Rewind – by Eivmoe
Genre: Indie Puzzle
Developer: Stubborn Horse Studios
Publisher: Stubborn Horse Studios
Release Date: Mar 31, 2016
Portal without portals and murdering robots! No, wait, let’s add beautiful scenery, a dose of the afterlife, timed puzzles, clones, a rather charming guide, a voiced main character, a blue sky, and murder! Rewind is a modern puzzler where you use your ability called rewind to make copies of yourself to solve the puzzle, pushing a button, shooting an enemy or yourself, all done in the past, future, and present. Creatively developed and published by Stubborn Horse Studios.
You need to solve puzzles and figure out what you are doing here, being fed story through dialogue which seems rather deranged and strange at first, yet becomes deeper with every passing level as you get more dialogue. The puzzles gets more challenging as you go on as you unlock a third copy meaning controlling yourself three times. This is not an easy task to complete when you start to race against the clock, or yourself, for added challenge.
You have time challenges as well from the main menu after first unlocking the levels. You race against time, and yourself, to complete the level. The time starts the second you start the first recording, and ends when the level is finished or you press esc. With no quick restart option, making one mistake is rather fatal as you need to exit to main menu, then jump back into the menu select to restart the level on time trial, which seems unnecessary.
Music in the game is rather upbeat and follows the pace of the game, which makes it fun to move faster and optimize every single move you do. However, the music does not always mix well with the rather calm and relaxing outdoor areas you may go through between levels, or even in a level, where you want to take your time and explore before you start the puzzle feels like it is just rushing you forward rather a gentle calming melodies. So a great fix to this would be that the music tones out after a level or when there is dialogue and starts again when you start the time trial.
Difficulty is a gently rising curve through the seven levels with seven stages. From rather easy in the tutorial to rather difficult by the end, but I found them fun and challenging though somewhat easy from previous puzzle games I’ve experience. I can see newer people to the genre having a great time learning it and slowly getting through the game, while personally I raced through the game in about 3 hours. The game difficulty curve is pretty gradual so it is a game for anyone to play from young child to those unknown to the puzzle genres, while veterans who are new to the rewind concept will enjoy it as well. However, those familiar with the style may find this a bit on the easy side.
Overall the game is nicely executed, I did not run into any bugs or glitches and I did not find anything to be repetitive. The voiced characters are nice, and the time trials and clone trials extended the gameplay to more than the original 3 hours of pure story. I would definitely recommend it to anyone new or old to the puzzle genre, and any ages, as the puzzles will be challenging, but fun.
Eivmoe gives Rewind a great Drastik Measure 7.5 out of 10 (75).
+Puzzling made fun, makes you think.
+Voiced characters.
+Good story.
+Rather unique in a mix of time and clone manipulating mechanics.
+Nice level design with multiple things to use from explosives, gun, enemies, moving platforms, doors
+Steam achivments
~Decent music and soundtrack.
~Rather short, but great for its price.
~No secrets to find within the levels which would make exploring a lot more fun, rather than running from one puzzle to the next.
-Gives a new meaning to play with yourself.
