Quick Review: DESORDRE

Not sure how this is supposed to help with orientation and balance disorders, but I’ll give it a go anyway.

GERONIMOOOOO

Made by the sole developer of SHK Interactive, DESORDRE (also often subtitled “A Puzzle Game Adventure”) is a puzzle game in which you are in a simulation created by a group known as Plegus Therapy to treat the issues mentioned above. You’re put through 16 puzzles of increasing difficulty in which you’ll be using several puzzle mechanics made famous by other staples of the genre on Steam.

The first major mechanic at use here is a portal gun with white and red portals summoned with the Left- and Right-click buttons respectively. This comes with the caveat that you can only make them on black-and-white checkered spaces, limiting where you can make them. Just like in Portal, you can use momentum to let yourself fall into a portal and be sent flying through another.

Currently, time is slowed. We'll need it in order to cross
this chasm; we also need to switch dimensions to get
platforms we can jump to.

The second mechanic is the ability to switch between dimensions by pressing E. A level can be radically different between dimensions, forcing you into minimal platforming. As you can imagine, you can use portals to carry something from one dimension to another, such as a cube that’s necessary to trigger a pressure pad.

The third mechanic is slowing down time by pressing Q, which is great if you need to readjust your portals while in midair. It also slows time down significantly, so you can jump in place, activate it, swap dimensions to see what’s on the other side (platform? Or instant death?) and return to safety.

More mechanics are added, as opening the doors to later puzzles gets increasingly complicated, often requiring the use of lasers redirected through both special cubes AND portals to power up switches.

Call it a hunch, but I don't think this simulation is
actually about orientation and balance disorders...

Mix all these together, and... “mind-bending” doesn’t even begin to describe it. If you can move past the derivative impression you may get from this Greatest Hits of Steam’s best puzzle games, you’ll find levels that utilize every single mechanic to its fullest, forcing you to think in five dimensions. You’ll feel especially smart anytime you figure out the correct solution.

These puzzles are topped by a final one that serves as the ending. Plot remains minimal, with the focus being almost entirely on gameplay (barring some implications with the figures on both sides of the field, which remain unexplained).

Quite a few of the last puzzles involve
high-flying escapades, courtesy of momentum.

A few downsides: Although you can press tab to highlight zones of importance (read: The exit and any checkered areas) so you know where they are, sometimes they’re in places where you won’t think to look, like on the ceiling. Many times, I got stuck solely because I didn’t know about a checkered space that was necessary to beat the current puzzle. Leading into my second issue, where the game will offer to let you skip a level you’re struggling with if you spend too long on it. That’s nice, but I think I would have preferred if there was instead a hints system that could help with getting started in some levels, especially since later ones include checkered areas that aren’t useful for solving the puzzle and exist to misdirect the player.

Nope, not high enough. Same in the red dimension.
Looks like I'm gonna need a sequence of portals taking
me higher each time.

As a result, this might feel more like a tech demo, or a test game from someone working on something greater. If this is what they can achieve now, I eagerly await what SHK Interactive will do next. Sure, it’s a bit of a mix and match of well-known puzzles, but the result works well and is decently challenging.

DÉSORDRE is available on Steam currently for 6.99$ USD.