Adrift

➕ Beautiful handwriten notes and artifacts. They are simply gorgeous to look at and helps to elevate the experience of playing the game. ➕ Well-designed puzzles. The game had a gradual difficulty curve, easing players into the game and its puzzles. There were many instances of clever use of artifacts and drawings in puzzle-solving. ➕ Hints system is decent. Decent hint system with multiple hints available before revealing the solution. ✖️ Structure of the game leads to some issues. The game's structure, with puzzles tied to poems, limits the use of some physical puzzles and may exclude non-English-speaking players. ✖️ One of the puzzles was too convoluted, potentially causing frustration for players. "Adrift" stands out with its stunning artwork and unique approach to storytelling through puzzles. It is recommended for both puzzle enthusiasts and beginners looking for a captivating and aesthetically pleasing experience.

a beautiful experience. an impressive way how puzzles between art and poetry can be weaved together. my first experience with Post Curious and it makes me excited for their other games!

This is a unique take on a puzzle-driven narrative. There are four “chapters,” playable in any order, each of which contains three poems, a piece of artwork, and a physical artifact. Poem one hides a message giving you a hint for how to interpret poem 2, which gives a hint for poem 3, which is combined with the artwork and the artifact to yield a final phrase “solving” that chapter. The four phrases together lead to the brief finale. Although the components are beautifully illustrated, there are some issues with the assembly (and disassembly) of the artifacts, particularly the ones involving cardboard. If you want to pass this on after playing you’ll have to be careful, although nothing in the game has to be written on or cut/folded, so that helps. We found the puzzles to be mostly solvable without hints, but one of the four chapters felt really underclued, and it is the one with the artifact that is the hardest to reconfigure, which is unfortunate. Anyway, if you like PostCurious games, you’ll almost certainly like this: despite the hiccups we felt it was a couple of hours well spent.