Seek Etyliv

This is a small and cute little game that I do not recommend.
The puzzles themselves are fine even great sometimes.
There’s even a lil story which is really neat. The visuals are cute too.

The issue rises with the game-play loop. With limited elements to the puzzles and the size of the puzzles being 3 by 3, there can only be so many solutions meaning you will do the same puzzles over and over again.
Its too short and too repetitive.
A shame really.

Simple yet good game. Interesting atmosphere, has some sort of mysterious feeling in it. Recommend it!

Unfortunately, like others said, it's just a bit too basic and repetitive. Even when the puzzle stumps you, it's only for a minute at most. And it doesn't feel very satisfying to figure out the answer.

A neat minimalist game, the main draw being the aesthetic.
I'm not much into poetry and the puzzles were on the easy side, however it was nice playing outside on my steamdeck.

Simple but deep in mechanics, short so it doesn't overstay its welcome - this is a great, small, puzzle game.

It isn't bad, but only ~32 levels taking place on a 3x3 grid. I enjoyed it, but there just wasn't much to justify the purchase for me in the long run. It works well within the minimalist format and the little bits of story were somewhat interesting, but I really felt like I was searching for things to do and not finding much else before even 1.5 hours passed (I even got a little stuck on a couple of puzzles...).
Most of the gameplay comes from a roguelike dungeon using the same puzzles you played in the main mode, which you had to do to unlock the roguelike mode anyway. The puzzles can rotate to be less recognizable at a glance, but there isn't really any new content to be found there (in my experience at least).
I would wait for a decent sized sale given the number of puzzles available, in the end it comes down to what your money is worth to you.

I was really impressed by how much this game managed to do with so little. The sprites are tiny, the boards are only 3x3, there are only 2 types of enemies, and yet, there were a lot of interesting puzzles and interactions in the first two acts.

However, the rest of the game's offerings are very different. The dungeon-crawling aspect initially appealed to me since it forces you to have a better understanding of the mechanics, rather than just brute-forcing every puzzle. But then, when I started seeing exact copies of puzzles that I recognized from the main acts, it wrapped back around to feeling like brute force.

I feel like the idea could have worked a lot better if there was something that the dungeon-crawling section offered that the main game didn't. Maybe larger boards, but the same types of enemy interactions, just built up into a larger situation that you have to get a read on, rather than eventually being forced to memorize all of the puzzles in the pool? The game definitely has potential, I just feel like the dungeon-crawling aspect wasn't the right direction, at least it wasn't for me.

Fantastic and well worth the price tag, holding out for a sequel!

A poem told through small puzzles, Seek Etyliv is a short but well executed puzzler. The game works on 3x3 movement puzzles with little room for error, but makes it easy to get back to where you were. It's fun for a playthrough or to come back to after quite awhile, but eventually starts to suffer from repetition due to the limitations of a 3x3 grid. Seek Etyliv introduces new rules to its base gameplay consistently enough to keep things interesting, but cannot help but become tedious after a playthrough. If you're looking for replayability this game doesn't offer much, but otherwise is a good dungeon to crawl through for the price.

You'll get through all the puzzles in about an hour. After that, you'll unlock the ""roguelike"" mode, which has you solve a random set of puzzles (among those you've already solved) in a row, without failing. As you do that, you unlock different icons -- but nothing else. The icons just act like badges, and, as far as I could tell, don't affect the gameplay at all.

At this point, the game just becomes about repetition and perfection. All you've left to do is to solve the same puzzles over and over again, perhaps trying to get a perfect solution -- just not my thing, really. And the main problem is there's just not that many puzzles: you'll start remembering them by heart soon enough. There's only so much you can do with a 3x3 grid.

There's nothing inherently -bad- about this game, I just wouldn't recommend spending £5 on it. I mean, sure, it's not a lot of money, but there are MANY free flash puzzle games out there that I've found to be much more challenging and enjoyable.

Cool game to spend little time sessions on. Still getting rekt in dungeon mode all the time and I have no clue on how to get all the characters but yeah, if you have some 10 to 20 minutes you want to spend rushing puzzles, this is actually pretty cool :D

[Edited] I usually like minimalist puzzlers, but I found the gameplay here a bit repetitive--there is only so much you can do in a 3x3 grid. I also wasn't impressed by the poetry, though that may just be me... the main issue, I think, is that the story is easy to lose track of when interrupted by a puzzle every line or two, especially since the connection between the story and puzzles was minimal. It might have worked a bit better if the lines were displayed simultaniously with the puzzles, instead of being something to click through to get to the gameplay.
That being said, the minimalist asthetic was quite nice, and the puzzles were very good considering how restrictive the design was. I initially quit after act one when perma-death started, but that segment is actually pleasantly short, as the dev said below.

I think overall, it is a solid, short puzzle game, with a nice aesthetic, but with gimmicks covering for lack of originality... the puzzles here are really quite similar to what has been done before, making the "discovery" of the mechanisms unexciting, compared to other puzzlers like Snakebird, Pipe Push Paradise, or The Witness. In short, it is exactly as advertised, but sadly nothing more.

What a wonderful little puzzle game disguised as a dungeon crawler this is. Who would have thought you could get so much gameplay and puzzly goodness out of a 3x3 grid.

Basically, the game is made up of a series of 3x3 rooms, with a very few different types of monsters, chests, items and pits to make up the puzzle aspect. The first part of the game is a sequential set of levels that you have to complete in order. After that, you get into the dungeon aspect of the game, which isn't really a dungeon crawler except for the room by room navigation. In this portion of the game, you have to beat levels without dying at all, and find the stairs to the next dungeon level. After you complete two dungeon levels, you win! Easy peasy! Not! Some of the levels are very devious.

I got my first complete victory at four hours. Much of that time was banging my head against the wall trying to figure out the boards.

The poem aspect of the game was nonsense to me. I read it all, but it's just some weird story that makes no sense to me. And, what's up with us only being to give ourselves a two letter name? You'll see when you get into the game. So, that part was Very bizarre and incomprehensible.

But, no matter. The puzzles are wonderful, and the progression works very well. The game is pretty short, but there are a LOT of "characters" that you can unlock by doing various things in the game, like throwing 50 monsters in the pit, etc. Stuff like that. The characters don't affect gameplay, they just change your player icon as you navigate the dungeon. But, they are still pretty neat, and each one adds to the "story" with a few more lines of prose.

So, there you go. A small game with a small price, but with a big barrel of puzzling fun!

Jake and Elwood highly recommend this game!

Seek Etyliv is a fantastic little dungeon puzzler where the content is bigger than what the packaging suggests. Now you won't likely get more than a weekend out of this, but if you try to unlock all the characters and achievement hunt - you will have some quality gaming hours in front of you. People that enjoy Slayaway would dig this one.

Pros:
+The story does a great job of walking you through the mechanics while gradually adding layers of complexity
+The artwork and UI are clean and functional
+Controller support is nice
+There are lots of cool display options (ie. scanlines and such)
+There are a ton of characters to unlock through completing various tasks

Meh:
=Now I liked the idea of a poem puzzler, but the actual poetry and story could have been better in my humble opinion

Cons:
-I had to complete the storyline before I was given an option to increase zoom; now I hear that this was a problem on my end, but I did try to push 'escape' and no menu came up

Well worth the small asking price.

peeks at hours played and messages begging me to stop

Okay ... it's about time I tell you exactly what you're getting here beyond the minimalistic puzzle dungeon crawling poem reader described on the store page. (that stuff is all pretty on point)

You are getting a game with roughly 60 individual puzzles using around 10 different mechanics.

Among them:

• a clever set of rules for movement, pushing and smashing
  
• skeleton and zombie enemies with differing behaviour
  
• termporary and permanent pickups that can be used by you and enemies
  
[*]hazards (pits and spikes)

Both are a little difficult to pin an exact number on. Puzzles, because there are plenty simple transitionary ones in the story (they are excellent for teaching you) and rotated or mirrored variants (that make a difference for the solution). Mechanics because you may view them more or less fine grained.

All of that is presented to you in two story acts and a dungeon crawler mode, which have to be unlocked in sequence.

The story acts alternate narrative with puzzles, gradually introducing you to all mechanics. You can fail puzzles here as often as you like and immediately try them again without punishment.

After clearing the first act you'll get a small teaser of the dungeon mode. It creates a random set of puzzles using the mechanics you've just learned. Failing a puzzle here will require you to start over.

Act two changes the appearence of the game, the way your character moves and introduces the remaining mechanics. Once again interlaced with narrative and instant retry should you fail a puzzle.

The complete dungeon then has two floors, the first using puzzles from act one and the second from act two. It picks from a pool of 30 to 40 puzzles in total.

Entering the dungeon always asks you for a name and a character icon first. If you complete the dungeon, an icon with that name will be added to the graveyard. If you fail or end a run prematurely, an unmarked tombstone will be added to the graveyard. This way the game records all of your runs.

The icons are the steam achievements and their unlock requirements range from very simple (such as completing the dungeon once) over quite difficult (completing the dungeon with all perfect puzzles) to pretty meta (messing with a game file).

The name length is initially limited to just 2 characters, increases the more runs you complete and can be used to enter passcodes.

I'd say a first play through (unlocking and completing the dungeon), while still learning the mechanics, takes about an hour (much more or less depending on how smart or sloppy you are).

Learning how to perfect all the puzzles and figuring out all the unlocks takes a whole lot longer. My first attempt at doing a full 100% run in one go already knowing about it all took a bit under two hours, which involves a whole lot of puzzle repetition (running the dungeon 10+ times).

So how did I rack up that many hours?

Well, first you can probably slice that in half since at times it was just idling. But there is more to it:

Rokas has managed to create something that is the equivalent of a Rubik's Cube to me. It just feels good to solve it despite already knowing all the algorithms.

Last but not least, controls and options.

The game has no customisable controls. But with WASD, arrow keys and stick or d-pad of any controller I've tried you should be covered.

Most of the game is just navigated and played with these directions. Opening the menu works with one of the various back buttons (B/Esc/backspace) and selecting things or getting a detailed view of an enemy with the confirm buttons (A/enter/space).

The game auto saves, so you can continue playing where you left off in the story or dungeon (you may get a death quitting inside a dungeon puzzle though).

There are plenty of video options. Fullscreen/windowed, a plethora of scaling levels and most pominently the option to usa a CRT filter. It has a hand full of presets (with a funny over the top "Indie" option), but the custom one is where you can make the game shine for you (setting curvature, line density/shift/strength/lightness, brightness, chromatic aberration distance/strength).

You also get to adjust the audio volume, play the game in English or Lithuanian and use written or instant text for the narration.

Testing if anything happens at 10 (non-key) reviews.

But, hey, it's a good puzzle game with solid mechanics. About an hour long for the campaign followed by 2-6 hours to unlock all the secrets. Puzzles have a chess-like quality to them, since you're predicting what will happen on future turns under the strict ruleset.

Tight, focused puzzle experience with a surprising depth. The poems are also really nice! Definitely worth a try if you're a fan of games like Into The Breach or Stephen's Sausage Roll (though it's not quite as hyperdifficult as SSR).

Interesting little puzzle dungeon crawler.
At first it just seemed like a scripted series of puzzles with snippets of story to go with it. But as I finished the two acts it became a challenging rogue like dungeoncrawler. Definitely unexpected, as I thought the game was over after the first 2 acts as it said end of story.

Bought this on a whim since the asthetics looked interesting. Since there's only a limited amount of puzzles, you're going to start seeing the same ones over and over on your way to a puzzle you haven't solved yet or failed solving earlier. Repetition and puzzles really don't mix.

Wow... impressive game. This is definitely one of the best short minimalist puzzle games I've played in a while. I like how the dungeon crawling elements mask how you'd typically see the puzzles in a game like this implemented (arbitrary shapes, gems, etc) to make it more interesting. The puzzles are fun to solve and aren't too difficult with some trickier ones scattered in there (so far at least after 30min or so), and it's neat how many concepts seem crammed into such a small grid. It's worth picking up.