While my love for roguelikes and shooters of pretty much all varieties make those my typical wheelhouse, I’ll admit that there are some guilty pleasure game types I enjoy in very different directions. One of them is a well-made casual puzzle adventure, the likes of which were really big in the early tablet era as on PC. I think they just arrived at the right time for me, and were a great distraction that I could enjoy, briefly flex some brain cell muscles with, and then put down to go back to other tasks. While Darkarta may not be one of the very best I’ve played in the space, I’ll admit that on the whole it felt better constructed than much of its recent brethren.

One of the aspects of play in this subgenre that can make or break the experience is the variety of puzzles mixed with the quality of their execution. Unlike titles that spread themselves a bit too thin, tackling too many types of puzzles, and allowing their quality to suffer across the board, this is one that feels like it never really bit off more than it could chew. Mixing together different flavors of hidden object puzzles, some visual logic, and a few others, I was pleased to walk away feeling like most of them were intuitive, fair, and rewarding to complete. While in a few cases I think that visually it was hard to understand where some key components were, some persistence and patience tended to win the day.

One problem I absolutely walked away with, though this is a consistent issue for most of the games in the space, is that the overall story and cutscenes that helped advance it were pretty awful. Most of their production values did pull me back a decade or two, but not in a good way. I suppose you could view it through a lens of being cheesy or bad in an amusing way, but in general I was just eager to get past them and to work on the puzzles instead.

Put it all together, and you’ve got a pretty decent set of puzzles that are implemented well, mixed with a story that may be trying to be dramatic and compelling but that misses the mark. Among its peers it’s at least solidly in the middle of the pack, never seeming to stretch itself too thin, and having a more consistent level of quality as you move your way through its mysteries.