I am unfamiliar with the number puzzle for the green lock. I might be able to figure it out if I knew the rules.

Tenzhi -- Can you KenKen?

Ah, it's apparently a variation of a game called KenKen or KenDoku. I figured it was a variant of Sudoku, and Wikipedia showed me the way. ;)

That actually wasn't so bad...

Green Puzzle

Not bad. A quick little "escape" (escaping from the outside world?). The worst part is the navigation.

Made it.

Have to agree with the general synopsis here..

Puzzles: EXCELLENT.
Navigation: If the puzzles weren't so well done, this would have put me off the game. :[

I'm completely stuck.

Can someone help? Am I missing something obvious?

Oh wait, I got it now.

Finally out.

Didn't enjoy the game all that much. What really annoyed me was having to figure out a) what the green puzzle was and b) how to play it. I generally dislike it when I have to consult Wikipedia in order to finish an escape game.

And another puzzle might be hard to figure out if

That one was more of a trivia question than a puzzle in my opinion. If I hadn't recognized the symbol (and it's a miracle I did, that is so not my area of expertise), I don't know how I would've finished the game. It's not like I could've googled the symbol.

I'm just of the opinion that puzzles in a game like this should be self-contained: everything you need to solve them should be in the game itself. And if you're going to use a puzzle like the green puzzle, it should be a little more well-known. I 'd never heard of it until reading the comments here tonight.

I agree with the general concensus: The navigation was a minor PITA, the puzzles were good, overall it was on the easy side, but not too much, so it was enjoyable.

The pnly part I had t resort to the walkthru was to find out where to use

. Also, it was - at least for me - not at all clear that the blue-white thing was actually

, but I got that right after all.

I would suggest a nicer ending though. You're out and what you get is links to other games... Somehow isn't right...

bio

I'll chime in to support the consensus here. The puzzles were fine. I didn't mind the green puzzle that much -- I hadn't encountered it before, but

Navigation was awkward, as others have stated; in particular, if I grasped the geography properly, there is one area you can't reach by clicking when it's directly in front of you but CAN reach from around the corner of the building. Odd.

This game also needs more visual cues. For example, with respect to the keys, I would have liked some visual indication that dragging the keys onto the locks did something. I often play these games in an environment where I can't have the sound on, so I can't hear clicks and such. When I saw nothing after dragging a key onto a lock, I assumed that there was something else I needed to do before the keys would work...

All in all, though, some decent puzzling for a Wednesday morning.

Okay, to throw my $0.02 in:

I'm going to have to agree with several others here: the puzzles were okay, but the navigation was horrendous.

It made a number of what I'd call "rookie escape game mistakes":

1. Dependence upon external knowledge.

I was stumped on the KenKen puzzle until I came here, because I'd never encountered one before. (This is kind of a stretch, though -- people put magic squares in these games all the time, and nobody complains.)

(In contrast, the

)

2. Objects/locations are visible from multiple vantage points, but can only be "reached" from one of those points.

There are locations on the far left and right that are quite visible from the front view, but cannot be reached from there.

3. Drag-to-use instead of click-to-select-click-to-use.

My touchpad is a PITA for dragging.

Relatedly, when he was young, my grandfather was in an accident that severed his thumb. They reattached it, but he had no feeling in it, making it nigh-impossible for him to drag objects using a laptop mouse/trackpoint/touchpad.

4. No changing cursor PLUS inappropriate hitboxes.

Not having a changing cursor is annoying, but I can usually deal with it. But the most of the hitboxes are WAY too big. The two cars' hitboxes include the cars as well as the empty spaces on either side. The "Key Door Patio" hitbox extends down into the yard below it.
So I'd click an spot to see if there was a hotspot there, and I'd be taken to a different area. Then I had to move my cursor down to go back, at which point I'd lose my place and have to figure out where I'd clicked, exactly.

Finally, there's one more complaint I have that I wouldn't classify as a rookie mistake, but was still very frustrating: The key colors were inconsistent with the locks they were supposed to go with. I kept trying to unlock the orange lock with the "red" key.

Fritware:
"For example, with respect to the keys, I would have liked some visual indication that dragging the keys onto the locks did something."

I had the same problem. I was playing with the sound off and had no clue that dragging the keys to the locks did anything. I was stuck for like half an hour. ;_;

I liked this game very much. Having said that only half the game was actually good. The blue, yellow and orange keys were just too easy. (One easy one is fine, but three feels unsatisfying.) The red puzzle was excellent. The pink requires knowledge which is a good thing. Although, as presented it's difficult to see if you're clueless as to what it's supposed to be and had to research it. I'm grateful to be introduced to a puzzle new to me in the green one.
I would have also liked it to be longer and maybe go inside the building.
All in all I really enjoyed it and hope they make more.

I quite liked this, it was different! A couple of things irked me, like the green key puzzle (I'd guessed it was a Sudoku type puzzle, but I didn't know the rules), and the navigation was terrible. I mean, once I got some of the items I thought "Aha, I know where to use that!" but COULD NOT find my way back to that area! Also...

Anyway, I thought it was a unique take on the escape game, but probably would need some tidying up, like better navigation and a cursor change, to be a really good game :)

The graphics are awesome! I love how you're able to find interesting clues and put them together... It's not easy, but it definitely gets more fun with time.

I liked this a lot! Yes, it had a few problems. (I'm not using spoilers because these are critiques, not giveaways.)

Navigation: (1) Biggest problem: the hot-spots are just too big. (2) A changing cursor would have improved the game dramatically.

Multi-key door: This was the only place where I needed to consult the comments. I did hear the satisfying little clicks when I used each key, but I thought my mission was to find all six keys before the door would open and I could "escape." Thanks to the posts, I realized I needed to click on each lock again to solve a puzzle.

One or two of the "found items" were a bit difficult to identify, but figuring out what they were was a big part of the fun for me.

Thanks, GrinnyP!

I enjoyed it! It wasn't too difficult, especially once I figured out what odd details to look for. My major complain is that annoying plunky soundtrack, good grief. It actually made me long for the elevator music of a Tesshi-e game.

@nerdypants --

Glad to know I wasn't the only one.

I'm of two minds about the use of sound in games like these. Sound is an integral element of some of the best puzzles that I've come across in the many rooms, office buildings, underground complexes, tombs, bizarre otherworlds filled with people doing incomprehensible things (I'm looking at you, Henna Escape) and other enclosures from which I've had the pleasure to flee screaming thanks to Weekday Escape. I love the idea of needing to stretch my puzzle-solving skills to include another of the five senses.

However, the need to play silently (or at least with the sound turned way down low) is very common among gamers. For that reason, unless the player is given specific notice that the audio is important, I feel that sound should be an adjunct to visual cues and an enhancement of a game rather than the sole method of communicating feedback to the player.

Of course, there are exceptions -- if there's a place in a game where you have to turn on a radio or pick up a telephone, it will probably occur to you to turn your speakers on, and that's okay. There is also the God Tower/Not Pr0n genre of puzzle games, where there may be no clues that sound is important but the whole point is to think outside of the window in which the game is running, and so you really have no right to complain if the game requires you to turn on your speakers (or, for that matter, examine the HTML code, decipher the dances of bees, or hack into a secret government database to find a pass code laid out across Connecticut but visible only in an aerial photo taken by the next generation of spy satellite).

But for the run of the mill escape game, where sound is basically irrelevant to the rest of the game, it's just confusing to drop it in as an essential element without warning.

Okay, extended rant over. In the future, I'll try not to comment while drinking an extra large coffee, but sometimes it's just unavoidable.

Escape the apartment. Wait - "Escape"? And you end up going IN to some random apartment?

That just says all about the 'logic' to this game. It is all about the 3d-graphic. Which is nice and all. But still - there is absolutely no logic in this gameplay - it's a random click the keys, and solve the puzzles behind the locks.

I am not a big fan.

Wow, that was pretty terrible. The worst part of it all was searching for the clue for the yellow key puzzle. The fact that the clue wasn't visible from the zoomed-out view but should have been given the art quality was amateur.

Loved the look of it and found it easy-peasy-pudding-and-pie. For once. Thanks for this one!

I'm having trouble with the red key puzzle.