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dkirschner's Creaks (PC)
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| [May 21, 2024 07:48:19 AM]
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I haven't played an Amanita Design game in a long time, and what a treat this was. I'd never heard of Creaks, but it was in some puzzle game bundle I purchased a while back. It’s got the exceptional art and music you expect from Amanita. The puzzles are creative and the concept is original. In Creaks, you are a guy who finds a hidden passage behind his bedroom wall. He turns on his flashlight and goes through the crawlspace. Turns out that below his room is a sprawling cavern with a massive tower, wherein live all manner of strange creatures. The anthropomorphic birds are the main ones, and they’ve got a problem. A giant monster is crawling around the outside of the tower, destroying everything. The birds are trying to figure out a way to stop the monster. You stealthily follow the birds down, down, down, watching what they are up to, solving puzzle rooms as you go. Eventually, they discover your presence and enlist you to help destroy the monster.
The puzzles in Creaks are great! Over time, you’ll be introduced to various mechanics, but they basically involve manipulating creatures and light sources, which when shining on a creature, change them into furniture. The first puzzle creatures you encounter are dogs. The dogs activate when you get close and bark at you. When you get too close, they chase you. If you jump off a ledge or go down a ladder, they’ll stand there barking for a minute, then trot back to where they were. So, for example, if you need to get around a dog, you might get it to chase you, climb down a ladder, and climb up a ladder now behind it while it stands barking at the ledge you dropped from. Or, if you lure it to a light source, then turn on the light, the dog will change into a chest of drawers, which (as long as it stays in the light!) you can move or climb on.
You’ll see jellyfish creatures, which have rules governing their constant movement; goat creatures, which run away from you if you go near, and which otherwise will move toward patches of grass to graze. Dogs will also chase goats. Then there are these weird plant (?) creatures. One type copies your movements and the other type does the opposite of your movements (e.g., you step left, it steps right). And so on. You are generally trying to position the creatures onto buttons or beneath light sources such that you can get past them and move to the next “scene.”
There are something like 50 scenes. Not only is the puzzle design excellent, but the larger environment design is cool too. As you’ll see, the scenes are all interconnected in the tower. The difficulty is just right. Some of the puzzles had me scratching my head and then feeling clever once I figured out the trick. I got really stuck only one time, but put the game down for a week, played Firework, came back, and with a fresh perspective solved the scene in 5 minutes.
Highly recommended for a creative, charming, chill puzzle game.
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dkirschner's Creaks (PC)
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Current Status: Finished playing
GameLog started on: Tuesday 16 April, 2024
GameLog closed on: Tuesday 14 May, 2024 |
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This is the only GameLog for Creaks. |
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