Waking Violet

Genre: Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

Waking Violet is a character-driven Puzzle game released on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, and Nintendo Switch in 2018. In this game, players take the role of the titular Violet, who finds herself trapped in a nightmare and must solve puzzles to escape.

The presentation here is good, but very subdued, with some nice but poorly-animated hand-painted 2D artwork backed by some quiet, moody instrumental music. It’s nothing impressive, but it does a good job of setting a somber and even slightly paranoid mood for the game.

As for the gameplay, this game does a few clever things with its genre, such as gradually giving Violet magical abilities she must conserve limited amounts of energy for to solve puzzles, as well as the requirement to set things up before grabbing a level’s stopwatch, which not only unlocks the level’s exit portal, but also frees enemies that will start to stalk the player. There’s some good puzzle design here, and fans of the genre will find some good challenge in the game’s thoughtful design.

Unfortunately, they’ll also find some very, very, very slow pacing, with each level introduced by an interminably long introduction, an extremely slow walking speed, and controls that feel rigid and robotic. As much as I love this game’s puzzle design, the overall game design saps so much of the fun out of the experience.

Overall, I still think that Puzzle fans will enjoy Waking Violet as long as they have the patience for its agonizingly slow pacing. As I said, this game’s great puzzle design really shines, and its art style is at the very least interesting. However, for more casual fans of the genre, you may find yourself wanting for something more fluid and responsive.

tl;dr – Waking Violet is a character-driven Puzzle game where players try to escape the nightmares of the titular child, Violet. This game has some good puzzle design, but much of the game’s fun is sabotaged by the game’s incredibly slow pacing. Patient fans of puzzle games may still want to give this a look, but everyone else should move on.

Grade: C+

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