Meridian 157

Meridian 157 is a game broken up into four parts. The first (shorter) part is available for free so you can try it out and see if you like the style. The game is a point-and-click puzzle game with heavy emphasis on the puzzles. You are exploring a strange abandoned facility chock full of intrigue. It is located on a small island just off the coast of Alaska. What is going on there? It’s up to you to discover.

Find it on Steam.

In Meridian 157, you are David Zander, a forensic meteorologist that goes to investigate a strange anomaly on a strange island. There, you get drawn into a facility of the mysterious FLARE project. The deeper you go, the more strange things you discover. And the more strange puzzles you need to solve as well.

The puzzle design here is extremely game-y. Don’t try to reason it out in terms of real world logic. You got to use game logic. Why is one door locked with a key, another with a code that you randomly find on a lampshade, and another with information you find in the kitchen? Who knows. The game certainly makes no attempt to explain the design of the facility. It’s like someone is trying to access the morphogenetic field over there. (This is a joke referencing another game.)

I enjoy that kind of style, though. A lot of games work hard to make their puzzles a logical part of the world. This game does no such thing, so they can have fun with it. The game has a variety of puzzles to solve. Some are based on using the right inventory objects, others are about finding information. To help you out, you have a camera to take pictures of anything you might want to remember for later.

The game doesn’t have a way to highlight interactable locations on the screen, but overall, it is clear what is and isn’t something important. There isn’t too much need to go hunting for stuff as long as you’re kind of observant. The game does have a pretty good hint system for if you get stuck as well. I used it a few times on some of the tougher puzzles. Sometimes, it can be a challenge knowing if something is a puzzle you can figure out immediately or something you need further information to solve, but it is mostly clear.

The atmosphere of the game is faintly spooky and unsettling. You are on a completely abandoned island full of old structures and facilities. Some kind of disaster happened that caused everyone to evacuate, or did they? It is a good setting for all sorts of challenges.

The playtime of each chapter may be short, but that’s because the game has only about 4 minute total of cutscene and animations. There are also no animations when getting things or going from screen to screen. Everything is a quick fade in and out. The presentation may be simple, but the locations are detailed and interesting to look at.

There are some amateur-ish things to the game, though. For instance, the time where I needed to input something, the game was just using the operating system default input box. And whenever a pop-up message is needed, it also happens to be the operating system default. Overall, though, the atmosphere and tone remain strong.

If you want some solid puzzling, pointing, and clicking, Meridian 157 has it. Find it on Steam.