Pneuma: Breath of Life

I first played this game when it was free with Xbox Live Gold sometime around 2016, and for years after playing it had very fond memories of it. I loved almost every aspect of the game: it's art style was gorgeous, it's puzzle mechanics stimulating, and it's premise a really rather enjoyable one. Had I reviewed this game then, or sometime in the four-ish years to follow, I would undoubtedly have given it a raving review.

But last year, in a spot of pandemic boredom (and having just played through it's successor, The Turing Test) I revisited Pneuma, and to sum it up briefly, I was...let down. For starters, the protagonist was far more annoying than I remembered him being - the "humor" felt very awkward and off-putting, and yet he just keeps talking. This is a problem, considering that him being the only character in the game means that narration is the only way the game's story can progress. He has to keep talking, but I don't want him to, because the things he says and the "jokes" he tells feel more weird than funny - and it isn't a little bit distracting from the game's actual focus, its puzzles.

On the subject of puzzles, I find it very hard to judge them in this position, given that most of my opinion of them now is based on a replay of the game, instead of when I encountered them for the first time. That said, I seem to recall that most of my time solving the puzzles my first time around wasn't spent trying to think up a logical solution to a problem so much as it was spent trying to figure out how the game actually worked. The puzzles are all in some way based around perspective - looking at (or not looking at) various objects to trigger certain actions that allow you to progress. This sounds interesting at first, but in practice it means that a lot of the puzzle solving is less about discovering a solution and more about getting the game's often-infuriating FOV to line up pixel-perfectly with where you want it to. I can figure out how I'm supposed to go about this very easily, and from there on 90% of the gameplay is getting the game to cooperate with me in solving it.

As with practically any puzzle game, there's also a handful of clunkers that are "solved" by just pressing a lot of buttons until something seems to do the trick - the sundial puzzle comes to mind here as an example. There's undoubtedly a rhyme or reason to how one solves it, but hell if I know what it is. A small handful of puzzles not making any sense and being arbitrarily harder than every other one is nothing unique to Pneuma, but it's annoying nonetheless.

One thing that did, at least in my mind, stand the test of time was the game's art style. It's colorful, bright, and consistent enough from chapter-to-chapter that moving through different environments as the story progresses feels really seamless. Maybe this is one of those things that will largely come down to personal taste, but to put it simply, I like the way it looks.

Then, at last, there's the ending, which is...fine. It uses a pretty predictable metaphor and its sole gameplay twist is relatively inconsequential and underexplored. You're supposed to feel sympathy for the protagonist in that moment, but as I mentioned earlier, he's very annoying, and in that moment I can't help but feel indifferent toward him.

Overall I think "fine" is actually a pretty good word to describe this game as a whole. It's perfectly functional, pretty to look at, and at times rather amusing, but as time goes on it becomes more frustrating than stimulating and lacks a good enough protagonist or driving story to make you want actively to complete it.