When I first saw the trailer for The Entropy Centre, it looked as though it would be an interesting puzzle game that might have some difficult levels that would be reminiscent of the Portal games. After playing it for over three hours, I can clearly say that The Entropy Centre is the greatest puzzle adventure game since Portal 2! This doesn’t solely come from the difficult puzzles that are expected of games like this, but also from the storytelling that is both thrown at you and sprinkled in through in-game secrets.

On top of all of this, the game manages to find a way to constantly keep you on your toes as to what is fully happening, what has happened before, and what will happen when you reach the end of your journey in this mind-bending game. Now, before I end up gushing too much praise onto this game, let’s get into the details!

You start off in the game taking the role of Aria, an employee of The Entropy Centre who has no memory of what is going on and where everyone is. Shortly after waking up and exploring a bit of the facility, you come into contact with ASTRA, an AI-powered tool that allows you to pick up various projects and reverse time on objects. Aria and ASTRA have to work together in order to solve puzzles so that they can produce enough entropy energy in order to reverse the time on Earth to prevent a cataclysmic disaster. While doing this takes a great deal of brain power, it also becomes apparent that there is something else happening in the facility as various things begin to appear to you from afar.

The various aspects of the gameplay are similar to the story since they are slowly introduced over time. This allows there to be a quick mastery of basic gameplay mechanics, but also gives some room for the game to throw you a curveball in terms of difficulty early on. As you progress through the level, more elements get added to each puzzle and different types of obstacles are put in your way.

The ASTRA tool has the ability to pick things up and reverse time on various objects, all of which is vital to solving puzzles and surviving various challenges that will be thrown your way in between some of the puzzle rooms. There are secrets to be found throughout the game that can help you to better understand what is going on in the facility and the things that the facility attempts to remedy throughout its existence.

The one thing that truly stuck out to me was the bits of humor that are sprinkled throughout the game. The main focal point for a lot of the humor is the developing relationship between Aria and ASTRA. Most of this is in dialogue that happens to further progress the story, but a lot of it can be triggered by little things that you do.

There was one time where I dropped a cube on a jumping platform and ASTRA exclaimed “Yeet!” to the annoyance of Aria. However, there are also plenty of other strange bits of humor that can be found by exploring the map. Everything from a fanatical cat lover to a hoarder of beans that puzzle the center’s store operators, there are plenty of little oddities that the developers have put in to bring a bit of character to the otherwise bleak and blocky surroundings.

While they are very rare, the game does have a few bugs and strange things to it that made me laugh at certain points. The first bug that I ran into is when a door closed with my character in the middle of it. This caused me to be stuck and have absolutely no way of opening the door, so I had to restart that area. Another thing I noticed that was funny, although it wasn’t a bug, was the fact that Aria is deathly allergic to water. If you so much as touch any of the streams in the facility, then you will die and be reset to an earlier part of the stage. These things never ruined my experience but did tend to take me out of the immersion in a strange way.

Overall, I absolutely loved The Entropy Centre! As far as I can tell, this is the first game ever released by Stubby Games, and it is an excellent first step for the studio. It will be interesting to see what direction the studio will take in their next game, but for now, I will just encourage everyone to try out this game. The puzzles can trip you up from time to time, but overall it is an absolute joy to play. If you would like to read about other puzzle games, consider checking out Alexx Aplin’s article about Chessarama.

A PC Review Copy of The Entropy Centre was provided by PlayStack for this review.

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The Entropy Centre

24.99

9

Score

9.0/10

Pros

• Challenging Puzzles
• Great Story
• Good Banter Between Main Characters
• Friendly Learning Curve

Cons

• Some Bugs
• Some Quirky Decisions