Cresting around a lazy marsh’s bend, the symphony swelling in tow, and arriving below a castle rich with twisted enchantment–it’s like getting those chills starting Skyrim for the first time! Like the rest of its brilliance, The Eyes of Ara’s entrance captivates and motivates with an immediacy that never fades away. One-man-army, Ben Droste, at 100 Stones Interactive, has riddled a puzzler classic with The Eyes of Ara.
Shot out of the Canon
The Eyes of Ara couldn’t have come at a better time for puzzle games–the mobile industry has had a revolution ushered in by games like The Room, widespread touchscreens have shifted puzzles from word-games to tactile solvers, and even real life has gone through an escape-the-room fad with brick and mortar shops popping up almost everywhere in America.
My personal experience with escape-the-room games goes all the way back to elementary school playing (and eventually getting banned) games like The Crimson Room on indie flash game websites. Even back then designers strived with restrictions and combined challenging reasoning with interesting narratives, and The Eyes of Ara goes above and beyond.
Without giving too much away, The Eyes of Ara delivers on the core promises of classic puzzle games while still innovating enough to earn a niche. Its puzzles require diligent thinking and tinkering–especially later in the game–without ever feeling like they are unfair. The rewards, checkpoints, and pacing of the content kept me wanting to solve just one more puzzle.
For puzzle junkies, The Eyes of Ara will present a considerable challenge, and for puzzle beginners, it will probably require a few checks of a YouTube walkthrough to get through the toughest parts. Beating this game produced in me a strong sense of accomplishment.
Uniquely, The Eyes of Ara is the first game that I ever played on my Switch with no joycons attached, just using the (sometimes forgotten about) touchscreen like a small tablet. The Nintendo Switch port of the originally mobile phone game makes requires the use of the touchscreen to get the most out of all the turning, spinning, and placing in the puzzles.
Rhythm and Harmony
Most importantly, however, the story, artwork, and musical score steal the show from the already good puzzles. From the very beginning, the artwork and music work perfectly together. Throughout there are musical and visual motifs that add layered depth to the story’s progression.
And that story’s progression is told masterfully through an epistolary narrative (a story told through discovered notes), which is a pillar of a well-made puzzle game. The more I learned of the castle’s history the more I needed to get to the next piece of the narrative’s larger puzzle. Not only did The Eyes of Ara inspire in-game curiosity for me, but it pushed me to explore its allusions in my free time.
Final Thoughts
In a genre saturated with copycats and lackluster knock-offs, The Eyes of Ara fully delivers a memorable experience. It finds those mythical sweet spots of being just hard enough without feeling arbitrary, of using an epistolary narrative without boring detail, of paying homage to the classics without sacrificing originality. Overall, the time playing this game is time well spent.
Pros
- Top-notch graphics and music
- Compelling narrative
- High difficulty without feeling unfair
Cons
- Using joycons takes away from the tactile puzzles
Score: 9.5/10
Check Out The Eyes of Ara Trailer:
The Eyes of Ara launches on Nintendo Switch on October 15, 2019. The game is already available on the App Store and Steam.
Nintendo Switch Review
Recent Michigan State University grad and current Game Studies researcher who plays fantasy RPG's to escape, Smash to compete, and Stardew to chill. Also have a +1 to rage/toxicity resistance due to the many hours sunk into WoW, R6, and LoL.
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