Game collections are always a bit of a risk, as while you’d assume all titles in the same series are of comparable quality, making the value of getting them together higher, that may not always be the case. You’d typically assume that as a series continues to advance that the quality of the experiences involved would continue to improve as well, but making changes to what initially works may also result in you losing the thread of the original’s appeal. Long story short, playing so many indie games has taught me that developing and marketing games is a serious challenge, and I bumped into these thoughts quite a lot while playing through the Q Collection.

Starting with Q Remastered, you have a puzzler that may best be played handheld, but works well enough with a controller, even if more awkwardly. The idea is almost always pretty simple, and the way you’ll solve the problem on each screen will be to draw something that will accomplish your goal. You’ll need to account for gravity, which can initially be a challenge at times as you develop techniques for dealing with specific sorts of problems by exploiting what you have to work with. There’s absolutely a challenge here, and while your means of control are a bit on the clunky side, you can at least appreciate the spirit behind the design.

Q2 Humanity is then a much more ambitious sequel, that uses the concepts and techniques of the original game and then throws in loads of new ideas and features. For one, you’ll now have the option to tackle the game with friends, opening up the experience to the potential for working together through problems. The other major change is a more action-oriented element, with little characters who have a wide variety of abilities for you to try to master added to the mix. This opens the door to much more diverse puzzle variations for you to tackle, blending together line building with an action component. Whether it’s an improvement over the original is a fair question though, as mechanics that could sometimes already be tricky are multiplied by some of the abilities you’ll need to use. The ideas are there, but their implementation can absolutely get in the way of the fun when you know what you need to do but sometimes struggle with execution.

The last one, which I consider to be the albatross around the next of the other two, is Q with VTubers, and while perhaps I can respect the idea of bringing in some people with new and odd ideas the results aren’t necessarily a positive. The problem? Even very early on, before the usual variety of weird puzzle ideas were unlocked like in the other games, I tended to struggle to simply understand what was being asked of me. I’m not sure if it’s a language issue, my not being in line with whatever audience they thought they were tapping, or what, but at least half of the puzzles I initially had to work with simply didn’t make much sense. I appreciate some of the quirk it appears they were going for, but when you’re sitting there and experimenting, not at all sure what you’re even doing, you quickly realize you’re simply wasting your time.

If I were to make a recommendation I’d actually say to simply get Q Remastered, or its sequel, if you think the action component sounds cool, and just roll with that. There’s a great deal of conceptual and mechanical crossover between them all, so either way you’ll likely get the full experience. If you want more you could then always look for the others on sale. Just as a complete package this doesn’t feel like as guaranteed a value as it should be, so I’d be cautious when considering it.