Linked Review (PC): A lacking and limited Casual Puzzle game

Linked is a fairly simple and short puzzle game from ThinkOfGames, and it’s also the subject of this particular review, so let’s get right on to talking about it already.

Linked is described by developer ThinkOfGames as a relaxing, minimalistic 2-d puzzle game.

Linked – The review of a casual puzzler

Linked is, as you might expect from that line up above, not the most complex game. As a matter of fact, the gameplay is really simple. Even more simple than another puzzle game I reviewed recently, Islanders.

Unlike Islanders, Simplicity seems to have been a core focus on the overall product here, as opposed to a byproduct of design choices. Linked relies on puzzles consisting of boxes, through which you must draw lines. Not many concepts get simpler than that, really. So where’s the difficulty to it, you may wonder?

You have to assemble a set number of pieces per level to succeed – for example, the image below requires me to create two lines of two boxes, and another consisting of three boxes. Very simple stuff, but it does have a goal in mind. This is a very early level though.

Moving on from the early levels, we have somewhat more complex ones, with more boxes in a more unusual layout with more targets to find – this is the entire game, really. You get 144 of these, 12 sets of 12 puzzles, consisting of boxes that must be aligned into certain preset length goals if you wish to proceed on to the next.

In summary, the sidebar will indicate that you can use a set number of lines of each length, and you have to get all boxes off the screen using those precise values – lines that are not part of the list, for example, a 4 combo when you have no 4 combo lines left available, will not complete.

Here meanwhile is one of the puzzles much later into the game, requiring combinations of various sizes to be used to solve. Fortunately all levels will allow you unlimited resets, so the game itself probably won’t take that long if you throw yourself into it, regardless.

Moving on from the gameplay, the game does have a fairly nice background track that suffers heavily from being far too loud, but unfortunately, the settings menu does not provide volume options, so an external control such as Windows volume mixer will have to be used to make it play at an acceptable level – your only other option is to mute it outright in-game settings, annoyingly.

The entire settings menu is quite barebones in a similar fashion, lacking what I would have considered fairly basic options. It doesn’t help that impression when I can fit all of the settings options into the one image shown below. Perhaps it is to be expected with such a simple game, though I would have liked to see more options available, customization settings or even basic volume and resolution adjustment ones, regardless.

The graphics aren’t anything to write home about, the backgrounds do look reasonably, though it’s more in the same way that wallpaper can be appealing, it functions well as a background that isn’t too distracting while looking vaguely appealing and does very little else, so there’s nothing special going on there. The previously mentioned boxes remain a consistent white throughout, as do your lines – a basic setting to adjust colours with hex code support or the like could have been nice if the game’s run time was a bit longer, but unfortunately clearing the entire experience as-is is a 1 to 2-hour effort, and then its back to the start with you, re-doing the same puzzles.

An endless mode or time attack with puzzles being generated at random would have done a lot for this game in my opinion, complete with some customisation and a more complete set of menu options to suit individual preferences – hell, even in-game volume adjustment would have been much appreciated. Those kinds of extra features would probably have boosted the score of this Linked review by at least a full point or two, but here we are, and the game is what it is.

If you’re looking for a quick puzzle game that’ll give you about an hour or so of gameplay, you could probably do worse for £0.79. Outside of being cheaply priced, however, Linked does little to recommend itself.