Explore Stories Through Puzzles Within Pictures in ‘Photographs’

Photographs is a lovely, well-made game that sees you exploring 5 different stories through puzzling pictures that you need to solve.

These stories are told through photographs that have been taken of the moment, with the main character talking about the image. These images aren’t the easiest to get and discover. You are given a title of what you need to take a picture of, and you’ll need to explore the scene in front of you to figure out what you need to capture in your lens. Once you have taken the picture, you then enter a puzzle. The main characters become tokens in the puzzle, which all depend on what story you are trying to solve.

The first stage within the preview of Photographs that I got to play was a slider-based puzzle. You needed to slide the various characters to their own outline, clicking them into place. Once all of the characters were in place, you could move onto the captivating story. 

At the beginning of each story, these slider puzzles are quite easy, but as the plot gets more complex, so do the puzzles. Suddenly, mud stops the characters, gates only allow movement one way, and bushes grow, trapping your character if you’re not too careful. Things continue to grow more complex after that, as the story of a diver takes you on a whole new journey in another area, adding more puzzle elements. Instead of sliding your characters around a screen, you need to move platforms around to bounce a ball into the water in order to progress the story.

The entire time you are solving these puzzles, you’re waiting to hear what happens next in these captivating stories. It’s this compelling mixture of complex puzzles and interesting stories that makes Photographs such an appealing game.

Photographs is a truly wonderful experience packed with so many different puzzle mechanics, personal stories, and brilliant visuals – and it’s only the demo that I have played. I am honestly looking forward for the full game to release, which should be in the next few months.

Photographs is coming to Steam, iOS, and Android later this year, but you can currently sign up for their newsletter on their website.

About The Author

Jupiter Hadley

Jupiter is a prolific indie game journalist, writing for Metro UK, Big Boss Battle, AlphaBetaGamer, and many more, all with a focus on smaller indie gems. She covers thousands of game jams and indie games on her YouTube channel, letting every game have a moment in the spotlight. She runs indiegamejams.com, a calendar of all of the game jams going on in the world, judges many jams and events.

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