PANIK plops you on a field filled with people who are quivering with shaky nerves and needing your help to chill out.
PANIK looks very simple on the outside – the levels themselves are small and have a very limited field you are moving about on. In these levels, you have a character with a crown and characters without crowns. The crowned character is often your ‘main’ character, which is the one you are going to be moving around the most. When selecting this character, you can see how many moves you can make through a number above their head and you can see where they walk through the highlighted tiles.
The other characters on the screen might be in a state of panic, which can be shown through their shaking and sweat dripping off their body. You will need to move the crown character or a non-freaking out character to them, so that they can then move. This is how the puzzles are played in PANIK.
Your end goal is to get a character on all of the checkered spaces so that the next level can appear. It’s something that often looks easy, but with the limited number of moves and characters that are just refusing to budge until someone can come make them feel better, there is a lot of thinking and planning to do with each puzzle.
PANIK has a lot of polish and juice for a simple-looking game. The way the characters shake, the confetti at the end of the levels, and the little bit of captivating narration from the developer throughout the game adds a lot of polish! I got to play a small demo at Indie Dev Day, which I quite enjoyed.
PANIK is currently in development, but in the meantime, you can add it to your Steam Wishlist.