The world is one hell of a puzzling place right now, so spending time on the first person, sci-fi puzzle game Relicta seems quite apt. To me, it was a bit of an analogy of being in Stage 4 lockdown here in Melbourne – frustrating, sometimes boring, but if you look at it from a certain angle you can turn that boredom into something positive.

Relicta sees you play as Dr. Angelica Patel, a scientist who works on Chandra Base, which is situated on the Moon. The game starts with a pretty dramatic cut scene which shows Patel blacked out with one of her colleagues trying to interact with her through her headset. When Patel awakens, there’s been a massive system malfunction which her colleague begs her not to interfere with. With her daughter’s life at stake, Patel lifts her bad ass Mum self off the ground says “I don’t think so!” to her colleague and charges forward to save her kid.

The game then brings you two years before this incident, to 2118. Patel has been experimenting with physics by using specially made “gravitonic wearable interface” gloves. These look like futuristic white and black leather motorcycle gloves with suction caps on the outsides and tiny little planets rotating in the palms. In short – they’re pretty wicked. She experiments with these gloves by completing courses that are situated in different environmental settings that make up the backyard of the Chandra Base.

With the aid of your gloves, these cubes can be changed from red or blue. If you add a gravitational pull to them you can attract them towards each other if they are also the same colour and throw them apart if they are the opposite colour. This is useful for getting the cubes into tight spots or high places.

What I like about Relicta is that it is does give you multiple ways that you can move these cubes around and interacting with them is pretty cool. You really feel the power of your gloves by all the ways you can manipulate and experiment with the cubes. It made me feel like a super hero, throwing these cubes up into the air and watching them fly through areas.

On the flip-side, my main problem with Relicta was its inability to be flexible with those who are new to the puzzle genre. I myself haven’t played too many puzzle games and Relicta seems to be built especially for puzzle fans. This may not seem like an issue, but it does alienate a lot of players who would want to give Relicta a go but find it hard to navigate. The biggest issue is that instructions about the physics mechanics are only explained to you once via the main system, nicknamed Sys. There are no tutorials that you can go back to if you get stuck and this was extremely frustrating. Like, what happens if you miss the instructions? It seemed like a massive oversight to not include a way for players to have a way to access these mechanics. I was so stuck on the majority of courses that I needed help from YouTube to see how the mechanics worked as I couldn’t find any other way for the game to give me a refresher.

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When you finish each course you take an elevator back down to the base where the narrative continues. There is no real narrative whilst you are completing the puzzles; sometimes Patel may say something funny or a small conversation will occur between her and a colleague via her headset, but mainly it’s puzzle time all the time.