Puzzle games can often frustrate me because they are designed with a single solution in mind. It's easy to concoct some obscure answer to a problem that makes sense in my head, but in reality it won't make sense to most people. Making problems that have a breadth of different solutions allows for the game itself to progress faster but at the same time incentivizes improvement. That's why Molek-Syntez hits all the right buttons for me. It's one of those programming games which has a complex system with open-ended problems. It's not to difficult to brute force solutions with enough instructions, but the real reward is finding the optimal solution. Much like programming in real life, efficiency is key, and the game even shows you a bell curve of solutions which always intrigued my curiosity (i.e. how the fuck did they do in that few cycles I need to figure this out for myself). I remember a few levels into the game I had really bad results and the levels were getting quite tough. Out of curiosity I decided to google what one of these pristine solutions looked like and I realized you could configure the starting position of the little modules that shoot out hydrogen. I was so excited to apply this new technique that I replayed older levels with the challenge of getting the best possible answer. The point is that the mechanics themselves are intuitive and fun to play around with, and every time you pick up new techniques and algorithms you can go back and apply them to get better solutions. This, in turn, adds something that is rare to find in most puzzle games: replayability. You can spend hours tinkering away to shave cycles off your solution, or you can just go start to finish without worrying too much about efficiency. Worth mentioning the atmosphere of the game (I'm referring mainly to the sound effects and ambience) really compliments the experience of playing. The sound effects for right and wrong answers became like dopamine receptors/inhibitors, and the game itself has this isolated feeling to it, which makes it easy to get immersed in the work. Also their version of solitaire is quite good.

The underlying gameplay is Severed Steel is incredibly strong. The movement options are great, the shooting is punchy, and it never got boring through the kinetic albeit brief campaign. I'm fine with the length because any longer would either get too difficult or start to lose its enjoyment. The difficulty is all about slo-motion and ammo management. When you're shooting bad guys in the head in slo-mo it's some of the most satisfying gameplay you can imagine (especially when you're sliding, diving, wall-running at the same time), but the second you run out of slo-mo or ammo you're basically dead. The guns are borderline unsuable in normal speed, but thankfully the movement helps in getting away. You also get an arm cannon early on which helps to counter certain enemy types, provide some much needed backup shots, and there's some fun interactions to be had with the environment. Most levels are pretty fun and well-designed although they're quite samey (either shoot this, kill everyone, etc.), and I did get tilted quite a few times (probably my fault but there are some tricky moments where dying feels essential to understand the layout, similar to Hotline Miami or Superhot). There's one boss fight at the end, but it's nothing special. I know there's a level designer, but I think after 4 hours or so I'm ready to move on. Also the music is great overall, really fits well with the look of the game. There's some nitpicks I have (nothing dealbreaking), but a solid experience overall, even more so that Epic was giving this out for free. If you're paying, I'd say it's worth it if you like fast moving and slow shooting with a bit of challenge.