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Iris Fallcan be quite a daunting game because of the number of puzzles you have to solve if you want to get through. Divided into seven chapters, the game tells a beautiful story while having no dialogue at all. You’ll be greeted with multiple beautiful visuals that will be narrating the story for you.
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In each chapter, you can encounter multiple puzzles at different difficulty levels. The interesting part about this game is that the puzzles aren’t tricky to understand, but they require a lot of persistence and patience. You won’t have a moment to breathe while you’re playing this game.
Look Out For The White Dot
The most important thing in the game while you’re trying to solve puzzles is the white dot on the objects you can interact with, as shown in the picture above. Usually,the game will leave you in a giant room, and you’ll have to find a way to start solving the puzzle. These white dots will highlight all the important parts of the room you’re currently in.
As you get close to the object,the dot will change based on how you can interact with it. If you can pick the object up or drop something on it, the hand mark will appear. On the other hand,if you can move the object in a certain way, the cog wheel will appear.
Although, the books that convert your body into a shadow won’t have the white dot. This is because these books already have their specific animation,making them quite hard to miss if you observe the surroundings properly. Moreover, you’ll have to solve different puzzles to use these books in the first place.
You Don’t Have To Use Everything
If there’s one thing that all the puzzle games have taught the players, it’s that you have to use every tool that you’re provided with for a specific puzzle. Although, Iris Fall completely goes against this rule becauseit’s very common to have items that won’t be used in the game when you’re solving puzzles.
For example, one of the wires in the circuit puzzle isn’t used in the second and third difficulties. You’ll have many similar puzzles where the items provided to you will be simply useless.
The same goes for different mechanisms in the game. In the second chapter,you’ll have a puzzle where you need to create the appropriate path on the shadow to get to the next area. To solve this puzzle, you’ll have two different mechanisms, but one of them will be completely useless.
It’s quite unique for a puzzle game to use certain items as bait to confuse the players. Not only does it make the puzzles harder, but it also lets players use their creativity in some instances.
Auto Save Has Multiple Uses
Most story-based games have an auto-save feature that prevents you from losing any progress in case your game crashes in the middle.While some games also allow manual saving with auto-save, Iris Fall isn’t one of them. Whenever the game gets saved, you’ll see an eye icon flashing on the top-right of your screen.
Although, saving is not the only function of this feature when it comes to puzzle-solving.While it’s quite cheesy, you can use this mechanic to know if you solved the puzzle or not. Some of the puzzles trigger a cutscene when you solve them, but other puzzles don’t give you a sign when you finish solving them.
To bypass this, you can keep an eye on the top-right of your screen while you’re persistently trying to solve a certain puzzle. Sometimes,you’ll see the auto-save flashing because you’ve finished it, but you’d still be able to interact with it and mess it up.
This feature can prevent situations like this and help you move to the next part of the game.
Don’t Press Anything Randomly
The best part about Iris Fall is that the puzzles don’t take a lot of time to understand.The basic mechanic required to solve every puzzle is quite straightforward, but it requires a lot of persistence and correct actions to finish them. Since you won’t have a hard time understanding the puzzle, it’s recommended to not try pressing random things.
Some puzzles can get much more difficult if you press some buttons randomly and mess them up. A perfect example of this situation is the Rubik’s Cube puzzle in one of the later chapters. If you randomly rotate the blocks in this area without thinking about the end result, it’ll take you a lot longer to solve it.
The Game Is Pretty Intuitive
The developers have done a great job of making the game extremely intuitive.Whenever you enter a new room, the cat will essentially tell you how to get to the next area. If the cat isn’t there, the game will zoom in on the puzzle you need to solve, so you don’t have to waste a lot of time going around the room.
Although,there are a lot of achievements for random things like running into stuff on the ground or sitting on a bed. But for a casual player, this game can be straightforward to understand. The creators wanted their players to have a hard time solving the puzzles, not finding them.
