Quick Review: ReThink

Now you’re thinking with colors.

Have fun seeing rays of colored lights everywhere.

Developed and published by Yaeko and released on March 8th, 2017, ReThink begins in the year 2275. In this far future, prisoners in government facilities can prove, at the end of their sentence, that they can be useful to society. They must therefore… not prove that they can be functional members of society again, or that they are no longer at risk of repeating what landed them in prison in the first place, or undergo any sort of official procedures… Nah, they only need to prove they can solve some puzzles involving cubes and colored lasers. That’s where you come in: It’s your turn to show that you can return to society.

Gee, let’s hope for the world of Earth Year 2275 that you’re not a murder-happy psychopath with an incredible talent for solving puzzles. I hope I’m not the only one seeing the flaw of that idea here? It doesn't sound right. Red flags all over.

Three lasers? That's nothing yet.

Puzzles on three levels? That's still easy.

On each level, there are cubes already in place emitting colored lasers. You are given a number of cubes that you can place around the level, on any of the set squares; these cubes will redirect the lasers in the direction you set them. The first levels are fairly standard, with one color that must be redirected at first, then two, then three, and you redirect the lasers to the corresponding colored goals. Eventually, the game starts to throw in color combinations that involve crossing lasers into a cube that will then emit the combined color (example, red and blue lasers to get purple). And all the way to brown and, even, white.

Now things get interesting.

Then the game throws in cubes that emit two diagonal lasers instead of one straight line. You need to take into account the directions taken by all the lasers. Still not difficult enough? Try cubes that emit three lasers of the same color… and, even further down the line, a cube that splits a white light into its three component color lights! I’ll be honest, after some time, I fared much better with trial-and-error than with any sort of plan. The first-person view does make it tricky, often forcing you to learn the exact layout of a room before you can think up a solution.

The game takes its core puzzle about as far as it could without making large changes to the gameplay, which is on par with what any good puzzle game ought to do. I don’t think the set-up story to justify the puzzles makes much sense, but it’s not really an issue. Though, to the game’s credit, apparently the game can end in more than one way…

My freedom better be worth all the effort
I've put into solving threse things.

There is an issue I had with the game: It’s very demanding, resource-wise. The game ran terribly unless I set all of the graphical options at the lowest settings. On higher graphical settings, I wouldn’t even see lasers beyond the first cube. In fact, even at the lowest settings, the lasers would sometimes fail to show beyond the first cube set in place, or fizzle out, or they’d disappear once I've walked too far away. Since the whole game involves lasers being redirected around, that’s a problem. I don’t know why a puzzle game requires this much processing power from a gaming computer.

Ooh, a prism! Suddenly, I can hear Dark Side of
the Moon in my head.

This is actually ReThink Reworked; the original ReThink can be accessed (as part of the package I got, at least), but even the devs from Yaeko don’t recommend it. I struggled to keep interest in this game, as I've played a lot of titles that felt very similar, but it's overall decent. If your computer can run it and you want a tough puzzle, you can get it on Steam for 9.99$. I went all the way to the end of the game, finishing the 38 puzzles, to see how it ended, but ultimately I'm feeling it's just okay. If you really want, you can try it out, and if you do end up enjoying it, this is a franchise with six more games to try out.