Reviews - honorless

Pleasant and transient, with a calming soundtrack. Much like the abstract visuals, its controls are simple and easy to understand. There is not much in the way of difficulty, what with infinite lives and checkpoints placed frequently within each short level. The plot details an origin myth that is completely G-rated and occasionally humorous.

Not to say it will put you to sleep, but I would liken this game to playing a bedtime story.

This is a competent puzzle game that unfortunately failed to move me. Visuals are nice and clean, though I suspect colorblind people might have a tough time.

I appreciated the fun, branching stage layout that allowed me to bounce around and skip ahead to tougher levels when I got bored. I wasn't so fond of how many solutions required you to break a loop—personal judgement, but it feels sloppy.

The generated music/sound is pleasant, but when you get down to brass tacks this is a game about guiding dots into goals. All you have to do is think about positioning reflectors, largely in advance. When you do need to place something at a particular time, it's not as if you have to be on-beat. So there's not actually much here for music/rhythm game enthusiasts. On the upside, that means anyone who is deaf/HoH can play Micron with ease.

There is a good concept here with a very low price point and a polished presentation. However, spending significant time with it reveals deep flaws.

The difficulty curve is bumpy while still remaining relatively shallow. There is a general trend upward as the matrix sizes increase, but levels with obvious patterns or lots of free spaces are scattered before and after ones that are more difficult. When a trivial level comes after a tougher one, the former comes off like uninteresting filler. This feeling is amplified by the sheer quantity of levels. A smaller selection of puzzles that graduate into real brain-twisters would have been more meaningful than over a hundred that...well, don't.

The audio never changes. The only visual variance comes in the colors of the ribbons. (I am not sure how well a colorblind person could play this game.) Coupled with the issues above, I found it difficult to maintain interest in Strata for more than a few levels at a time. This might be fine for a mobile game, but is unsatisfying on PC.

As a neutral note, all the trailers and screenshots say that there is a fifth set. Despite fully perfect-ranking sets one through four, I saw no sign of it.