imprint-X

Something I’ve always enjoyed about the indie scene is how simple ideas and mechanics are expanded upon to create great games. If you look you begin to see it everywhere: Papers Please, The Stanley Parable, Towerfall: Ascension, Nidhogg all have one core mechanic and iterate on them, creating some of the strongest games in their respective genres. So it is with imprint-X, a puzzle game based entirely around clicking buttons - and it’s so good.

- Adam Wilkin

imprint-X opens with a hand drawn, 1990s adventure game looking cutscene that shows an artefact buried deep within the Earth coming to life and releasing lots of small alien creatures. I love this aesthetic when it’s done well, and imprint-X does it really well: there’s enough detail and animation to make the images look really good. Adding to this is the fantastic techno soundtrack that loops throughout. I’m a sucker for a good techno soundtrack, but this really is good.

The gameplay concept sounds really simple, but developer Morgondag take it to logical but unexpected extremes. Each puzzle consists of pushing buttons in the correct order to unlock the nanotechnological devices in six different people. These start simply enough with buttons activating other buttons, and progress to timed memory puzzles and spatial awareness problems.