Разработчик: Simon Says: Play!
Описание
"In 2062, Men from Terra have access to a new technology from a mysterious Black Cube they found 5 years before. With this new power, they decide to explore their solar system, in search for signs of intelligent life. They send you at the discovery of planet Catyph and its moon Tytaah." CATYPH: The Kunci Experiment is Another Space Adventure reminiscent of Myst and Rhem, and you can absolutely play it without knowing anything about the first Black Cube game, ASA. With the help of the data that you collect on Tytaah, you must attempt to access the 7 regions of this moon. Your main mission: understand what the Kunci is. The whole game relies on observation, discovery and exploration.
CATYPH is an independant and self-funded game, mainly created by one person. It has been envisaged as an experience, an interactive story based on exploration and logical puzzles. This prerendered 3D game is made of static pictures with video transitions.
Gameplay
Point & Click. Visit the regions of Tytaah, take notes on a piece of paper, and solve the puzzles!
Hotspots description:
- blue circles: action/examine
- blue arrows: turn head/view to look around you
- red arrows: walk to next/preview node/view
- blue dots at the bottom of the screen: turn view 180°
Features
- Visit the vast moon of Tytaah (7 regions: desert, snow, alien forest, mercury seas and more)
- Around 15 hours of gameplay
- Over 800 transition videos and 2000 background images
- OST: 18 tracks composed by the artists of KARREO
- Immersive story: try to save Terra with the support of General Lantier, and learn more about the mysterious "god" of Tytaah: Germinal
- Play in HD 1920x800
- Unlock bonuses (minigames and films)
- Developed with Visionaire Studio (Deponia...)
- Choose a difficulty level: Normal/Hard, or also Story/Classic modes
- Benefit of useful icons over the hotspots
- Available for Windows in full English
The soundtrack of CATYPH was composed by KARREO. Several artists joined their forces to create a unique OST (Stélian Derenne, Jeff K-Ray, Antoine Vachon, Pol Desmurs and Cécile Cognet).
Check out the Black Cube site to discover other related projects:
- ASA, Myha
- Catyph Artbook
- Original Soundtracks
- Self-published DVD
- ANTERRAN comic
and maybe more?
Поддерживаемые языки: english
Системные требования
Windows
- OS *: Windows Xp, Vista, 7, 8, 10
- Processor: 2Ghz+
- Memory: 3 GB RAM
- Graphics: Non-Dedicated (shared) video card with at least 512MB Shared VRAM & openGL 2.0 support
- Storage: 5 GB available space
- Sound Card: openAL compatible sound card
- Additional Notes: Some of the puzzles rely on colors and sound. Mouse only.
- OS *: Windows Xp, Vista, 7, 8, 10
- Processor: 2,5Ghz+
- Memory: 5 GB RAM
- Graphics: Video card with 1GB VRAM
- Storage: 5 GB available space
- Sound Card: openAL compatible sound card
- Additional Notes: Some of the puzzles rely on colors and sound. Mouse only.
Отзывы пользователей
Catyph is the second game in the Black Cube series (it is a sequel to ASA), which can be described as a sci-fi puzzle adventure. You are an astronaut, sent to one of the moons of Catyph (a large gas giant that resembles Saturn) where you discover a mysterious black cube. Entering the cube transports you to one of the other moons, Tytaah, where most of the story takes place. You travel to different regions of Tytaah in order to unlock the mysteries of the cube, while Terra (your home planet) is under the threat of a strange spacecraft.
There are two editions of the game, “Original” and “Light”, and you get to select which version you want to play at the beginning of the game. After experimenting a little bit, I opted for the original version, which features transition cutscenes between scenes. Light edition is supposed to improve the design of some puzzles, I wasn’t able to test that.
Positive
- I was pleasantly surprised by both the amount and quality of the puzzles in Catyph. ASA was fine, it was actually better than average, but it is this game where the designer Simon Mesnard unleashes his true puzzle design skills. Catyph is full of interesting and complex puzzles, and most of them are difficult to solve. Challenge and depth of the puzzles leads to a very exciting gameplay experience; it had been a while since I played a game that left me with this level of satisfaction. On top of that, the content and variety of the puzzles are also great. There are classical pattern matching and mechanical manipulation puzzles which are the staples of this genre, but there are also math puzzles, time manipulation puzzles, environment observation puzzles and even some cryptography puzzles. For the last one ,you actually need to learn the rules of an alien language at some point, which was very cool. Apart from some exceptions, which I will mention soon, Catyph was one of the most memorable and fun puzzle-fests I have played in a while. It is a remarkable achievement.
- One of the major shortcomings of ASA was the weird navigation scheme, which made it very difficult to localize yourself in the game. Catyph fixes this issue by adding full video transitions between different nodes. Not only do they look great and improve the immersion, they also solve the navigation problem since now you can get a clear sense of where your character is moving between scenes. Graphics were also good, I especially liked how each main region of the game had a different feel and look. Overall this game looks and plays much better than ASA.
- Music and sound design are well done. I loved the epicness of some tunes and the voice acting was also satisfactory.
-I love that the in-game database provides a lot of info on the lore of the game. This database is essential for solving some of the puzzles, and you can also read it to gain more insight into this solar system and its history.
Negative
Although the majority of the puzzles are very good, there are also several under-clued and frustrating puzzles, where the solutions don't make sense even after reading the walkthrough. This game would deserve a near-perfect score if only these puzzles had better clues. It is a pity, I really wanted to give this game a 9+ score.
The lore of the game is interesting, but the font of the text that depicts this lore is very small, which makes it unnecessarily difficult to read, since it is like 1000 words fit into a single screen. This would have been easily fixed by making the font bigger and adding a browsing bar.
There is an in-game currency called blue matter, which you can earn by playing an arcade game at any point. You can spend this currency to get hints about puzzles, which is fine. What is not fine is, you also need to spend blue matter to activate cubes in the game, hence there is no escape from playing this arcade game. It is not that difficult, but it gets repetitive and annoying very quickly; I think gimmicks like this have no place in a puzzle adventure game. Light edition is supposed to remove this feature, but it also removes transition cutscenes, which I do not prefer.
Conclusion
Catyph is an amazing puzzle adventure with an intriguing story and tons of interesting challenges. A few weak puzzles prevents it from reaching its full potential, but nevertheless it is a very solid effort. Highly recommended to all Myst and puzzle adventure fans.
Score: 8.5/10
This is a truly remarkable game with all the elements of a first class adventure. Beautiful and diverse scenery, pleasing musical score, complex story, and very challenging puzzles. This is a stand alone game. If you have played other Black Cube games by Simon Mesnard, you will have the added bonus of returning to familiar themes, objects, and characters.
The backstory is told through logs and video ransmissions. There is an incredible amount of creative detail woven into the story of the Black Cube universe, the adventures of Philip Forte, and the ARK. There are languages to decipher, numbering systems, machinery, energy sources, and teleportation... all laid out for you to explore at your own pace.
The game is built around a 'hub' from which you travel to 5 satellite moons, each with a unique environment and artistic style.
The 2018 "Light" version of Catyph has improved point and click navigation and some additional hints for the more complex puzzles. This was the version I played. The Steam timer is not implemented in this game so my actual time playing is not the .3 hours shown, but around 12 hours total.
One caveat - this game is not for those who like easy games. Black Cube puzzles are some of the most challenging I've encountered and require extensive note taking and (in some cases) a calculator. Puzzles are varied in form and always intriguing. I will admit that I did refer to the walk-through at the Black Cube site on several occasions. Not because I was stuck and needed a solution. Instead, there were times when I needed more insight into the intent or mechanics of a specific puzzle.
Overall, I really enjoyed this game and highly recommend it to players who enjoy stretching their brains and using critical thinking skills while exploring a very immersive landscape.
I love a good 90's style point-and-click, but this one was tedious. While some of the puzzles were reasonably fun, most seemed to require a degree in math or linguistics. It would take hours to solve each puzzle (one, for example, involved a lengthy translation from an alien language). The voice-acting was terrible, and the graphics were very very old-school. The "point and click" style made getting around a chore, and it was very easy to miss rooms/areas because of the awkward movement dynamics and the way a lot of areas looked identical. The story didn't make much sense (too convoluted, too many things going on), and the characters presented were caricatures--it was hard to care about what was happening on "Terra" and the "bad guy" was so bad he could have been The Master in a 60's episode of Doctor Who (see: mustache-twirling, maniacal laugh). With most Myst-style games, the puzzles are so cool and interesting you genuinely want to solve them on your own. There is always some kind of narrative payoff for solving a puzzle as well (a secret revealed!). Here, you'd slog through six worlds, solving puzzles, and your only reward would be more mustache-twirling dialogue (in a very bad English accent!) from the villain, or another video message from the general (who is depicted as an African American, cigar-smoking military vet, but voiced by what sounds like a 19-year old, white, Yale grad. I guess Morgan Freeman was busy that day). Although you could tell they tried to make the puzzles "make sense" to the logic of the worlds, it was clear that most were, in a personal pet-peeve of mine, puzzles for the sake of puzzles.
THE MOST FRUSTRATING ASPECT OF ALL was the inability to take pictures of hints when you came across them. I wound up having to take pictures of my screen with my phone, to avoid having to take a million pages of handwritten notes (WHY????). The clues would be so elaborate that there was no way I was going to write all that crap down. Even then, I am not wasting my life translating things to binary code, mmmm kay, designers? That's the definition of a pain-staking, tedious puzzle that is Not Fun to do.
It sort of misses the mark in a couple of places, but Catyph is a surprisingly good adventure, with what seems like it could be an interesting story (though translation issues and mediocre acting made it hard to follow). The puzzles, when they work properly, are as interesting and varied as the different parts of the world in which they reside. And the presence of a free demo is always a good thing!
For more, check out my mini-review here: https://youtu.be/9eHc4z_RHI4
For more reviews, as well as Let's Plays and livestreams, find Gemini Does Games on YouTube, Twitch, and Patreon!
The puzzles solutions are not clever or creative if you have played games like MYST it is disappointing. for example, in one case a door code is a rock formation in the backdrop, in another the solution needs you to decode a fake language which needs you to have a pen and paper in front of you and can ten minutes to an hour to get to the relevant clue on the monolith. The time depends less on skill and more where you start.
Some puzzles I solved by unlocking the clues or solutions with an asteroid mini game.
What wrecked the game for me was after I unlocked the solution for a couple of puzzles and had no idea how I was supposed to have figured them out.
Get this only if you love puzzle games and don’t mind if one puzzle is a simple spot the thing, and the next needs an hour of working with your notes.
well, I liked the first one better due to more sci-fi vibe... this one tried so hard to be like myst+riven but failed... also it tried so hard to be a sequal and make all the connections to the previous game in order to unravel the mysteries. the puzzles are so didactic that it spoils the game. the visuals and transitions of the first game was way better... if you like myst-like adventures and were a fan of the first game, you may give this one a shot though.
Definitely something to check out if you like the MYST series. The overall plot was intriguing and the puzzles pretty hardcore.
The graphics are dated, but I could forgive that.
The English is rough, at best, but I could forgive that.
The game uses a very long intro vid to "tell the player" in an attempt to throw the player into the start of the game fully-informed (and then expect them to fully appreciate the details), rather than "show the player" to throw the player into the start of the game and leave them puzzled. Odd, but again, I could forgive that.
What I can't forgive are the puzzles... they just weren't fun for me. The 1st one requires the player to assume that this (very deteriorated) landscape has been left in a state to suggest the entry code, rather than assume the place has fallen apart and is different from how the builders made it. The 2nd one requires the player to use pattern recognition from low-res graphics you can't zoom in on. The 3rd requires players to hunt for "spark plugs", and places one along the side of one of several very unremarkable corridors.
TL;DR: Short version is, I didn't have fun playing this game, and I'm going to refund it if I can.
This game wasn't for me, but it might be for you, so be sure to check out what I liked about it. The game has a demo, so try it. It's better than just reading reviews.
Summary
Reviewers have compared this game to Myst, which can be misleading. This is not a modern game that is reminiscent of Myst. It is adventure game that would fit literally into in the 90's - complete with 90's technology, UI design and philosophy, and technological limitations of the era.
What I Liked
All games follow tropes, because they'd be incomprehensible otherwise. But Catyph uses a few fascinating themes that I like - an eerie, uncanny world with a secret to discover, and an environment to match the mood. The style is classic deep sci-fi, and it's not surprising that it's compared to Myst for these reasons. It reminds me of Arthur C. Clarke's works.
Catyph is remarkably fresh in this way - the way only small developers seem to be these days. That should be commended.
What I Disliked
Catyph's UI is worse than early Flash-based games. The videos seem to show the character walking around the world in real-time, but it's actually a point-and-click game of still images with grainy, compressed animations between them - just like you'd find in the 90's.
The geometry of the world is impossible to figure out given the way you travel. You can click on an arrow that teleports you to another scene, but you can't tell what direction you're now facing. This makes the world feel unreal, and more like a collection of network nodes than an actual place.
Besides the fact that the designers ignored everything we've learned in the last 20 years about UX (User eXperience), they also failed to advance the genre even by 90's standards. The puzzles seems logically disconnected from the world, and while some of them are interesting, they also seem pointless. It's as if one game designer created a world and backstory, and then another came in afterward and just distributed puzzles through it without knowing anything else about it.
Conclusions
I've never been very tolerant of nostalgia trips, because they are almost universally disappointing. The experience you had in the 90's -- when you were 20 years younger -- cannot be duplicated. You were a different person, and lived in a world with a different set of limitations that you accepted at the time. And more importantly, you hadn't already seen it once, so you didn't have expectations.
Nevertheless, I decided to give Catyph a try, partly because the reviews seemed good overall, and partly because the premise sounded interesting.
Unfortunately, what I got was similar to grabbing an emulator and picking up an original copy of Myst, which isn't the experience I wanted.
An amazing puzzle game with a complex storyline!
But first of all, Catyph is not a game for everyone. As a sequel to ASA: a space adventure, it is a classic Myst-like or Rhem-like in terms of gameplay, but it is way much more difficult.
Clues are not directly apparent and require some very good observation skills and intuition (you need to figure out if something you see is a clue or simply just part of the surrounding world). Puzzles are very diverse as in the previous opus ASA, but are more difficult. Curiosity and perseverance are a requirement. But even then, it will still be sometimes necessary to take a look into the walkthrough...
I quite enjoyed the wide diversity offered by the exploration in the game. While exploring 6 beautiful worlds in completely different environments, you will be able to use different modes of teleportation, experience time travel, pilot a submarine robot while dodging some prehistoric creature, explore the inside of some beautiful painting…
I really had a lot of fun solving the puzzles. In fact, I became so engrossed in trying to solve them, that I completely lost track of the storyline and forgot about reading the database… After spending hours grinding my teeth on the puzzles, I realized that the storyline videos were kind of messed up since I had moved back and forth between worlds when I was stuck. Since I had not followed at all the storyline, I decided to start over, and this time, exploring each world one at a time (which I recommend), watching and reading everything.
About the storyline, the game starts with a video that was, I have to admit, kind of confusing on the first view. Watching it again later while knowing more about the game world helped.
The story takes place in a parallel world of our solar system.
You play as an astronaut who is equipped with a (super-) suit that can be controlled by a (very knowledgeable) AI named MAIDEN. A database storing all informations about the storyline and the game world, as well as a system producing blue energy (some new energy discovered after the events that occured in ASA) are integrated in the suit. This blue matter system can be used to create a shield to protect you, increase your strength, or simply emit blue energy particles to interact with objects made of dark matter. It can be recharged using blue matter wells located a bit everywhere or by playing some minigames (one located in your database and one that is found later in one of the worlds).
As part of an exploration team of planet Catyph and its moons, you travel and land by yourself on the 6th moon of Catyph where an alien construction with a huge black cube has been sighted. Approching the cube, you accidently activate a mine field surrounding it. Protected by the shield of your suit, you find yourself projected towards the cube which then teleports both of you on the 5th moon of Catyph, Tytaah, using a technology, you learned later, called the Kunci. There, you discover more alien constructions and start to investigate. After fixing a teleporter, you will be tasked to collect black dices in order to save your own planet Terra. To do this, you will have to explore the 6 differents continents (worlds) of Tytaah.
The storyline is very rich with a lot of details, but might be somewhat technically too complex for some people.
But contrary to ASA where we had to use a lot of the astronaut diary content to solve puzzles, the disappointing part here was that most of the reading content is useless to play the game. I think only three puzzles use some little information from the database. So I would say that the database is mostly destined to people who like reading and are curious to learn more about the black cube series world.
To continue the comparison to ASA, Catyph offers better graphics and a greatly improved AI. In ASA, the AI made me feel like a small kid. In Catyph, it made me feel like a scientist, telling me all kind of scientific informations about the environment. I found that kind of cool.
I would recommend playing the previous opus ASA first. Puzzles are mostly easier and it starts as a good introduction to the black cube serie and helps understand Catyph storyline better as it refers a lot to facts and characters previously introduced in ASA.
In all, I found that Catyph was an amazing game, all the more impressive as it was achieved by only one person. There are sadly so few challenging puzzle games nowadays that it really was a pleasure to play this game.
So big thanks to the developper to have brought us such a wonderful game. I am looking forward to the next opus!
tl;dr
Like Myst, but without any world to explore. 5/10
Ps & Cs
+ Competent graphics
+ Voice acting has much improved over ASA
+ Streams beautifully
- Very little exploration
- TERRIBLE video communications followed by encyclopedia dump
- Puzzles do not at all feel natural to the world
- Bizarre mini-game for blue things that don't appear to do much
Nitty Gritty
This wasn't the game for me. You're dropped into a world with nearly no branching paths and asked to solve puzzles that don't at all feel natural to the environment. You get some box that I don't understand, which I guess is part of your suit's augmented power? You also find these little blue orbs that don't appear to do anything. But you can play a terrible little game-and-watch game if you want more blue things. The little animated transitions between scenes were nice and a good improvement. However, 5 minutes in, you're given a video communication from a 1980's Saturday morning cartoon Army Sargent complete with cigar discussing who cares. It sets the tone for a game that is trying to emulate the quiet seriousness of Myst, without any of the insight into what makes Myst interesting. 5/10
I really enjoyed this classic point-and-click game. Although it's a sequel, I don't think you need to have played ASA before this, although it certainly wouldn't hurt. The storyline is very good, with a great deal of well-conceived background, and the game's flow fits the story well. The puzzles fit nicely into the overall story; the majority are challenging, with some really tricky ones, which makes solving them particularly satisfying (although I did have to get help on occasions!). In-game help is available in easy mode and a walkthrough is now available, so there's the option of that for people who want to play in the harder modes. The artwork is great and there are some very lovely mini movies, especially at the start and end of the game. As others have said, overall it's very Myst-like, but to me that's a real compliment.
The game ran well; I had no problems with any of the features. Save worked fine and the game autosaves regularly. I did hit a problem when I missed something in one of the regions which prevented me from seeing one of the game endings. However, the developer was great and very procactive, and helped me figure it out. Having just completed that ending, I'm glad he did! I think the developer's estimated 15 hours of gameplay is a bit short if you're going to try and crack the puzzles without help (but I may just be slower than most!).
Overall, if you want huge 3D graphics, timed puzzles and/or things to fight with/kill/run away from, and hate reading, then you'd probably want to look elsewhere (although you'd be missing out!). But if you want the satisfaction of figuring out tricky puzzles within very nicely rendered environments following a detailed and interesting storyline, and especially if you're a lover of classic Myst-style games, I'd certainly recommend Catyph.
So, I haven't finished playing the game yet, but, I'll still make a review.
The game has its pros and cons but the ingenuity of the puzzles makes up for what it's lacking.
The graphics are correct, the foreground/helmet effects look cool.
The voice acting is really good.
Story is interesting with a lot of background and depth.
I would say, if you love Myst, you'll love this game.
Another good thing is the lack of a walkthrough, making me try harder than usual and far more rewarding :)
I enjoyed this game, but I must admit I had to use the help now and again,'normal mode'.The logic circuits in my brain seem to be working fine but my observational skills are nil.
You need both to get through this game without any help.
This is a good game and has kept me interested and determined to finish it, which I have done!
The different area's you visit are visually good and have to be investigated.
I am looking forward to the next installment.
Игры похожие на Catyph: The Kunci Experiment
Дополнительная информация
| Разработчик | Simon Says: Play! |
| Платформы | Windows |
| Ограничение возраста | Нет |
| Дата релиза | 22.01.2025 |
| Отзывы пользователей | 57% положительных (14) |