A fine puzzler. Sometimes unintuitive, but even I got through relatively unscathed so it can't be that bad.

I initially wanted to talk about the wishy-washy story, but now I'm not so sure. When is a world merely underexplained, and when does it invite the player to kit it out? It reminds me of Bastion's non-recurring ending: a venture into the unknown out of a mystical contraption, few characters and hints at something bigger. In Ina's case, I think they're trying to get on a more abstract plane too quickly while skipping over what's happening concretely. It's obviously not trying to be a huge worldbuilding effort, and in the scope of a nebulous Architect building a semi-living tower it does well enough, but I still cannot grasp what the purpose of it is. You get all the different puzzle pieces throughout and it's not like they don't fit together, but they're so far apart that you can't begin to tell where they do fit. But it might just be all preference.

At least it does have a relatively upbeat ending, which I appreciate.

Reviewed on Nov 18, 2023


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