Con poquísimos elementos (árboles cortos, largos, piedras, la forma de la isla y diría que ya está), monta una cantidad ingente de puzzles que no dejan de sorprender con nuevas mecánicas cuando ya pensabas que el juego había mostrado todas sus cartas.

Además hace varias cosas que me entusiasman: huir de los tutoriales y enseñarte mecánicas con puzzles que sirven para descubrirlas (hola The Witness), y que eso te permita volver a islas anteriores con nuevos ojos (hola Mario Oddisey). Eso sí, el mundo abierto me parece tan grande que me da flojera darle una segunda vuelta para sacar más secretos.

Todo esto está aliñado con un sentido del humor muy fino y una ambientación muy distendida. Ningún puzzle del "camino principal" es especialmente difícil (y tiene un sistema de pistas bastante bueno, te indica la solución final pero no te spoilea todo el proceso para llegar hasta ahí) y funciona perfecto en partidas cortas, así que es un juego ideal para descomprimir al final del día.

There was a long stretch of this game that was pure bliss. I didn't know my goal and I didn't care. I went from one island to the next solving every puzzle that came my way. I didn't worry about completionism– like finishing every island in a cluster before moving on– I just... roamed and enjoyed.

A Monster's Expedition is a puzzle game with a simple verbset and only a few ideas to work with, but part of the fun is discovering the details to these scarce gameplay objects, like how you can flip one log over another. It seems very inspired by Stephen's Sausage Roll, which is right up my alley.

I've not completed all the bonus puzzles so we'll see if my opinion on this game changes but it's an incredibly solid puzzle experience.

Really enjoyable puzzle game. It’s deceptively simple and you feel stupid when you figure out the solution.

I enjoyed the art-style and the little bits of lore scattered throughout the map. It made making progress so much more enjoyable.

I played on an IPad Pro and it was getting hot while playing the game. I experienced some lag here and there which was fixed from closing then re-opening the app. The game was also a battery drainer.

I had to retire the game 10 hrs in as I couldn’t work out any more puzzles. The game also got removed from Apple Arcade, so it’s left unfinished.

This is the kind of game that prevented me from playing other Apple Arcade games. It keeps your attention where you want to complete all the puzzles before thinking about something else. I’ve completed 594 out of 726 puzzles. There’s a reason for not going for 100%. The way the area is made (open world) is brilliant for puzzles, but also a real slog in terms of backtracking. Sometimes you have to bring logs from different islands, push logs from different angles, or bring them only after completing other steps on other islands. You can easily reach a point where you don’t remember how you reached a certain island and how to come back to finish a puzzle. This easily happens when the area looks like a maze and you’re just trying to retrace your steps. I would have far preferred having the freedom to teleport to every island after completing them instead of the transport points we have where they also cause backtracking. Other con is the hint system. The game didn’t have a hint system, so the current one got patched over time. It shows you the solution and where to go next if you haven’t reached the credits. I can’t imagine doing the game without those hints but what’s here is not enough sometimes. Showing a solution is showing the end destination, not the steps you took to get there. You can still get stuck with tough sections. And it’s kind of hard finding the solution online with the open world nature of the game. Still, the puzzles are fantastic. The game does a great job of teaching you new mechanics through playing. The game is very polished in every way. Play the game if you don’t mind the things I mentioned.