What would you expect to find when you show up at an apartment building after being told that your friend has somehow gotten lost inside their own room? A narrative puzzle game packed with twists and turns, of course! That’s essentially the premise of Looking For Fael, a game that drops you into its strange world with little more than a “good luck, have fun” before leaving you to figure things out for yourself. So, how does it stack up against other puzzle games?

Leave your name, coward!

When I think of puzzle games that teach you their mechanics naturally through gameplay rather than relying on tutorials, I think of something like Portal. There’s a gradual increase in difficulty that establishes the rules and gives you a good idea of how you’re expected to approach each challenge. Looking For Fael does no such thing.

Even the very first puzzle could take someone quite a while to figure out, simply because there’s no real explanation of what kind of puzzles you’re dealing with. I love being tested, but solving this one requires connecting a note on a table with a card on the fridge, doing some math, leaving the apartment, and then entering the result into a keypad in the lobby. None of this is particularly obvious, especially when there are cables running throughout the apartment and boxes scattered around, some of which can be opened while others can’t. There’s a fine line between challenging the player and simply leaving them confused.

This movie sucks, turn on something else.

I can’t argue that the puzzles aren’t clever, though. Don’t get me wrong there. Sometimes they might even be a little too clever for their own good, such as the projector puzzle in the makeshift movie theater you’ll encounter as the story progresses.

The main idea is that the rooms themselves begin to change as you advance through the story, and suddenly it makes a lot more sense how your friend managed to get lost inside an apartment. You’ll eventually play a Tetris adjacent puzzle that allows you to transform rooms and continue progressing. A perfectly ordinary apartment can become something resembling an overgrown environment straight out of The Last of Us, before later transforming into the aforementioned movie theater. Each version has its own distinct visual identity, which is especially helpful when you’re constantly bouncing between different puzzles. It makes keeping track of where you are and what you’re currently trying to accomplish considerably easier.

The weirdest game of Tetris you’ll likely ever play.

Visually, I don’t have many issues with Looking For Fael, but there was one graphical problem that kept throwing me off. When you get close enough to something you can interact with, the game typically highlights it with a yellow outline. This includes doors, which is where things can get a little confusing.

In a game that already gives you very little indication of how its puzzles are supposed to work, even a small visual glitch can send you completely down the wrong path. At times, these yellow outlines were visible through walls, and since I had no idea what I was supposed to do next, I naturally assumed I’d discovered some kind of hidden door that would help me progress. Alas, there was no secret passage waiting for me. Just a graphical glitch and several more minutes of me wandering around trying to figure out what on earth I was supposed to be doing.

I enjoyed the voice acting in Looking For Fael, and I thought the characters were portrayed well. The atmospheric sound design, however, felt a little lacking, especially for a game that’s supposed to feel so mystical and fantastical. Most of the time, you’ll hear little more than running water and your own footsteps. There’s nothing wrong with being able to hear yourself think, but sometimes a little extra ambience can go a long way.

I was really trying to figure out if this line indicated something you could interact with. Turns out it was a door through the wall..

Overall, Looking For Fael is an interesting puzzle game that perhaps needed a little more direction. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a difficult puzzle game that puts your brain to work. It’s probably good for you, after all. However, establishing some early benchmarks for how its puzzles work would help prevent players from becoming frustrated and potentially walking away before seeing the story through. There’s plenty here worth experiencing, but the game could have done a better job of helping players understand its language before expecting them to become fluent in it.

Looking For Fael is available now on Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch 2.

A copy of Looking For Fael was provided by the publisher.