Room Escape Artist

Her Trees: Puzzle Dream is a point-and-click puzzle game created by Stone.

Format

Style of Play:

• Point-and-click
• Abstract visual puzzles

Who is it For?

• Puzzle lovers
• Scenery snobs

Required Equipment: computer that meets the system requirements; Steam Deck verified

Recommended Team Size: 1

Play Time: About 2 hours

Price: $3.99

Booking: purchase and play at your leisure

Description

Her Trees: Puzzle Dream is an abstract puzzle game. Players first find puzzles by examining the various items in the grayscale room they find themselves in. Puzzles typically follow a similar pattern throughout the game: pieces are dragged around the screen in order to manipulate the on-screen images. The proper manipulation will reveal a correct letter or number pattern, which players enter in order to progress.

Jayna (Jay) Shea’s Reaction

Her Trees: Puzzle Dreams is ethereal and almost haunting in its format. The monochromatic setting allows the puzzles to shine in their simplicity. All the puzzles include dragging at least one item across the screen, and while sometimes I knew immediately what needed to happen, other times I found myself slowly moving pieces across the screen waiting for my brain to catch up. Solutions magically revealed themselves as components came together, and this made it very clear what the answers were, once found. Unfortunately, this means there is often little to grasp onto if you cannot visually connect how everything needs to be manipulated, but don’t fear! A hinting mechanism is available to help, and this often consists of a screenshot pointing out a particular area of the screen. After that, you can reveal the full solution if needed. In all, if you enjoy visual manipulation puzzles, questioning what is or is not negative space, or feel like following a feline into dark corners, this is your game.

Joel Smileypeacefun’s Reaction

In a dream-like scenario, objects might hide more than what first meets the eye. By shifting your perspective, you can uncover hidden messages.

At its best, all the puzzles in this game are satisfying when solved because of how visual they are. The distinctive art style baked into how you solve what’s in front of you makes up the key focus of Her Trees: Puzzle Dream. The progress bar (which isn’t really a bar) is beautiful and gives everything a clear structure.

At its worst, there weren’t really any surprises baked into the gameplay. The type of challenges lacked variety (although I’m pretty sure that’s on purpose), which made this feel like playing storyless separate levels instead of a well-flowing integrated adventure. At least one puzzle had some misleading red herrings, and the final brain teaser was cute but very underwhelming.

For the low price, this is a nice way to kill some time and have some lovely aha-moments. However, while it starts off great, it can lose its momentum towards the end.

Theresa W’s Reaction

Her Trees: Puzzle Dream is an abstract puzzle game designed around the same input mechanism being used in 40+ vastly different ways. While it took a little bit to on-ramp to the gameplay, Her Trees did a fantastic job guiding players to the solution with minimal but helpful cluing. The hints are delivered with progressive hints to put players on the right track. The final meta puzzle for the game was rewarding, cumulating in a heartfelt ending. With a stunning art style integrated deep into the puzzle design, Her Trees is absolutely worth trying! Be sure to view the credits when you’re done with the game – there are even more puzzles!