Village Gamer

Developer: IonFX
Publisher: Meridian 4
Genre: Puzzle
Platform: Windows PC

Background: Based on IonFX’s award-winning mobile game of the same name, Obulis takes things to the next level by fusing highly compelling gameplay with outstanding graphics, music and state of the art physics effects.

I have had Obulis for a few weeks now, and while I generally try for a quick turn-around on game reviews, this one took me a bit longer than normal. The reason being was that I wasn’t sure if I liked the game and didn’t play very far into the game at first. I then set it aside for a few days, and as it turns out, there are some areas of the game-play which I truly liked, admittedly much to my surprise.  There were only two or three areas which I felt were negative, but they relate directly to my personal preferences – and as I advanced through the game, one of those negative issues became not so important anymore.
I do agree with the publishers – the artwork and the musical track are outstanding, and the game is very easy to learn. The developers were kind and offer the player solution assistance for a few levels. These can be a great learning tool, allowing the player to see how the cause and effect of physics is important to the game play as well as demonstrating that timing is also very important.

The map branches off, allowing the player to choose which way to travel through each world while still ultimately requiring each map to be completely solved. While playing through the game, the player is also on a quest to find map segments. As each set of segments is discovered, another area of the world map is unlocked.

Overall, I ended up enjoying Obulis. At first I found it slow-paced and unexciting, but I wanted to give the game a fair try, and as I played through the game (and I still have many levels to go before I complete the entire map), I found that the speed of play wasn’t important. Perhaps I play so many faster-paced games that I was missing the opportunity which comes with playing Obulis – the chance to sit back, relax, and spend some time puzzling out solutions.

In fact, the only option that I wish had been included in the game was the option to play in a smaller screen. As I stated earlier, this is a personal preference and doesn’t reflect on the game itself. The only other criticism I have of the game is that there are a few textual and grammatical errors in the game writing. Other than that, I think that I will be finding many more hours of puzzle-solving enjoyment with Obulis – even if some of the levels can be quite maddening – until you get the timing right.

Obulis is available for purchase on Steam and at TryMedia

System Requirements:

Windows 2000/XP/Vista
1 GHz Processor
128 MB RAM
DirectX compatible 128 MB graphics card
DirectX compatible audio card
50 MB of available hard disk space