• The Dweller
  

  2 hours playtime

  10 of 11 achievements

This is a puzzle game. The protagonist follows the mouse, but can only move through ground tiles. If there’s a rock next to the ground you’re in, you can click it to go inside the rock, at which point you can move left and right and fall off ledges (your character still follows the mouse, but now speed is variable depending on how far away the mouse is). The goal of each level is to get rid of all NPCs on screen, whether by killing them or simply having them run away.

It’s a decent concept for a puzzle game, though I found it to be too easy. It has a few tricky levels, but when you think it’s about to start getting really challenging, it introduces a new gimmick and resets the difficulty curve. First it’s just 1x1 rocks and wooden platforms that won’t let you move through them (but can hold NPCs), but then it’ll introduce 1x3 rocks and 3x1 rocks, and even introduce levels that require you to exit from a rock as it’s falling. Level 37 (of 59) was the first one where I was really stumped, but just when I thought I might be able to recommend the game after all, the difficulty faltered for the proceeding levels, and then level 44 introduced teleporters, and then level 48 introduced green towers that let you place (a limited number of) teleporters in whatever ground tiles you want, and then level 53 introduced a red tower that just straight up lets you ignore the initial restriction and fly wherever you want on screen. This is also where the game decides to introduce soldiers, who’ll shoot you if they see you. You can only kill them if you approach them from behind, unless they’re walking, in which case they can see behind them as well. They can even see into the ground a little bit. There’s also a final boss despite the game only having had hazards for a grand total of 7 screens, and while the boss doesn’t move, it’ll just spawn hazards randomly around the screen and you just have to react to them as they appear.

Not recommended.

P.S. Also, there’s a bug where, sometimes, if a rock is only one level below the one you’re moving, it’ll get stuck on the one pixel where they connect and get pushed instead of having the rock go on top of it like it’s supposed to.

EDIT: Oh, and just in case you’re wondering about that one achievement I’m missing: it’s for skipping a level. Too bad I beat all the levels already.