Game: ReThink: Evolved 6
Genre: Puzzle
System: Steam (Windows)
Developers | Publishers: Yaeko
Controller Support: Full
Price: US $9.99 | UK £8.50 | EU € 9,99
Release Date: December 12th, 2024
A review code was used, with many thanks to Yaeko.
ReThink: Evolved 6 is a puzzle game where you control beams of light to connect different colors to different boxes. This first-person-perspective puzzle will keep you thinking on your toes, presenting some deep challenges.
Feels Familiar, In a Good Way
If I had to place ReThink: Evolved 6 in a subgenre, I would say it is a Witness-like, Portal-like, or The Talos Principal-like game. It doesn’t have a story like those games do, but instead relies on the puzzles themselves to keep you invested.
The graphics of ReThink: Evolved 6 look great; it’s a beautiful game. While there is no story I can find, there is something really relaxing about the world you find yourself in. Maybe you are living in some kind of super-futuristic escape room where you aren’t timed, but you get to leave the creepy, backroom overtones of Portal and The Talos Principal at home. I was stunned to see that this is the sixth in a series of these games; how have I never heard of something that is so very much up my alley?
Unfortunately, I haven’t had the time to play the others, so let’s just talk about ReThink: Evolved 6 for now.
The Gameplay of ReThink: Evolved 6
As stated above, ReThink: Evolved 6 is a first-person puzzle game. You get a collection of boxes that can split lasers in a bunch of different ways. You have to point the right colors of lasers at the right boxes, so red needs to go to red boxes, blue to blue boxes, etc. Then, sometimes you have to mix light colors together to get some boxes to light up, like combining red and green light to get yellow.
I am someone who spent a long time in art school, so at first my brain was like “That’s not how that works,” because I always forget that light doesn’t mix like paint colors do. You have to mix red, green, and blue together to get white, and that sort of thing. It really stretches my brain to remember that I’m on a completely different color wheel than I am used to.
That being said, the puzzles are deeply challenging, interesting, and compelling. I think leaving out a story was actually a really good choice for ReThink: Evolved 6; I think it just would have gotten in the way of making an amazing puzzle game.
The Pros of ReThink: Evolved 6
This game has a lot to like about it. The soundtrack is pretty interesting; whatever you think it is going to be, that is not it. There is a lot of holy-sounding almost religious music in it, which makes it feel like you’re doing something a lot more epic than you actually are; it makes the pleasure centers of my brain light up like Christmas, and I can’t explain it. If the music was different, I’m not sure wins would hit as hard as they do.
I know a lot of people don’t like first-person perspective, but again, I think it was a good choice for ReThink: Evolved 6. It lets you ignore the fact that you are a person or robot or whatever inside this world, and it lets everything be about the puzzles instead. It gives you complete focus on what you are doing.
The puzzles are great too. I find myself spending a long time pondering over many of them, moving boxes around to try and make everything perfect. The developers introduce concepts slowly, allowing you to figure out each new thing before you have to start putting concepts together. It’s a tutorial without explicitly being a tutorial, which is one of my favorite ways to have things taught to me.
The Cons of ReThink: Evolved 6
I didn’t have any real issues with ReThink: Evolved 6; I didn’t experience any bugs or problems getting the puzzles to work. Things move a lot like you would expect them too. However, there are a couple of small things I would change.
The first is your ability to knock boxes out of the way with your feet. I spent the whole time feeling like a non-entity in a game that is so hyper-focused on puzzles that you have no body when you look down and no personality. So it was very, very jarring when I realized that I could kick boxes. I kind of thought I was a ghost or something, until I kicked a box and was immediately reminded of my own body.
I can’t tell you the number of times I was placing boxes just so in order to solve a puzzle, then I walked by a box too closely and kicked it across the room. It was a nightmare; it would be much better if you couldn’t kick them once they were down. It was kind of cute the first time I did it, but it quickly just got annoying.
The second issue I had with ReThink: Evolved 6 is that boxes are destroyed when they hit the barrier of the level, forcing you to restart the level. Are you seeing where this is going? I would almost have a puzzle perfect, I would walk by a box, kick it, and it would shatter, forcing me to start over. It wasn’t a big deal until you get into the puzzles with like eight or nine boxes to place, but it was still very annoying.
Not to mention that right-click also throws boxes across the room instead of just tossing them to one side. If the boxes bounced off the barrier instead, it would be a massive improvement.
Conclusion
Overall, I think ReThink: Evolved 6 is a really fun game with a lot of interesting puzzles. If you enjoy puzzle games with simple premises that get harder and harder as you progress, that give you a lot of challenge and no story to bog it down, you should love ReThink: Evolved 6. Even with its flaws, I think it’s an amazing example of a story-free puzzle game with interesting mechanics, beautiful graphics, and really great puzzles to solve.
Final Verdict: Two Thumbs Up:
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