficulty a bit too slow, since you really start to turn gears in your head more in about last third of the game. The variety of mechanics for puzzles was really appreciated and it didn't feel stale, with few somewhat original ideas (at least for me, but I didn't personally play a lot of puzzle games).
Story is fine, nothing too exciting, but I guess enough to justify the stuff happening in the game, although I didn't like ending too much, it was sort of underwhelming and predictable, and didn't really lead to anything.
Visuals are great in quality, but a bit lacking in visual style and design I'd say, and seems to be all over the places on some occasions.

If comparing it to Portal, I'd say it'd still hold up pretty good, but I feel like level storytelling, as well as narrative through visual design in general is lackluster. Almost everything has this overgrown post-apocalyptic look to it, as if it was untouched for hundreds of years, and it stays like that through whole game, with very little changes and mix-ups (the most notably probably being the beach/tropical zones and half-destroyed everything near the ending)

On technical side, had 1 crash and 1 game freeze (when I was switching windows) through whole playthrough so I'd say it's stable.
On R5 5600X, RX 6900XT, 16 GB of 3200MHz RAM and PCIe gen 4 SSD, game was running good, in 1440p had 120FPS locked on Ultra settings everything, only there were couple of stutters every time there was (I assume) level streaming, especially in the very beginning of the game, before any loading screens, but it wasn't anything game-breaking.

The Entropy Center is a really great puzzle game, akin to the Portal series. Its safe to say that if you enjoyed the portal games, you will enjoy this as well.

This game is suprisingly beautiful, and suprisingly well optimized. And the puzzles are pretty good too, if not a little easy. Once you realize 'the method,' the solution to every puzzle is basically the same. You just place the puzzle elements in reverse order, and rewind them accordingly.

The writing here is actually really great, Aria and Astra are great characters, and i loved every second of their interactions. The lore terminal entries were also very well written. I will however say that, once you start thinking about how the time rewinding really works, you start to notice some cracks in the logic. So probably best not to think too hard about it.

Plot and story wise, i think the entropy center does a great job, however, i will say that i found the ending to be a bit unsatisfying, but i will discuss this in the spoiler section of the review.

All in all, The Entropy Center is a really good game, that positively suprised me, despite my already high expectations. I definently reccomend it

*SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT*

The plot plays a bigger role in the entropy center than it might first seem. So i really do reccomend that you play the game before reading on.

The entropy center has some clear thriller elements, in the way you slowly uncover the severity of the situation that you find yourself in.

Essentially, you are the last person remaining on a moonbase, which purpose is to generate entropy energy (through completion of puzzles. Dont ask) to rewind the earth in case of a disaster, be that ecological collapse, world ending apocalypses or natural disasters. The moonbase then sends the data from pre-rewind earth to post-rewind earth, so that post-rewind earth can solve their problems and avoid ending up like pre-rewind earth. This has happened *many* times, and to great effect. There is a section in the game (the entropy museum) where you learn about all the times the entropy center has saved the earth from some sort of disaster.

But all of that doesn't explain why you are the only person here, or why the entire place is overgrown and dilapidated. As you complete some puzzles and move through the facility, you witness one of the previously mentioned apocalypses happen live, and the entire earth is engulfed in flames. Your primary objective for the rest of the game is to activate the rewind procces, and rewind earth.

Along the way, you slowly come to discover that this is not the first time this specific apocalypse has happened. In fact, it has happened many times, many many more times than any other single apocalypse. For some reason, earth has consistantly failed to avoid this future, even after the entropy center has rewound the earth 100s of years. Eventually, the personel of the entropy center realize that they simply cannot produce enough entropy energi to keep rewinding earth, and that shockwaves from the destruction of earth are damaging the center itself. They rewind earth 2 years, and evacuate, accepting their fate.

Aria is the only person who stayed behind. She is stuck in a loop, where she fixes the rewind procces, rewinding the earth, but by being too close to the rewind laser, she herself is rewound back to the beginning of the game.

Its a nice and closed ending, but it feels unsatisfying. So many answers lie unanswered. What causes the apocalypse? Why cant earth fix it? And how long has this been going on?

The presence of shrubbery and greenery growing all around the facility, suggest that the facility itself is not rewound along with Aria at the end of the game, unless the time between the personel evacuating, and aria getting stuck in the loop was big enough for the entire facility to be overgrown, which i find doubtful. Not to mention, that Aria was only rewound because she was too close to the laser, not because it malfunctioned. Basically, this means that the loop will eventually break, when the facility is destroyed. So what will happen first? Will earth eventually find a way to solve the problem? or will the entropy center be destroyed, dooming all of earth the fate we see in the game?. One of the logs has this quote "i heard its anarchy down there" refering to earth. And it makes sense, the entire world knows its going to end in x years, and they've tried everything to prevent it, to no avail, so i dont exactly have faith in their ability to figure out a way to prevent the apocalypse, especially with the very *very* long track record of failing to do so.

Its a bittersweet ending i guess. I wish we got to figure out more about the nature of the apocalypse, and the reason why this one is so different from the rest.

Very solid. High effort puzzle games like this don't come out often. I just wish you could save at any time so you don't need to redo the entire puzzle after screwing up one step.

I'm also certain I've cheesed few of the puzzles, but eh.

Similar concept of Portal, the Entropy Centre delivers puzzles around time. Thinking in reverse, what is last and first. Puzzles aren't took complicated once you get your mind around that notion.

Doesn't have the humor which Portal brought in with the automated voice systems. At times I could barely hear what it was saying due to the other sounds happening.

The concept was good, and the story about Ariel was well done. For the price and what you get, well worth it.

Overall, I did have fun with this game. This is a play on the legendary Portal games. I don't feel it quite lives up to them, but Portal is a tough act to follow.

Gameplay mostly involves solving puzzles using your Entropy Gun, which can rewind time. Like Portal, you have several types of cubes and several types of environmental pieces that can be used in different ways. A simple puzzle might have two locked doors, and two panels that unlock them, but only one cube. You would complete the puzzle in the following steps: 1) Place cube on Panel 2; 2) Place cube on Panel 1; 3) Go through Door 1; 4) Rewind the cube to go back to Panel 2; 5) Go through Door 2.

This is a simple puzzle. Many of the puzzles are much more complicated. However, many are not. Often times the bigger frustration was trying to figure out what tools the puzzle was giving you or where you are even supposed to go. This was also a problem in Portal 2, but not so much in the original Portal. It can also be frustrating when you get to the end of a puzzle and realize you missed a piece, and have to restart the entire puzzle because you got something out of sync. Or worse, because you missed the jump pad or a box fell off the conveyor belt.

Gameplay also includes interludes where you travel through a falling-apart station or face hostile robots. The robots are relatively easy to fight, they're just annoying. The other travel sections are very simple puzzles, which mostly involve rewinding damaged catwalks. These are very one-dimensional.

The main character talks, along with the gun. There is some fun banter. I'm torn. Normally I prefer a silent protagonist. However, there were some points later on where I realized that the gun and I hadn't talked in a while, and there were some funny jokes. I wish they would have gone one way or the other, and either had banter between every level, or just gone the route of Half-Life and Portal with a completely silent protagonist.

The game was fun to play through once. As it stands, there are three things the developers could do to increase replayability.
1) Introduce a test chamber maker, so players can make their own puzzles. We have lots of tools to do so, and many reviewers have expressed a similar opinion. This would be great for the puzzle making community, and give replayability for all of the players who want to keep doing puzzles.
2) "Fix" the physics that make some things unpredictable. All of the environmental pieces that can move blocks have resulted in me sometimes needing to reset a room just because a block didn't go in the right direction. This could be something that is especially frustrating for speedrunners, if you're in Chapter 13 and you lose a minute because of a bad gust.
3) Allow us to select individual test chambers instead of going chapter by chapter to replay. If I want to replay 1204, I shouldn't have to go through 1201-1203 first. It would also be useful to have some sort of indicator of where our missing intel is, such as having a % completion on each chapter.

Overall, I enjoyed the experience. I would love to come back if some of these suggestions are implemented.

The game isn't ground breaking but it was super fun, had a really interesting concept with the whole reverse gun for puzzle solving, and is very visually appealing over all. Has some areas that could be improved upon but for a one man dev team AND it being his first game? Well done.

After 8.7 hours of gameplay, I've finally finished The Entropy Center. A spiritual successor to the Portal series, The Entropy Center aims to give us that Portal 3 experience we so deeply desire. Not only does The Entropy Center fill my "Companion cube shaped hole", it does so much more, truly making it a game of its own. I'm astounded that it was put together by such a small team, and I look forwards to future releases from Stubby Games. This game is one of the best I have ever player, competing with the likes of Portal 2 on my list of favorites. The Entropy Center builds on the mind bending puzzles of Portal, creates a realistic and believable atmosphere, and has an intricate story that truly makes you feel like part of another world.

I've mentioned Portal too many times already in this review, but this game is NOT Portal, its a game that does the same thing with a different core mechanic. The Entropy Center swaps your portal gun for an entropy gun, completely changing the concept. The game does however, use many of the same concepts elsewhere, like with the cube, laser (thermal discouragement beams), and bridge cubes. These cubes all employ mechanics seen in Portal, but rather than using portals to change their locations, you must put them in their locations first then rewind them back to where you need them. This concept allows for many new kinds of puzzles where you bring one cube and then the other, or where you use two cubes together to bring them both over a gap, the game may take from Portal, but it also builds on the mechanics. The Entropy Center doesn't just learn from Portal, it also adds its own content with things like the tall cube. This is an example of entirely new concept that melds with the time rewinding mechanic of your gun, the tall cube doesn't have its position rewound, rather its sate, going from large to small. The tall cube isn't the only new idea, there are fans, conveyor belts, and transformers that are all completely original and innovative ideas, bringing the game away from being 'Portal 3', and closer to being 'The Entropy Center'. Although there is a clear inspiration behind The Entropy Center, it truly is a game on its own, not just a Portal replica.

The Entropy Center successfully creates an interesting an believable atmosphere. The game knows what it is and how it does it. There are only a few titles within the video game industry that excel at keeping the player's disbelief at bay, my favorites being Bioshock and Metro Exodus, like those, nothing feels out of place in The Entropy Center. The are explanations behind everything, the computers containing lore-emails are all in offices (or whats left of them), the break rooms between puzzles, even the puzzles themselves have a purpose (something I struggle to find in the Portal series, "testing" what kind of excuse is that). The game doesn't just focus on what the puzzles are for, but also life outside of the puzzles, with the lore emails, and relaxation areas. Showing life outside of puzzle solving fleshes out the game's atmosphere and makes the player feel like they are in a functioning environment. A functioning environment tells a story, and answers many of the players questions about the world, creating a more realistic feel. The Entropy Center gives every object a purpose and creates a believable environment that I enjoyed exploring.

The narrative in this game is controversial, though it moves incredibly slowly, it manages to keep the player somewhat captivates throughout the entire game. I was always looking for that next computer, searching for the next bit of lore I could find to flesh out the story all while solving puzzles. This captivation shows how good this game is at keeping the player enthralled in its story. The game doesn't have all that many story beats, I found this to be the biggest downside. The player has to keep looking for that next bit of hidden story to keep them engaged. If you aren't one to look around and would rather focus on gameplay, The Entropy Center might become a bit repetitive for you. This game is lacking in narrative beats considering its duration, but it you're willing to look, the game will keep you engaged start to end.

Overall I found The Entropy Center to be one of the most enjoyable video games I have ever played. It's definitely on my favorites list. A must play for any Portal fan, or any video game fan for that matter.

Good ideas. The inspirations are obvious BUT, Does it really need to have 15 chapters. Many puzzles looked like "fillers" to me. A pitty that the interesting puzzles were within the last chapters, many hours after making the "fillers". Still some physics bugs for certain puzzles requiring a certain orientation of cubes to be solved. For an unknown reason at the 10th chapter, there was a cube bridge which was not orienting itself in the proper way after a conveyor belt. I found an alternative which was certainly not the developers' purpose. These kinds of bugs can be frustrating. The action parts with the robots are also "fillers" to me that do not really add to the fun. Once it is original, two times is OK, but more than that it feels like trying to reproduce what Valve had mastered. However, considering the small team of developers, I can imagine the amount of effort put on this game.

Due to this being made by a relatively small company I will be nice. While I found the puzzles quiet easy this would
be a perfect game for someone new the the genre. I wish there was more skill based mechanics as the potential is there. I hope that there might one day be a Co-op mode or some kind of prequel.

Overall 6-7/10

It's no secret that this game is heavily inspired by Portal 2, but since that is one of my all-time favorite games, this ticks every box for me, and more. The puzzles are never *too* complicated, the story is incredibly captivating and the ending is insane. Although somewhat predictably, it feels really cool to unravel the story throughout the game as you start to realise what's really going on. All in all, this is one of my favorite games of 2022, and I can see myself replaying it multiple times.

describing this game with mere words would be difficult but needless to say stick along with it and i assure you there's a masterpiece here, with an amazing ending that few game companies would dare attempt, absoultely top notch on all the fronts.
what else do you need to know?
its a great puzzle game with an amazing story, decent controls and quite the amount of cinematic moments.
seriously give it a go.

The puzzles are good, the story is fine, the game is a bit buggy and at times seems to lack some polish. Could use a dedicated "load the last check point" button as it's possible to lock yourself or get stuck. Honestly though, this game has parts to it that are just amazing, beauty in the face of existential terror, hope and despair. This will likely stay with me for a very long time. Overall, if I could rewind my brain to play this game for the first time all over again I 100% would.

I love portal and this game was clearly heavily inspired by it but i find it hard to recommend because of some major issues. which is a shame cos i wanted to like this and was looking forward to it for a while.

for one this game feels a lot like a portal mod. everyone is here. cubes, faith plates, light bridges it all works just like portal the only difference being you rewind objects to move them instead of using portals. so if you have played portal dont expect many new mechanics. even the environments are similar to portal, there are test chambers like portal and there is a wisecracking companion following you the whole time. even the music is very portal like (although not as memorable in my opinion)

the puzzles themselves feel VERY similar. almost every solution is just place the thing in the last place you need it then the first place you need it and then rewind. also there is often arrows on the ground or outlines of where to put things so even working out where things go isnt a puzzle. at one point the wisecracking companion straight up told me the solution to a puzzle before i had the chance to even look around the room adding insult to injury. a lot of the puzzles can be broken in some way aswell sometimes needing to reload the level to fix hinting that this game wasnt tested very well although maybe they were left in for speedruns? annoying that i found them on a casual playthrough tho. also at one point it adds this stupid river mechanic to replace the excursion funnels in portal where you have to drop a cube in the river and pick it up again so that when you rewind you can leave it in the river to float down to you later. i assume this is the intended solution to these river puzzles cos i did a lot of them like this but dropping and picking up the things from the river is clunky and annoying it felt like i wasnt supposed to do it. and because i guess my character cant swim in 3 inches of water if you ever get to close to the river you die and have to play the whole level again. this was about the point i gave up on the game.

the story is interesting although im 5 hours in and it hasnt progressed at all if you have watched the trailer dont expect and more story until atleast the 5 hour mark. i cant say if there is more beyond that as my patience has been tested enough already.

the writing just isnt as good as in portal. many of the "jokes" just fell flat to me and with the story not actually moving along with you it mostly feels like filler. which brings me to my next point there is SO much walking around and just doing the same shit you have been doing in this game. i would say of the 5 hours i played about 40 minutes was actual new ideas being shown the rest was just walking around getting to the next area. they disguise this as set pieces that i think are supposed to feel tense or atleast like you are sneaking around the rat dens from portal but it basically comes down to walk, see a large pillar slowly fall towards you, rewind said pillar, continue walking.

as for the secrets in this game as a dev that was clearly inspired by portal they really missed the point of them. for one many times when i thought i was going to find a secret it was just a dead end (sometimes requiring to reload the level to get back) and the rest of the time it was just a PC with an email that added absolutely nothing to plot. for example early on there is an exact copy of the first puzzle in portal with the single cube and button that opens the door and in portal if you throw the cube through the door while on the button glados gives unique dialogue and opens the door in this you end up having to reload the game and nothing happens. there are many missed opportunities like this and the ones they do take are really not worth it.

so in short unless you are really sold on the concept enough to sit through a lot of waiting around or you just havent played any of the MANY similar games that are better than this i would not recommend it.

A very fun puzzle game. Obviously very inspired by Portal, but it is not a Portal-clone. The time-rewind-mechanic is very cool, and allows you to solve puzzles in very surprising ways sometime.
The story is interesting, but not great.
Performance was also good, but clouds of dust brought the 80-100 FPS game down to 20-ish FPS at moments. Not sure why. Maybe a bug?
I did notice some mistakes in the level design. I like to explore and managed to find a forgotten wall more than once, I would have probably felt out of the level had I walked through it, but I didn't test it. I've also managed to get stuck behind some crates a few times. And the only way to get out was to go back to the main menu and reload the checkpoint.

Ultimately I had a great time. Some puzzles really strained my brain, and I loved them all.

Gives off heavy Portal 2 vibes, minus the 2 killer AIs that are out to get you. I find that the puzzles are easier than Portal 2, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, as I found myself wondering "what am I supposed to do?" quite a bit while playing Portal 2. I don't get that here. It's pretty much a matter wondering how to get everything to the correct place at the correct points rather than what to put where.

The mechanics themselves are pretty similar to Portal 2's, so if you're familiar with those, then you should feel comfortable with everything in this game, minus the time reverse thing, which is simple enough to figure out.

Overall, very good game. Would recommend.

It's been a long time since I played a game where the campaign leaves me speechless. I enjoyed playing a chapter or two a day to relax after work and it was a nice experience in the beginning. I was curious about the story but didn't have many answers. About halfway through I started getting fed hints and I kept guessing and wondering and theorizing what was going on. I finally finished the campaign and you know it's GOOD when you are left unable to stop thinking about it, and unsettled by the answer you were given, the responses of the characters, the things you've seen. If you like puzzle games, the puzzles are great. Some of them really make you think. If you like campaigns, you HAVE to play this game. The story isn't terribly long, but it's incredible. 100% worth your time.

Overall - I liked this game. It gives some new ways to think about puzzles, has enjoyable Astra assistant, overall interesting, even if simple, story.

- Puzzles are easy for the most part, harder to the middle of the game and a bit easier towards the end - which is good, otherwise I would feel eshausted by the end.
- Some puzzles are a bit buggy. Some can be completed in an easier way than intended, ignoring half the puzzle room.
- Story is simple, mostly text driven, but I liked it. I was interested to see how it ends.
- Astra is cute. YEET.
- You HAVE to pet E. It's the rule.

Closest thing to Portal we can get right now. I really hope there will be a sequel with a bit more budget, story bits and polish.

TL;DR Indie games are amazing, and this game was made with love. If you liked Portal, you should definitely check this game out.

Right off, the game's opening sequence is visually stunning and phenomenal. The overall aesthetic of the Entropy Centre reminded me a lot of Aperture Science labs and, surprisingly, Mass Effect's Noveria.

The main story, as well as the overall narrative construction of this game, are spot on. They're well crafted, very finely structured and they never get boring. I never found neither Astra, nor Aria behaving out of character. However, I find their humor to be highly inspired by Portal. Otherwise, it's these little quirky moments, like Astra saying "yeet", a friendly robot called "E" and the game's apparent obsession with beans. But I can also appreciate the message the game tries to deliver. The story doesn't revolve around the said message, which is quite good, but it also makes it a necessary part.

The sound design. Good heavens, is it amazing. The work the sound team did on this game made it very immersive. The sound effects are clean and fitting for everything. The entropy device sounds pretty much how you would expect it to sound. The environment sounds are very realistic. The soundtrack, however, could've used a bit of variety. There are some moments when the same music plays for a few levels and it can get quite repetitive. At some point, I discovered that the music can stop playing at all.

The puzzle aspect of this game is highly inspired by cubes and buttons of Portal games. But that's not a bad thing. The rewinding gimmick was very interesting, I loved every moment of constructing the right order of cube placement and I also appreciate that, in some cases, there were multiple ways of solving a puzzle.

Another thing I have to complement is the programming aspect of this game. On my whole journey, I only encountered a single bug, and it was the aforementioned music bug. Now, you can get soft-locked in some areas, it happened to me twice, but not once have I fallen through a terrain, not once was I unintentionally launched into the air, not once have I encountered an issue caused by failed rendering. All the bugs that are characteristic for games made with Unreal Engine are non-existent in this game.

Indie games are the future of gaming, and games like Entropy Centre, games that were made with love and sincere dedication, are the solid proof of it.

You can feel that the game was inspired by Portal, but personally I don't mind. The time rewind feature provides some challenging puzzle and the chemistry between Astra and Aria is just lovely. While it might not be for everyone, personally I had a great time playing.

Go for it if you're need some atmospheric game to scratch that Portal itch of yours, but I won't recommend this game for any other reason.
"The Entropy Centre" requires a lot of polishing to be done: it's easy to lose a minute or two by re-doing a puzzle because of the box being hidden in geometry, physics glitches can both kill you during the intended sequences and allow you to skip the levels in unintended ways, the decorations phasing out at some angles also need fixing.
Unfortunately any polishing cannot cover the fundamental flaws of the game: time-rewinding mechanics are inherently slow-paced, so even trivial solutions take time to implement, and sloppy action scenes in-between merely emphasize this simple fact.

Love the main concept of the game and variety of puzzle elements. Fun storytelling and characters with some additional lore to seek out. I've played so many community portal maps and I really want to see a workshop developed for this game because I think it could be a fantastic self-sustainable cycle of fun puzzles

Excellent game! It's crazy how capable indie developers are nowadays. 100% recommend to anyone who enjoys a portal type game with an interesting story. I hope the dev releases dlc w/ more difficult puzzles.

You liked Portal and/or Portal 2 or you like puzzles and time manipulation? This game is for you.
The story behind the protagonist (you) and the Centre is wonderfully written.
The only downside I have is how short the game is. I want more, it deserves more.

Of note, you can get portal 1 and 2 for less than this game costs, and I would recomend both of those before recomending this as they both have more interesting gameplay and fun to them.

SPOILER WARNING:

Having just finished the game I must say I found it very lacking. All stackes are completely scripted until you do a thing which completely falls apart once you get close to the end where they will mention incredibly low times, like "catastrophic colision in 20 seconds" only for the walk you need to go taking more than that and nothing happened. This really should not have been the case, firstly. If the time you claim is less than a minute you better make sure what you are claiming actually happens. and secondly. The fact that you can't even get to where you need in the given time is really bad imo.

There is also a few pewes i have, one being the placement of some items the the games more broken down sections. This game has areal fate plates. Its very obvious they arent suposed to be where you find them yet they happen to line up perfectly with the next part you have to reach every time. It just makes no sense and does bring me out of the game with how incredibly gamey it feels. The game even had a great option to replace them which would have been way less obvious. The bridge cubes which while still gamey would have been way less so since you in this case place them to make your own path.

This game is no portal, It wants to be but it just is not. The puzzles are way to easy 99% of the times, and starts to very quickly feel like chores instead of something fun to do. If anything this game has given me a reneved appreciation for portal.

Despite my complaints tho I do not think its a bad game, just a very mid one. 4-5/10 buy it if it gets a sale for 50% off.

What can I say, I am absolutely astonished at how great this game is. I saw this game on the "coming soon" page 3 days before it came out, bought it on the day of and played it for a bit the following day, I knew nothing about the game except it looked like a fun new spin on the portal series, and that's exactly what it felt like through the first half of the game. Very simple story shown at the beginning with a very simple way to complete it, complete puzzles.

*SPOILERS*

But... Something felt off with how long the game was when I checked the achievements and how quiet and still everything was, then the "ghost" is introduced, and me being who I am got a little scared because I hate horror, but also calming myself down thinking "ah, it's just good ol Biggles" and not thinking to much on it. The puzzles keep getting better and better as each chapter goes by with fun new interactive ways to complete each level with just a cube or two. Just like portal 2 when entering the old aperture science laboratories, you enter this endless office that keeps progressively changing, now something definitely feels off. Then that ghost appears again except this time there's more than one and there's also writing on the wall warning you of "rewinding the cataclysmic event" and you soon realize this is your office, and your email, and that you stayed here when everyone else left. This is right about where I lost it and had to finish the game this night because I was expecting some awesome looking 8/10 puzzle game but to be treated with a plot twist to make an actual story, 10/10. I am very grateful I came across this game when it came out, and if I'm gonna be honest I thought the price was a bit much for just a puzzle game, but now I realize the length and the effort that was put into the making of this game. Honestly a lot cheaper for something I would enjoy this much.