Tengami

At first glance this may seem like an artsy indie film house equivalent of an atmospheric adventure kind of game.

….And it is. But I like it so don't disregard it just because of that.

The art style is rather unique. I had only seen screenshots previous to playing so I only saw the paper cutout look. But in action every thing is a pop up book that folds and acts accordingly to how you'd expect, mind the water of course.

You play as a Japanese Samurai or it appears that way. I apologize, I'm not that well versed in the culture. Walking around inside of a pop up book. The goal, one can infer things but it seems more or less to bring the tree back to life by bringing back lotus petals. The puzzles are all fairly strait forward though there is a hint system that can be turned off should you choose. Near the end, I did have to retrieve some actual real pen and paper as one of the puzzles requires you to count symbols that are reflected in Kanji characters on a safe. Which is something I've not done in a long time.

The soundtrack is quite excellent. There was something about the character movement speed that made him feel detached from myself. Almost as if he himself had started listening to the music instead of focusing on the task at hand at the same time as me. Or maybe I'm crazy.

I was actually rather surprised to find out this was an iOS game first. This may sound weird but thats an actual platform for games now. Weird, experimental ones at that. The only issue I might mention is that this, being an atmospheric game, may be served better here on PC. Typically, PC games are consumed at home, perhaps isolated. Where as a mobile iOS game is more likely to be consumed in a waiting room or on a bus surrounded by people distracting you.

Anyways, its real short but worth your time.