Developed by Bit Rot and published by Iceberg Interactive, Recursive Ruin is a brand-new kaleidoscopic narrative puzzle game where you are introduced to another man’s grief turned into a visual presentation. The world of Recursive Ruin is recursive, and you must find a way to solve puzzles and get to the exit of the world which seemingly has no ends to it. Recursive Ruin features a beautiful world that looks nothing like I have seen before with unique gameplay mechanics. This is our review of Recursive Ruin in which we shift the world up and down and shove cubes into eyes to solve various puzzles.
Recursive Ruin is essentially a visual representation of grief and how it eats you up from the inside if not treated properly. In the game itself, the story revolves around you using all of your available abilities to beat Ichor, who is eating away at the fabric of reality. You will meet various NPCs as you progress through the levels but most of the time, you will be alone, and all of the puzzle-solving is mostly left to you as you figure out the solutions and progress in the levels. Similar to most puzzle games, Recursive Ruin’s puzzles do tend to get harder and harder as you progress in the main story but actually, their difficulty depends on your understanding of the game mechanics and how you use them to manipulate your surroundings.
One of the key elements of Recursive Ruin is the game’s world itself. The game itself it basically inside another game called Recursive Ruin that you play which are the actual gameplay levels where you solve puzzles and everything. While not playing these levels, you are in your room with your Behemoth, the cat where you can interact with various items and get to know more about the main character of the game and different aspects of their life. While most of this is still shrouded in mystery at the end of the game, chunks of information are thrown in the mix that gives you an idea of what really happened with them.
For guidance, you can find white markers on interactable items, and you can go and click on the items to interact with them. Most of these sessions end with a discussion with your cat and then you must find the disc for the next bit of the session and resume playing the actual game. The main game is in the form of levels and after completing a level, you always return to your own room to find new dialogue and interactions with different objects and your cat. There are fourteen levels for you to complete in the game and their length depends on your proficiency and understanding of the game’s world.
You have two basic abilities in Recursive Ruin where one allows you to shift the world up and down while the other one allows you to shrink in size. You can do both at any time and there is no recharge time or anything for both of these abilities. The world around you is a fractal world and it repeats itself continuously. You can pick a direction and start moving only to notice the world repeating itself after a short time. There is no end to this world, and everything is just the same no matter which direction you move into. If you see one thing, it will continue to repeat itself in other realities connected to your current one. Most of the puzzles play around with this mechanic in the game and it becomes really interesting.
Most of the puzzle games just leave you hanging in their worlds, but Recursive Ruin has a clever hint system that is right there but completely out of the way that you can use only if you really have to. The puzzles mostly involve you getting cubes and for some reason, shoving them in the eyes for opening up doors and paths but as you progress, these puzzles start to become more and more detailed with each puzzle adding additional challenges in the mix. There is no platforming in the game however you can sprint and jump in the game as well. The game is in first-person perspective giving you a wide clear screen to focus on puzzle-solving. What sets Recursive Ruin apart from most puzzle games is that instead of just making puzzles harder to solve, some of the puzzles in Recursive Ruin become longer rather than harder.
For example, while some puzzles are solved in an instant, some of the puzzles require patience and a little bit of work to do in the game to set up the puzzle-solving before you can solve it. For example, one of the puzzles I remember from the game made me pick up a cube, throw it into another room and then shrink down to reach this cube. After picking it back up, I had to navigate additional corridors and areas while I was still small to bring the cube to the final room. While doing so, I also had to avoid camera eyes that blocked doors as well as avoid the cube-destroying doors. If I failed at any instant, I had to restart the whole process again. There is no death in the game and if you end up falling down, you simply respawn at the start of the puzzle.
It is also worth noting that Recursive Ruin is a little bit tough to understand at the start and what shifting the world around you means sometimes you even think that the game is glitched but once you are past that barrier, you instantly understand how the system works and after that, you start unlocking additional powers as well and then you are solving puzzles in no time. For my entire playthrough, I do not remember getting stuck on a puzzle for a long time. Most of the time, the solution is right there in front of you and after finding the solution, I used to think about how I missed it. The world of Recursive Ruin plays a big role in this as well because the level design wants you to think that the puzzle is extremely complex but actually they are pretty simple to solve.
Once you are past the initial hiccups and are well-acquainted with the controls and everything else, you start enjoying the game. The learning curve will vary for different players and having played tons of puzzle games, I do not know why I took my sweet time to understand how the game works out. It surely brings an impressive perspective into the mix and how the developer turned grief into such a beautiful visual representation. As a bonus, you have a talking cat named Behemoth as well who will continue to shower you with wisdom and sometimes give you hints on what to do next in your room. Technically, the game is pretty sound with a brilliant soundtrack to keep you company throughout your journey.
Final Verdict:
Recursive Ruin features a beautifully crafted world that might repeat itself in the game, but you might not repeat in real life. It is a one-time experience and the game does not give you any reasons to visit it once again. However, during your first playthrough, you will greatly enjoy the beautiful world of the game and the puzzle-solving as it brings a great deal of satisfaction as you solve puzzles of varying difficulty in the game. Normally, we see a progressive difficulty bar in puzzle games but in Recursive Ruin, solving puzzles depends on your keen eye. Ignore the story elements of the game and you have a beautiful yet challenging puzzle game at your hands. I greatly enjoyed my playthrough and I am sure that if you love puzzle games, you will have a great time in Recursive Ruin. You can download and try a demo as well before jumping into the full game.
Final Score: 8.5/10
