Infini

Genre: Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in the Nakana Bundle #1, along with A Night at the Races and Soul Searching. It is also included in Nakana Bundle #5, along with A Night at the Races, Cosmic Top Secret, Eqqo, and Please Touch The Artwork. Additionally, this game is also in Nakana Bundle #6 (10 games), along with A Night at the Races, Cosmic Top Secret, Eqqo, Journey of the Broken Circle, Lydia, Mythic Ocean, Please Touch The Artwork, Soul Searching, and Stilstand.)

Infini is a Puzzle game that has one of the most bizarre presentations I have ever seen in a videogame. Players take on the role of a humanlike figure named Hope who is on a spiritual journey of sorts to escape reality and return to Infinity… whatever the heck that means.

Yeah, the story in this game doesn’t make sense, the characters don’t make sense, and often the world doesn’t make sense. Someone elsewhere referred to this game as looking like a student art project, which is apt. I would also compare this to a fever dream or an acid trip. This entire game runs on a strange otherworldly logic that I’m sure makes perfect sense if you’re suffering from a severe brain injury.

The characters are hand-drawn in an ugly art style with vague, abstract hand-painted backgrounds. It’s not that a lack of effort went into this game’s visuals so much as it seems to have been a very deliberate attempt to make this game look as freakish and indistinct as possible. Likewise, the music here all comes across as experimental an just plain odd – it’s perfectly fitting for this game, but I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or an insult. Likewise, when characters talk, their words make odd noises, kinda’ like Banjo-Kazooie and Yooka-Laylee characters, but without the humor and cuteness.

Okay, so look. I am clearly not into this game’s presentation. I imagine some people will absolutely love how bizarre it all is, how weird and head-trippy the entire experience is, and some people will undoubtedly hate it with a burning passion. Just from the presentation alone, this was clearly always going to be a love it or hate it sorta’ thing. However, if you can at least tolerate the presentation, the gameplay here is actually surprisingly compelling.

I call this a Puzzle game because that’s the genre that probably best describes this, though it’s really unique. Players control Hope as he plummets down on the screen, which endlessly repeats, with their only goal being to guide him toward an exit portal without bumping into any walls. This is simple enough, but as the game progresses it adds more elements and complications to this formula, and many of these create truly mind-bending situations that require observation and clever analysis. There are some truly excellent puzzles here that really make wonderful use of this game’s unique elements, such as one area where players gain the ability to zoom out the action, but can only zoom out… however, the endlessly repeating of the screens remains, meaning that players must carefully zoom out the screen in the right way to get where they need to go.

There are some frustrations, though. It is easy to bungle up a puzzle to the point where it cannot be solved, requiring you to die and restart. This is thankfully quick and fairly effortless, but it’s still an annoyance. Also, the solutions to some puzzles aren’t always very apparent, and as there’s no skipping them, I can definitely see players getting stuck fairly easily.

However, these are minor flaws, and really for the most part, Infini is an excellent Puzzle game, it’s just one where the barrier to entry is whether you can tolerate its bizarre and off-putting presentation. If so, you’ll find this to be a refreshingly unique Puzzle game. If not, you may be better off sticking to games that are a bit less… this.

tl;dr – Infini is a Puzzle game that has you guiding a character down repeating screens, trying to reach the exit in each. The puzzle design here is excellent, making good use of this game’s unique gameplay elements, but the presentation is like something out of a hellish fever dream, and will definitely put off some players. But if you enjoy Puzzle games and don’t mind dealing with something that’s truly bizarre, Infini may be worth a look.

Grade: C+

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