A fine puzzle game with a vibe that lands somewhere between Zelda and Portal. Though it doesn't quite live up to those ambitions, the puzzles are solid, the aesthetic is appealing, and the story is interesting.
Guayota is an indie puzzle game, the first release from Team Delusion. It began as a final project for a master’s degree in 2019, and after a long delay, the game is finally making its way to Microsoft Windows and Nintendo Switch. For this review, I played the game on Steam using an Xbox controller. (A controller is recommended for this game, and you’ll be prompted to plug one in when you start it up on a PC.)
When you start the game, you’ll be treated to a bit of backstory. You’re part of a Portuguese expedition to the Canary Islands tasked with locating Saint Brendan’s Island, a fabled land referred to as “paradise on Earth” that purportedly can only be found when you aren’t looking for it. You set yourself adrift and go to sleep, and later awaken on a beach. You find another member of your crew nearby who explains that you’ve made it to the island and must now explore each of three temples found on the island. You get a few clues right away that there’s something a bit off about this place, but that’s probably to be expected on a phantom island.
The introduction and overworld portion of the game aren’t particularly compelling. You will eventually come across a few more members of your crew, and you have a few dialogue options with them, but they’re not that interesting. The island is bare outside of the temples; the overworld seems to be there just to connect the three hubs, and hasn’t had much effort put into it. But it’s a forgivable oversight, allowing the developers to focus on the actual meat and potatoes of the game.
That meat and potatoes is inside the three temples, where you’ll find eight different rooms in each one. These rooms offer progressively more challenging puzzles, making up the core of the game. Each temple has its own theme and set of obstacles, and most rooms have two different variations that you must solve to mark the room as completed. The first version is completed in the “real world,” and offers deadly challenges that will deplete your 3 charges of health if not avoided. If you die, you’ll be transported to an alternate version of the room with a slightly altered layout. This second version of each puzzle does not have any of the deadly traps, but usually offers a more complex puzzle element.
The puzzles are very satisfying and offer a good mix of variety and challenge. The first couple of rooms in each temple are deceptively simple, teaching you the basic mechanics of that particular temple in the most straightforward way possible. The game offers just enough instruction so you know what button to press, but doesn’t hold your hand. There were a couple of places where I had to figure out how something worked on my own, but figuring those things out felt rewarding and not overly frustrating. The puzzles themselves were similarly stimulating; I found myself “aha”ing in victory whenever I figured out a particularly tricky one.
The “real world” levels are notably more difficult since you are punished for mistakes and only get three tries before you have to start over. Many of them require you to backtrack through obstacles more than once, which can lead to some frustration if you have difficulty with a particular trap. But I usually found that after a few unsuccessful attempts I was able to find a good rhythm to navigate the area, which gave me a good sense of progress as I mastered each level. My initial instinct was often to try to sprint through a set of traps as quickly as possible, but eventually I learned to exercise a little more patience and planning. Dash through one set of traps, and then wait a beat in the next safe spot for my dash to recharge. (There is a short cooldown on it, indicated by a small blue flame that lights up on your character – this took me a few levels to figure out, but I may have skipped that particular popup if it appeared.)
If you do fail the first version of a level, you must then complete the alternate version before you’ll be able to try the original again. That gives you a chance to see the layout in a more safe and straightforward capacity before adding the obstacles back in. The puzzles in these alternate reality rooms are a bit more complex, but without the traps you can focus exclusively on wrapping your brain around their patterns and execution.
Completing each puzzle rewards you with a peek at a stone mural, allowing you to piece together the mysteries of the island. The game’s namesake is the Gaunche deity of evil, and each of the three temples is dedicated to one of the other gods of the indigenous Canary Islanders. Some of the murals have been vandalized by other explorers who have been to the island before you, changing the images slightly so they depict similar scenes from the Book of Revelation.
The lore is interesting, and I enjoyed learning a bit about Guanche mythology. It’s always good to get away from the same old western myths, which have been rehashed to the point where any sense of discovery is lost in their telling. The elements of colonialism were compelling as well; I was offended to see that this culture’s heritage had been literally erased and rewritten by the newcomers. It added another dimension to the story and made me want to see where it was headed.
The style of the game is also well-executed, with beautiful cell-shaded textures and effective sounds and animations. Ultimately though, any puzzle game’s value is almost entirely in the quality of its level design, and that is where Guayota excels.
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Luxrah
I love RPGs, sandboxes, survival, and sim games. Anything that lets me build and decorate or just has a really good story. I've spent hundreds of hours in Bethesda games and even more time modding them. I also play a lot of World of Warcraft.
