Vanessa Saint-Pierre Delacroix Review

By Dave Flodine, on January 31, 2012

Publisher: Replay Games, Inc.
Genre: Puzzle
Released: 26 Dec, 2011
Size: 16.6 MB
Price: $0.99

PROS

A great setup of the main character and her plight in the intro.
Physics box rotating puzzle pandemonium.
The game title certainly invites further investigation.

CONS

The music may not be to everyone's tastes, and to those who enjoy it, there are too few tracks.
With the story and music, more could have been done with the visuals to round out the atmosphere.
Controls can be unresponsive.

VERDICT

An intriguing name, an intriguing setup, and an intriguing approach to a puzzle game. While it feels that the presentation and controls could have warranted more attention, this will provide some amusement to puzzle fans.

Full Review
App Store Info

Vanessa Saint-Pierre Delacroix and her nightmare. Man that's a mouthful isn't it? Still, a title like that certainly breeds curiosity. While the game itself may not be what one expects from the title, the tone certainly is. In a very well told intro we learn that Vanessa is a brainy puzzle loving young girl who feels ostracized from her peers at the schoolyard. One day a strange puzzle box that she acquired from her father's antiquities shop breaks and sucks the entire town inside it. Now it's up to Vanessa to rescue her classmates and find a way out.

The game is certainly a bit of a mind bender, at least initially. The levels are a cube, that you travel across side by side. The side you're inhabiting can be rotated clockwise or counter-clockwise, and this opens up pathways to other sides of the cube. Initially just the exit needs to be found (along with the special coin in each level if you so desire), but the game starts becoming more complex with locked door requiring keys and blocks er... blocking the way until they can be rotated and dropped into a switch mechanism. Each level has a time and a number of turns that if the level is completed within those parameters., you are given a greater score on completion, but this is only for those looking to perfect their playthrough (as the thirty-six currently available levels won't take puzzle aficionados too long to complete) .

As you're making your way through this cubist nightmare, you will most certainly notice the piercing soundtrack consisting of remixed, almost metal instrumental versions of classical pieces you most certainly will have heard before. These renditions might be too sharp for everybody's taste, but they do indeed lend to the atmosphere of the game. It's just a shame that there are only three tracks endlessly repeating.

Vanessa's nightmare is a puzzle game with a great idea, and a good sense of the tone it wishes to convey. The visuals could have accentuated this a little more (outside of the intro), but puzzle fans should find themselves a momentary distraction with this title, at least until new content is released.

Screenshots