The Entropy Centre

Entropy Center is the first game from the British development team Stubby Games that introduces us to the idea of ​​controlling time to solve puzzles and takes clear inspiration from the famous Portal games in its art direction and some general elements of the experience The game’s story puts you in the role of Aria, who wakes up in a space facility called “The Entropy Center”, a facility that… Your workers solve puzzles to generate energy that is used to charge a special device that… Time restored to the planet Earth in the event it experiences a catastrophic event that results in its destruction. Aria finds the facility deserted and loses her memory, but fortunately she finds the talking weapon Astra, who informs her that Earth is facing a new cataclysmic event. He begins by helping her uncover the secrets to restoring the Earth and discovering what happened at the facility in the process.

Gameplay and Story

The story in genre games is usually just an excuse for what happens when it exists, but Entropy Center surprises you over time with a series of developments and details that make the events in the story interesting to watch Ability to scan for computers that are silent I’m working on reading messages between co-workers before they disappear. To give a better idea of ​​what happened in the past, the masterful voice acting resulted in spontaneous interactions between Aria and Astra in a beautiful and entertaining way that serves the story and the development of the relationship between the two characters. Astra’s comments are robotic and rigid about completing the work, but the other comments have a kind of naivety and rudeness to them that causes her to have very funny moments.

Visuals and Gameplay Mechanics

The gaming experience is simple in its elements. You rely primarily on your weapon to control the crates, the weight of which can be used to activate elements of the surrounding environment, such as doors and the like, while also presenting a diverse number of crates, etc. other environmental elements with special properties , such as boxes that allow you to jump and others that create a bridge of light and start the game. Introducing these boxes and items little by little as you progress through the stages maintains a sort of diversity in the nature of the puzzles and their solutions.

Puzzle Solving and Difficulty

The basic concept relied on when solving puzzles is to understand the steps that lead to solving the puzzle and then apply them in a military manner, as one benefits from a box in activating many elements of the environment and therefore must place them This box must be placed in the right places and at the right times in a time window of 39 seconds or less, as the weapon will no longer be able to rewind time. There is also the option to reset the counter for each edited box to ensure the correct time is available.

Level Design and Challenges

The game offers plenty of entertaining puzzles with a series of beautifully designed levels that provide a satisfying challenge, but its main flaw is that it doesn’t break a certain difficulty barrier. The idea of ​​the game is based on recurring elements of the environment. Time is a simple idea that can be understood within the first hours of the experience, and then the challenge is solved. The puzzles range in level of complexity and the steps you need to take to solve the puzzles, but the level of complexity stops increasing in the second half of the experience, and while a number of good puzzles were presented in this half, the gradualness was missing of the challenge that we felt in the first half and the second half presented some of the puzzles that were considered very easy, especially in the final part where we expected a series of difficult puzzles.

Escape and Visuals

To break the routine and not go straight from one puzzle to the next, the game offers a series of parts in which you can escape after a technical malfunction or an explosion in the facility. This part is based on the idea of ​​jumping between platforms more than just solving puzzles, and there can be very simple puzzles at times, and you will also face… A number of robots have experienced a technical malfunction and you use your weapon to destroy these robots with their own missiles and get them back to their source in time.

Visuals and Technical Issues

On the visual level, the game offers an artistic approach very close to Portal, with a good graphical level, and on the audio level there are a series of melodies in the background that serve their purpose without standing out. The game generally does not suffer from significant technical problems, except for the fact that on rare occasions the elements of the environment interfere with each other. This occurs when you carry and transport an item and you can simply turn back time to solve this problem. There is an annoying bug in the game related to the jumping part between platforms, as the controls are not precise enough and the camera is not suitable for this part and in many cases you may not be able to jump from a special box for jumping because camera , which forces you to rearrange all the elements again to solve the puzzle.

Conclusion

We completed the experiment in about 10 hours, and there’s no real value in replaying the experience unless you want to read all the messages from the facility’s staff. The Entropy Center offers some new ideas in addition to its clear inspiration from Portal. The game may not offer the level of difficulty that fans of it are looking for. This is a kind of experiment, but thanks to the variety of puzzle elements and the exciting story full of spontaneous interactions and the path between Aria and Astra.