Hourglass

With Portal getting a surprise release on the Switch, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we need more puzzle games with weighted companion cubes. Apparently, the people over at Secret Item Games heard my call, because here we have the brand-new console port of Hourglass, a Portal-esque puzzler set in the far-reaches of Egypt. And while it doesn’t have a psychotic computer taunting you the whole time, Hourglass does have a lot of clever challenges and a companion cube that is just as friendly as the one found in that other game. I sure hope you don’t mind me tracking sand all over the place, because this is my review of Hourglass.

This is the story of Aywa, the adventurous daughter of a famous archeologist who has gone missing after an expedition to Egypt. Fearing the worst, the young woman decides to trace her father’s footsteps in hopes of rescuing him, or, at the very least, find out what happened. This leads her to an isolated part of the desert far away from anything resembling modern civilization. It’s here where she discovers a series of ancient pyramids with powers and technology far more advanced than anything she could have possibly imagined.

Instead of finding portals, Aywa discovers a mysterious doorway that takes her into a different dimension where everything has a blueish tint. What we quickly realize is that this door is actually recording your movements for a few seconds, something that it will play back for you once it’s done recording. This will prove handy in a lot of ways, especially when you need to have a second pair of hands moving weighted companion cubes or opening up doors. This is incredibly useful, but it’s also limited, giving our hero only a few seconds to record and playback the scene before it disappears for good.

The puzzles built around these doorways start out simple enough, having you carry a cube here or record yourself standing over there. You’ll run into a lot of situations where our hero will need to perfectly time a recording, that way there’s enough time to run to a platform or pick something up. Of course, like any good puzzle game, these challenges become a lot more complicated and ambitious, eventually sending you into larger puzzles where you’ll need to overcome a series of problems in order to pick up the item that you’re after.

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What’s cool is how the game adds to this formula from one pyramid to the next. After learning the basics of the otherworldly door, you’ll pick up an hourglass that will allow our hero to record at the push of a button. This opens up the puzzles in big ways, as will the introduction of portal pads you can manually place around the levels. You’ll start to look at the space around you differently, forcing the young adventurer to use her newfound powers in a lot of unique ways that aren’t always obvious at first.

What I really like about Hourglass is that it never throws you in the deep end, instead choosing to ramp up the difficulty slowly and fairly. The levels are split up into a series of pyramids, but even before we get there, we’re introduced to a new power and then shown how it works through multiple puzzles. It’s these paths to the pyramids that will get you acquainted with the types of puzzles you can expect to see, which helps out a lot when you finally get to the main course. Inside the pyramids are five elaborate puzzles, each with multiple parts that will put your mind (and reflexed) to the test. This challenges you just enough to make sure you have fully wrapped your head around the newfound powers and then moves on, giving us a tightly-paced adventure that doesn’t overstay its welcome.

As a puzzle game, Hourglass is great. Even at its most difficult, I don’t have too many problems with the way the puzzles are laid out. However, the game falls short of Portal and its clones in one important way – the story. Most of the plot points happen late in the game, after you’ve spent several hours doing little more than solving puzzles. It’s not that I necessarily needed a rogue A.I. taunting me the whole time, but it would have been nice to see some of the story beats and cool discoveries sprinkled into the earlier parts of the game. As it is, the game waits until the final act to overload you with story, and that strategy just ends up overwhelming what had been a simple adventure up until that point. The game would have benefited from having somebody on the phone with Aywa, or maybe the adventurer simply talking to herself. It takes so long for the story to get started that I found it a big jarring and out of place, even though I do feel that Hourglass has a satisfying ending.

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It's also worth noting that the gameplay is sluggish and not as responsive as other Portal-style games. Getting around is easy enough, but little things, like picking up and placing the weighted companion cube, don’t always work like they are supposed to. There were dozens of times when I only had a few seconds to pick up the cube and place it before my recording stopped, yet couldn’t do it because I fumbled with picking up the cube. This is especially annoying because once that recording has run its course, you have to go back and re-record the actions all over again. Messing up a puzzle because of the often sluggish and unforgiving gameplay is frustrating and absolutely no fun.

What this game excels at are the puzzles, which are constantly clever and evolving. These challenges are every bit as fun as what we get in Portal, and I especially love the Egyptian setting filled with vibrant colors and interesting architecture. However, Hourglass simply isn’t as memorable as other similar puzzlers, if only because it waits too long to form any kind of unique personality. Even though it covers some familiar ground and the gameplay could use a little tightening, this is an easy game to recommend because the puzzles are so much fun. It’s not on the same level as Portal, but Hourglass still delivers when it counts.