Puzzle Parasite Review

Puzzle Parasite is a mind-bending, sci-fi puzzle adventure developed and published by Wrenfall. After all the roguelikes and action games I’ve played this year, it’s nice to occasionally change the pace with a self-described cosy yet thrilling journey, figuring out elegant solutions to tricky puzzles, so let’s check it out. 

There are two separate campaigns: one made for single player and the other made for co-op. I played the game by myself, so I’m only covering my experience in the solo campaign. In it, you are an operator who is part of a research team out to analyse a planet for minerals. However, after you're sent down into its caverns, it becomes apparent that there's much more to this world than what meets the eye. If you want to get out, you’ll need to exploit your powers and alien technology before… something makes sure you stay permanently.

The narrative is fine, if a little uninteresting. You aren’t alone in your journey as you’ll have your crewmates talking in your ear, moving the story along. That being said, for the majority of the game, it doesn’t feel connected to the levels. They’ll talk about how a mechanic works, or mention something going on outside of the caverns, but if you turn off the dialogue, it wouldn’t change all that much. For example, there’s a level called Factory that could be a nice change of scenery between all the caves. Unfortunately, it’s quickly tossed away after it’s completed. The gameplay is given priority, while the story is just sort of there to give you an excuse to keep going.

But enough about the constant caves and somewhat dull story, where Puzzle Parasite shines is its gameplay. There are four actions at your disposal: swing your cricket bat, grab an object, pull an object into your line of sight, and reset the level. Of course, like with every first-person puzzle game, you’ll be mostly dealing with… orbs, not cubes. Huh, that feels weird. Anyways, puzzles centre around multi-coloured orbs — or energy cores. They’re used to both activate the many switches around the caves and, by placing them all in their specific slot (often by whacking them into them), complete the level.

Each core has a unique colour and function that you’ll need to deal with. For example, red cores can’t be moved with the pull power, and yellow cores can't be smacked with the bat. These can lead to a ton of interesting interactions and puzzle solutions. That being said, they can be frustrating to use, with the purple being the most troublesome to deal with. By getting it close to a different coloured orb, they’ll switch colours, which gets in the way more often than it helps. I basically had to babysit purples because they can and will screw you over, necessitating the aforementioned resets.

Plus, due to being physics-based, there's a degree of trial and error to puzzles that I didn't really like. Cores can end up in bad positions that make it impossible to solve the puzzle or a missed shot can basically set you back to the beginning. At least in similar games like Portal, you aren’t relying on proper execution. If you’ve solved it, all that needs to be done is to execute the solution. Here, though, there are a few more hurdles that need to be overcome.

Having a level reset that is easily accessible is pretty necessary, as you can mess up enough to softlock yourself out of beating the level. It’s especially frustrating when you’ve basically solved it, but one mistake will force you to restart from the beginning. At times, I ended up solving some levels through unintended means, which felt like cheating, but the true solution was much harder to figure out or perform.

There is, at least, some kindness found for struggling players. If you find a level too hard for you, you do have the option to skip a level; however, you have to spend a Skip Token. These are limited, so you can't just skip every level you find difficult. Here’s a tip: pay attention to the name of the level. Even if it relates to dialogue, it could also be a hint to the solution, which is really neat!

Now, onto the performance, and it’s pretty great. It stayed at 60 FPS throughout the entire playthrough, and although I was screwed over by bad aim and softlocking, there were no glitches that prevented me from continuing.

Overall, though, I found Puzzle Parasite to be an enjoyable game for anyone looking to exercise their brain. It is a short time; you can casually beat the game in two to three hours, but I found many of the puzzles satisfying to solve, and it does a lot with very little. It does have its moments of annoyance, but it’s worth dealing with that to experience a great puzzle title.