Alice Mystery Garden

Cool little game. Great to put a headset on your moms head and watch her smile.

6/10 - good

About 2 hrs to finish.
cute visuals, easy going
17, easy short, puzzles.

the simple VR mechanics works well
Quest 2 & 3 with VD Streamer.

I completed it in under 2 hours. Was a very fun puzzle plat-former. Definitely didn't overstay its welcome. Would play through again. Very cutesy. Only issue I had was not having a steam menu. 100% would recommend this cheap gem.

Not a bad little game at all, this is a puzzle-platformer where you have to manipulate different parts of the level with your hands while also controlling the character's movement to get through. Controls are a bit too sensitive and finnicky and there's no in-game customization that I could see. You can get through all levels once in a couple of hours or less, but it's enjoyable still.

For the 5EUR asking price it's worth picking up if it sounds at all interesting.

Technical issues with VR presentation. I wanted to enjoy a cute little puzzle game, and I do like Alice in Wonderland themed stuff, but this is just unacceptable.

There are three main issues that you will immediately face as soon as you launch the game:
1) The world scale is way off, and in an inconsistent way. Some things are huge and way too close, most things are incredibly tiny and hard to see.
2) The resolution is fixed at the Vive's internal resolution. While fine for Vive, this does not match other headset and looks extremely blurry and pixelated.
3) Audio only plays if the window is focused - and it does not focus itself. This means that you have to manually refocus the window any time it looses focus, and if you know what it's like to use VR, you know that you'll have over half a dozen windows that all want to be on top.

More issues will arise as you play:
4) There are no settings. At all.
5) The bindings are exclusively for Vive, and it relies on Steam Input for compatibility. This should be fine, except it's not. The controls are clunky and unintuitive. This reeks of very early VR.
6) The game does not respond well to any attempts to change things like resolution, world scale, or input on the user side. Any changes you make might work briefly but will probably break as soon as you load the next level.

Overall, I really wish I could enjoy the game, but it's simply inaccessible in its current state, and is not worth it for any price.

Nice Visual, Less motion sick.
Must buy if you are up for some solving puzzles while not preferred to be hectic like other games.
Good to chill.

TL;DR: Short and sweet. Totally worth the price.

This is a very cute platformer puzzle clearly inspired by Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker. The twist being that instead of using gestures or touching the screen to make thing move or rotate, you have to do these things yourself.

In each level you have to explore and make your way to get 5 crystals and then reach the exit with blocks. Sadly there's no secrets to collect. With only 16 levels (not including the tutorial) it feels a bit short, but for puzzle games like these that's better than being too long and repeating the puzzles too much.

The music could be better and the camera controls are a bit awkward, however the game is very fun and is worth buying at full price.

Played with HTC Vive Pro/Wireless/Index controllers/RTX2060super

This is the type of game that works very well in VR.
It looks very cute, it plays very well, the puzzles aren't too difficult.

There were only a couple of things that could have been improved.
The first person view should be controlled just like you control Alice, so moving should around should be using the joystick, not only forward/backward.
And once you've been in first person view, a lot of times there will be small white arrows which would direct you where the 'map' is, but even if you're looking directly at the map it still shows the arrows like it's somewhere else.
And it would benefit from some graphics settings, as it seems as it was in a lower resolution then my headset is capable of (but it still looked pretty good). Personally I don't really dabble with the SteamVR settings, as it should be ingame.

I bought it on sale at 3,29 euro's in october 2021, and I think it's well worth the price. Even at full price I think the 4,99 euro's it's now is a good price.

Hope we'll see more from this developer.

Awesome Puzzle game. If you like puzzle games that are fun and not complex, this is for you. I get too frustrated by puzzle games that get so complicated so quickly. This is not that, and the price is more than right. Nice job here, Dev's!

Cute vr platformer from a different time of vr, we've grown a lot in vr but this is still very much worth playing.

The platformer gameplay is rather unique and has mechanics which has you interact with the enviroment and rotate around it like games like fez or captain toad. This works really well for immersion. It's a cute world with some fun levels.

The bad parts however, like I said it's an older title and we're learned a lot. Some drawbacks:
Can't change resolution so you're stuck with a aliased game.
In first person mode there's no smooth rotating(this is a small thing but still worth mentioning)
The first person parts with the torch mechanic feels a bit.. meaningless.

Overall this is a fun proof of concept game that proved how well platforming can work in vr, and how creative you can get with level mechanics. I recommend getting this on sale.

Cute, short, and priced right. The soundtrack is really obnoxious and there are some handles in the later levels that are kind of hard to grip, but otherwise nothing to complain about. Five dollars for two hours of charming entertainment is a better deal than going to most movies.

~OVERALL RATING~
65%

~ SUMMARY ~
This is a cute little 90m puzzle game where you can switch dynamically between 1st and 3rd person perspectives. It actually makes for a really refined experience, as you can zoom out the pivot the maze around, and when you need to see inside the structure or do something requiring finesse, you can switch to 1st person.

~ DIFFICULTY ~

🔲 My 90 year old grandma could play it
🔲 Easy
✅ Normal
🔲 Hard
🔲 Dark Souls

~ GRAPHICS ~

🔲 MS Paint
🔲 Bad
🔲 Meh
🔲 Graphics don't matter in this game
✅ Good
🔲 Beautiful
🔲 Masterpiece

~ MUSIC ~

🔲 Bad
✅ Not special
🔲 Good
🔲 Beautiful

~ STORY ~

✅ This game has no story
🔲 Like playing Angry Birds for the story
🔲 It's there for the people who want it
🔲 Well written
🔲 Epic story
🔲 Imagine Kingdom Hearts but on crack

~ PRICE ~

🔲 Free
🔲 Underpriced
✅ Perfect Price
🔲 Could be cheaper
🔲 Overpriced
🔲 Complete waste of money

~ REQUIREMENTS ~

🔲 You can run it on a microwave
✅ Average
🔲 High end
🔲 Supercomputer

~ LENGTH ~

✅ Very Short (0 - 2 hours)
🔲 Short (2 - 15 hours)
🔲 Average (15-50 hours)
🔲 Long (50-90 hours)
🔲 Extremely long (90-110 hours)
🔲 No ending

~ FUN ~

🔲 I'd rather watch paint dry
🔲 Hard to enjoy
🔲 Repetitive
✅ Actually pretty amusing
🔲 The kind of fun you'll remember
🔲 Ride of your life

~ REPLAYABILITY~

✅ It's a one-time experience
🔲 Only for achievements
🔲 If you wait a few months/years
🔲 Definitely
🔲 Infinitely replayable

~ WORTH BUYING ~

🔲 No
🔲 Wait for sale
✅ Yes

This is a puzzle game where you guide Alice to collect shards of mirrors in small levels by moving blocks around for her to step on. The models are really cute. The music's fairly awful. My biggest reason for dropping this is for missing something really obvious; you can rotate the level in front of you to get a better view, but the background should stay static when you do. When you rotate the little platform, the entire world rotates with you, which is unnecessarily nausiating.

Outside of some performance issues and silly ways to cheese the puzzles, I had a wonderful time with this game, was a joy to watch & poke Alice & the puzzles respected the player, if not were a bit easy.

Loved the little things you could mess with in the environment, it's not all entirely interactive or has to do with the puzzle at hand, but they're nice little touches.

I physically bowed every time she did when I completed a stage, was a nice treat to see a more detailed model of her, I wish they allowed you to interact with her in the stage clear scene somehow. Regardless If you have a headset and 5$ to spare then I wholly recommend this little game.

Still wish I could headpat her though.

Just moments ago, I had the distinct pleasure to complete Alice Mystery Garden (AMG), and with few exceptions, had an exceptional VR experience. While the future may be filled with compliments such as “makes outstanding use of the VR medium” to describe games making the transition from “good VR game” to simply “good game that happens to be VR”, AMG will likely be a game that can proudly wear this badge for quite a long time yet.

Alice Mystery Garden touts itself as a puzzle game, and it is….sort of. I’d be more tempted to label it “games using simple puzzles to explore just how comfortable and fun VR can be.” As might be expected, AMG starts really sweet and cute, then goes progressively darker and darker. From flowers in gardens to skeletons in cemeteries in fewer steps than one might expect. Still, no deaths, and falls are slow and graceful.

What makes AG really special in this reviewer’s opinion is two strong features. One, each individual game field/scenario, be it a garden, castle or candy forest, can be manipulated perhaps more conveniently than I’ve seen previously in VR. Yes, a simple joystick movement will rotate, raise or lower the game. But if a player needs faster or grander movement, simply GRAB the game with both hands and place it exactly where and how you want it to go! And considering how large some of the game fields are, this is a very handy feature.

And best of all isn’t simply that the game is made up of seventeen beautifully crafted and colorful scenes/levels, but that with the touch of a button, the player is no longer observing from any and all top-down directions; the player suddenly IS Alice, within the game and seeing every flower and bone in glorious detail. And while going into “Alice” mode can be fun, having the choice has another vital function. In top-down mode the player is basically in god-mode, with the ability to move blocks crucial to reaching certain levels, or grab handles to allow sections of the game to be raised or lowered. And going “Alice” may be necessary to make that crucial (but risky) step with the necessary precision, it’s is absolutely essential to be able to navigate dungeons, and other areas of the game field that are below ground level.

The objective of each of AMG’s seventeen levels is to obtain all broken mirror pieces to be able to use the repaired mirror to travel to the next level. Who can play it? Anyone, at any age able to operate VR. I found it to be a fine and entertaining way to perform the very game actions that I only dreamed of when I first started playing text games in the mid ‘80s. AMG would have been the absolute answer to my game prayers. And while I may have played AMG more slowly than some, I would still estimate a game time of four to five hours. I I were asked to recommend a very good first VR game, this might just be that special first game.

LIMITATIONS ASPECTS

Any area large enough to sit is all that’s needed to play AMG. There are no sudden or repetitive movements, and neck, back and shoulder are protected from stress during the game. The only complaint I might express is that the developers might have placed more emphasis on the manner of presenting “tiny Alice”, as the movement in miniature mode tended to make me feel nausea, especially in the levels where being launched is a feature. (But to emphasize, this only occurred in my experience while miniaturized. So unless one is on a ladder, miniaturization can be switched off with a single button.)

Thank you to players for reading, and developers for creating such wonder.

A nice Captain Toad-like game but with VR mechanics. Level design is quite good. Looks nice and plays well. I like the miniature style. A cool puzzle game.

Short, cheap, casual, cute and polished...

There was SO many ways to do this wrong... but no, they got everything just right, to keep things fun and entertaining throughout.

It does have two critical flaws :
- SPOILER ALERT : You never get to pat a real life sized Alice, not even as an end game reward.
- It has an end.

If you finished Alice Mystery Garden, you can try checking out these other VR games :
http://store.steampowered.com/app/680400/Light_Tracer/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/378750/Sayonara_Umihara_Kawase/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/331460/Rooms_The_Unsolvable_Puzzle/

I really shouldn't complain about a game that cost me €3,29, but it is far from the experience it could be (though, if it was, I'd even pay a lot more for it just like some of the other reviewers).

Since the game is new, I hope to give constructive feedback and I'd love to change my review as soon as the game gets more refined with a patch, because it deserves better than what it is right now.

So let's start with the good things:

1. It's a puzzle game really complimented by VR. Of course the gameplay could still be accomplished without virtual reality (And you all know the game that comes to mind here, right?), but it's just more fun the way it is.
2. The game is very cute and has those little details that make it a nice experience.
3. The music suits the game very well and does add to the experience.
4. It's almost an instant buy for the low price it asks.
5. You can switch to a first person mode that allows you to take over Alice and view the levels more closely.

So, why again am I giving this a negative feedback?

1. The first person controls are way too slow to be enjoyable. Sadly, I haven't found any settings to increase the walking speed while in first person mode. Personally, I'd prefer to play in this mode if at least there'd be a way to get Alice running in first person. Tried all the buttons available, but didn't succeed, so I guess it's impossible as of now.
2. As beautiful as the graphics are, the game has game-breaking framerate issues. I had to turn down my superscaling settings to 1.0 and still had occasional framedrops that got me motion sick after half an hour of playing the game. I'd expect to get better results with an i7 6700, a GTX 1080Ti and 16GB of RAM, especially from a mere puzzle game. Pretty much all other VR games run fine with supersampling settings of 2.0 or more on my rig, so my guess is that this is due to bad optimization. I really hope that this will be addressed in a future update. I'd also like to point towards my girlfriend, that is a die-hard fan of Alice in Wonderland. I partly bought this game, because I'm sure, she would love playing it, but I know I wouldn't expose her to potential motion sickness due to lag.
3. Again, for the price I shouldn't be complaining, but this is one of the rare occasions where I'd like to pay more to get more content. I hope that DLC will be made and that this game turns out to be a must-have for VR gamers, because it definitely has the potential (as long as the other issues stated above are addressed as well, of course).


So, that being said I will watch this game regularly and hope that it will get some love by the developers.

I intitially bought it because it seemed absolutely adorable.
I was not disappointed. Every time I clear a stage I just want to walk over to Alice and headpat her.

The puzzles themselves are usually fairly easy (so far, I haven't beaten it yet) but it's still fun to help tiny, adorabe Alice get around the map safely.

The only downside is that the game appears to be very short, but for 3,29€, I can't really complain considering it's very well made and just absolutely adorable.


PS: Devs, please let me pet Alice. Plz.

What a cute game! I said "D'aw!" out loud quite a few times. I'm already about halfway through, it's a very short game, but there's a high level of polish and it's all well put together, so if you can find this on sale, it's well worth your time to try it.

I will mention that I do have a problem, at least on the Vive: controlling Alice can be a little bit slippery when in third person, and too slow in first person

Apart from that, this is a very short, cute, well polished game and I had a lot of fun with it so far.

I'm a sucker for anything related to Alice in Wonderland so I'm loving this. It's cheap, Alice is adorable and the puzzles are pretty decent. You can't go wrong. It works well in VR as long as you don't mind the teeny tiny models. I also like the little interactive bits on each stage like being able to put out candles or smash statues with your hands. These aren't puzzle elements but just little extras.

A few things I would change so far would be:

1) It's kinda choppy on my [email protected]/1070. It's not bad enough to be nausea inducing but it shouldn't be choppy at all considering the scenes aren't complex.

2) Give names to each level. Each puzzle has a nice Wonderland theme to it so names would give a little bit more flavor to them.

3) During the "Stage Clear" scene when you're Alice-sized, it would be great to be able to walk up to Alice. Headpats would be the perfect reward for completing the puzzles.

Overall, a great little puzzle game for a good price.