Sand - An Adventure Story Hack 1.7 + Redeem Codes

So i like a lot about this game. Beautiful design/ artwork, generally easy to use, great puzzles. I wound up breaking out algebra skills I haven’t used in 30 years for the coin puzzle, then ditched the approach and went with a hunch which proved correct. Really makes me think, which I like in a game. My issue is that when you get to the wheel puzzle in the labyrinth (the one where you start with a cyan pie piece across the disks), I get stuck. I can place the sections from the wall diagram where they belong, but there’s no indication as to where the others should go. After trying a few logical possibilities, I realized either I was missing a piece of information or it was one I would have to brute force, which I dislike intensely. I looked up wikis and walkthroughs, but the ones I found stop at the end of the free section. There’s no option to get an easier puzzle here, or anything about where to look for more info. Also can’t find a way to message the creator for info… so, review it is. Again— good game. Just frustrating when you can’t find out how to work around a puzzle.

**Updated—The developer replied to this review, which is kind of incredible. Apparently the two puzzle snags I mention in my original review aren’t snags, but intentional and don’t affect the game. So I gave another star, but they still seem distracting and odd imo. I would certainly try another of this developer’s games. Original review—I paid for the game, and having finished think it mostly delivers on the price. I enjoyed the style and tone of the story and game. The graphic novel-type art was great, the sound/music were good, and there were words when I tapped on almost everything, which seems like such an easy thing but so many games slack there. The puzzles were standard but solid; a little more challenge would have been nice but I’ve played a lot of these sorts of games. One problem is that you can advance without solving at least one puzzle (the stone rings), which begs the question of why it’s there. You can’t go back so presumably you miss part of the story, which in a short game is irksome. In the beginning there is also a window that is too high so the game says you’ll have to check it out from the other side—that either doesn’t or doesn’t have to happen because I didn’t find a way to investigate before the chapter ended. Those seem like two surprising mistakes in what is otherwise a pretty polished game imo.

The puzzles were challenging but not impossible. After playing the demo, I fell in love with the art style and puzzles. I happily paid $1.99 for the full version. I only "simplified" 2 puzzles, but that was because visually they were hard to distinguish (the beetles puzzle + the numbers square puzzle). Overall, a fun puzzle game (with actually challenging puzzles) with an interesting premise (though the ending felt rushed).

The most difficult part of the game was trying to find the hidden objects in random rooms! One of the rings you needed in a puzzle was in a corridor hidden by complete shadows! And a flask you needed to clean a mirror was placed amongst an already completed puzzle. It was unnecessarily frustrating to look up a tutorial of the game because I literally couldn't find what I needed to progress. The hints were just "you need to find the object"- boy, I know, I do! Where IS the object, hint?

If the company releases another puzzle game (a sequel could be fun with the open ending), I would happily play it. Just made the hidden objects easier to find!

I really loved playing this game and found the puzzles to be different and the right amount of challenging. But, that money game!! Whoa. Too hard for me and I almost quit before switching to easy mode. It would be nice to have more hints or a skip feature for anyone that just can’t get a puzzle. I hesitated to switch to easy mode because I couldn’t switch back. I may play again to see what the rest of the puzzles are like in the harder mode. Thank you for a beautiful game and story. You did such a great job of integrating the story and puzzles in a consistent, unique and on-topic way. For anyone wanting to play - just pay the 2 bucks and enjoy it. It’s not much to ask for their effort to bring us a beautiful game. It starts a bit slow but really picks up. You won’t be disappointed.

It’s not often I get to the end of a game and say, “Holy ****!” at the completion of the story, but I did on this one…twice. It’s a nice little game for an excellent price IMO.

I used hints pretty frequently when I couldn’t quite tell what a puzzle wanted me to do, but I never had to resort to “easy mode.” The puzzles all had solutions I found logical, unlike some other puzzle games, where I often have a reaction of “how was I supposed to figure THAT out” if I’m having trouble with a solution.

The coin puzzle seems to trip up a lot of people, and I agree that it made use of some algebra which I’d have found easier if I broke out some scratch paper. But as far as I can tell, there is only one solution for X. That was maybe the most satisfying to solve!

The one I struggled with the most was the antidote puzzle, because it took me way too long to figure out I was allowed to do something that was required for at least some of the solutions.

The only puzzle I solved by accident was the one where you slid around a bunch of squares to put them in the right order. I thought I knew what I was supposed to do and then about halfway through it “unlocked” and I’m still not quite sure why that was the solution.

All in all, I really enjoyed this game, and I’m interested in seeing other games from this developer.

Love puzzle games like this, but the map puzzle is honestly really difficult. You can’t zoom into the map to look at it closer and you can’t take it with you so you’re stuck having to go back and forth with the paper scraps. The scraps in themselves give no indication what to do, even after using the single hint, which does nothing if you’re already lost and put the game in easy mode. I’m completely locked and have no idea what to do but I love games like this so I don’t want to quit. It would be nice if there could be more than one hint, and the hints don’t have to still give you the answer, but at least not tell you what easy mode already had to do

So I started playing and almost immediately hit a pay wall. It irked me because I don’t like it when developers do sneaky, shady, stuff like that, but it seemed like a game I would enjoy, so I paid up.
I got through the whole thing in less than an hour. That’s it. The whole game took less than an hour. The puzzles were ok. Not too easy, not too hard. I did have to do two of them on “easy mode”, but no big deal. The story was very lacking in detail. It was frankly, dull. There just wasn’t much to it, and the end was very abrupt and anticlimactic (which isn’t surprising because the whole story was anticlimactic).
The graphics and music were good , and the few puzzles there were, I enjoyed. It was just so incredibly short and boring for a PAID game, I was very disappointed.

As you’ll see from the other reviews, a lot of people struggle with the coin puzzle, and there’s a good reason why: the clues yield a set of possible solutions, not a unique one. It’s fundamentally a set of linear equations with two degrees of freedom; the limited number of coins add one more constraint, but again, not enough for a unique solution.

We play puzzle games for the satisfaction of solving a puzzle. When a puzzle has multiple solutions but only one is accepted, this fundamentally ruins this experience. Furthermore, I’m leaving this at one star because of the developer’s responses to other reviews—providing solutions to puzzles are not the same as true hints, and telling frustrated players they’re basically too dumb to solve their ill-designed puzzle is bad practice. The game is not good enough on its own merits to make up for this kind of developer response.

I only played the free portion which took about 5 minutes so I can’t speak to the paid part of the game. It’s really pretty - I love the art style - but the paywall came way too early in my opinion.. Based on other reviews saying the whole game is under an hour long, maybe that explains why? I’m not willing to pay for a game I’m only going to play one time, regardless of how good the game is. It seems like a puzzle/story game should be longer and ideally give you more of a demo or better explain what all is included in the full game? It seems this is a first game from this dev so I’m excited to see their future projects as there’s definitely some strong potential here.

I was really enjoying this game but within MINUTES it prompted me to pay for the full version. The game was off to a good start so I was willing to pay $1.99 for the full version. Paid for full version and I was off! Or so I thought. The full version too maybe 30 minutes. And it ended abruptly too. The story easily could have accommodated more levels but instead it just ends!

Don’t get me wrong. Game play is fun, hints and guides are super helpful, even the story line is good (and I typically couldn’t care less about storylines). But if you’re going to lure us in and then make us pay for a full version, at least give us a full game!