Quick Review: See No Evil

I don’t recommend playing this one with your eyes closed.

Good work, you called the monster humans
towards your position!

Developed by Gabriel Priske, published by Noetic and released on August 26th, 2014, See No Evil takes place in a world where mankind has willingly chosen to abandon the sense of sight to rely on everything else instead. Those who open their eyes are called Seers and are hunted down. After seeing a dead Seer fall through his roof, a Seer child ventures out into the wild to solve that mystery, in spite of the almost cult-like devotion the rest of mankind has gained for keeping the world in darkness. …And this, in spite of all the obvious and blatant issues it causes to them and society at large!

Crate-pulling, crate-pushing action!

But like many puzzle games out there, the plot is mostly an excuse. In this game, enemies hear your footsteps (denoted by a circle around your steps on the floor), so you have to be careful where you walk. If you are spotted, you’ll be chased. And of course, per puzzle game tradition, the kid is slow like a snail. You have to play around the enemies’ senses. Not just hearing, though; if you step in garbage, they’ll spot your odor, and you’ll have to walk in a puddle of water to remove the smell.

Is sound supposed to travel like this?
I doubt it, but hey, puzzle game logic.

Some puzzles involve dispersing the dark fog
by lighting up some glowbugs.

Seer has a second ability: He can scream. He can use that to make his presence known to enemies in order to lure them in a corner and trap them. He can also use this to startle old grandpas sitting their asses on pressure plates so they’ll activate said plates – with some later puzzles all about redirecting the sound with horns to gain the desired effect. And yes, like I mentioned, pressure plates are a thing here, and they’re usually needed to make precise colored walls retract into the floor. Sometimes, you can also use a crate to either keep a plate activated, or to keep a wall section in the floor.

The flowers can also emit sound?
This is a damn weird world.

As is mandatory of a good puzzle game, new mechanics are slowly introduced to you and explained before you are taken into levels where they’re involved with increasing difficulty. As an example, later, deadly cannons with laser sights are thrown into the mix.

If they're now literally shooting at the people
who decide to use their eyesight, something's
seriously wrong and freaky with that world.

Props to this one, it uses a lot of interesting elements. It tries new things and that’s pretty cool. The graphics are nice and the music, if I can call it that, is mostly ambiance. And the puzzles can be challenging at times, especially when they start to combine multiple elements from past levels (although, admittedly, that recipe is standard of most puzzle games on Steam). You catch bits and pieces of a story as you venture through this dark world, and can learn what happened to that dead Seer. Although it might be that I’ve played so many of them, I wasn’t wowed by this one as much as I thought I’d be, but I do think it’s a clever game overall.

If you want to try it, See No Evil is on Steam for 0.99$ USD.