RoonSehv: Neterra
Denis Martin
Hands up those who like Myst. Or
Riven. Or any of the others. Or any solitary exploration games where the
whole world is really just one big puzzle (RHEM, Alida, Schizm).
Me, me, me and me again.
And games where your
obsessive/compulsive tendencies and your brain are in equilibrium?
(ok, perhaps [the first bit] is
just me).
RoonSehv will feed those
predilections.
As far as I can tell, it’s a
labour of love for all things Myst, begun in 2004 and picked up again in
2013. Reading Mr. Martin’s blog, the Unreal engine was clearly a
development boon, and I have played a number of games recently which use
the engine, and from a playing perspective it offers a lot. If it offers
as much from a development standpoint, kudos to it.
RoonSehv uses the keyboard to
move and the mouse to look around. Left click to do almost the only
thing you can ever do, which is interact with something. I only took one
item with me anywhere, and having it caused it to be used, so you don’t
really have an inventory. You will though pick things up and use them in
that place.
I do know that this completely
free moving 360 degree panning gives some adventure players motion
sickness. My advice would be take things slowly, tweak the settings at
your disposal, and give it another go. In my view it’s the most
realistic way to play, and you may miss some games you really should
play.
Like this one.
It does a very good job of
anchoring things in the D’Ni universe. Numbers are the obvious aspect,
but it felt right. Get out your pencil and paper, write down/draw/take
note of almost everything you see. Almost nothing is insignificant.
Which verges on a weakness. So
much that you see is so very necessary for later puzzle solves, you are
almost overwhelmed. If you pay attention, and have your brain tuned in
right, what is necessary and what isn’t is apparent, but I confess I
missed things here and there. I also got to the stage where I stopped
taking notes, waited until I thought I knew what the puzzle was asking
of me, and then went in search. It led to some significant backtracking,
but it became more manageable.
It might be apparent that it
isn’t an easy game. No highlighting hotspots, and you have to be near
enough to them to interact with them. But the hotspot is the least of
your concerns. What to do with it is the point.
There are some colour based
puzzles, and a musical one (not so you have to recognise notes) and one
involving switching on the right lights gets repeated more than once.
Hope you like those sort.
Diary’s and a note or two fill
in the backstory, further placing it in the Myst universe, but I tended
to skim read these. If you play, you can discover it’s place yourself.
For me it was about the environmental puzzles.
I was a little pig in mud,
albeit it brain hurting sticky somewhat confusing mud. It is at times
almost too hard, but I peeked at a walkthrough and moved on.
And did I mention that it is
free?
Give it a go if you like the
things I like.
I played on:
OS: Windows 7
Processor: Intel i7-3820 4GHz
RAM: 12GB Ripjaw DDR3 2133 Mhz
Video card: AMD Radeon HD 7800 2048MB
Note: This is a free game that can be downloaded from
the
developer's website.
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October 2015
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