Room Escape Artist

Headlong Hunt is a sliding puzzle game.

Format

Style of Play:

• Play on-demand
• Point-and-click

Who is it For?

• Puzzle lovers
• Any experience level

Required Equipment: computer with internet connection

Recommended Team Size: 1

Play Time: 4+ hours

Price: $12

Booking: purchase and play at your leisure

Description

The player acts as an explorer trying to capture an animal that always runs away. You must use your knowledge of the animal and the features in your environment in order to trap the animal under the net each level.

Editor’s note: To play Headlong Hunt, you need a minimum of Windows 7+ operating system with 1 GB RAM and 200 MB available space. It is not available for Mac. Unfortunately, our third reviewer was unable to play because of the system requirements.

Joel Smileypeacefun Reaction

In this sliding puzzle game, we try to capture an orange creature who’s really shy and tries to hide from us.

At its best, it’s easy to get started. There’s no giant rulebook to begin with. Over a hundred levels (!) paired with a cool overworld map await you. The artwork is cutesy yet simple. And the game comes with a handy undo button, so you don’t need to start over with every single mistake.

At its worst, it’s cute, but cute is not mind-blowing. After about 30 levels the challenges started to feel redundant, even if new mechanics were introduced. Other games reuse components more effectively to create unique levels. Additionally, I wish a hint system was in place to point you in the right direction if needed. There is some lore of what’s going on but no overarching story.

It’s a game that you can casually play and then come back later, instead of a do-it-all-in-one-sitting type of challenge. As a disclaimer: I didn’t solve all the puzzles for this review. I spent about 4 hours in total and solved a bit more than half of them, but looked at all the levels briefly.

Theresa Piazza’s Reaction

Headlong Hunt is a puzzle-y video game about trapping a monster. The game does a nice job of adding new features to the environment, which both scales up difficulty and keeps the game interesting as you progress through the many levels. While playing, I couldn’t help but wish this was a mobile game, something I could take with me on the go and play for only a few minutes at a time, as even with the interesting new features, I got bored of the game sitting at my desktop computer. There’s no way to take hints, but unlike other games in this style, there is a setting to unlock all the levels. This is a welcome change, as it allows the player to keep going even if they’re stumped by the current available levels. For those folks who like Baba is You, or Patrick’s Parabox, you’ll likely enjoy this game too!

Disclosure: Headlong Hunt provided the Hivemind reviewers with a complimentary play.