Kenshō

I put Kenshō on expecting maybe twenty minutes of a palette cleanser, and somewhere around the third door I realised the light behind the puzzle board had changed colour, the music had shifted from piano to woodwind, and I hadn't moved from my chair in over an hour. That is the trick FIFTYTWO pull off here, and it is a good one. The core loop is a tile-sliding match-three: you drag coloured blocks across a small grid, match three or more in a line to clear them, and collect key fragments that unlock the ornate door to the next world. Eleven levels, each set in a distinct biome, lush jungle, stormy sea, ruined temple, and each carrying its own hand-composed track. The obstacles scale up as you progress, from stationary stones you route around in early stages to chasing drones, bordered key pieces that only accept matches from one direction, and tiles that randomly mutate their properties mid-board. That last wrinkle is where some players lose patience, and fairly so: when a tile changes colour just as you've arranged a perfect clearing, it feels less like a puzzle and more like improvisation. The composer, Oscar Rydelius, asks you at boot-up to use headphones, and he is not being precious about it. The forest stages pair woodwind melodies with rustling percussion; the ocean boards lean into organs, wind chimes, and flutes that genuinely evoke open water. Eleven original pieces, all performed on live instruments, violin, piano, harmonica, accordion, and the transitions between them are as carefully paced as a film score. I say this as someone who frequently plays puzzle games on mute: I left Kenshō's audio on for every session. That is unusual enough to be worth noting. The visual design operates at a similar register. The world between puzzles is a continuous, scrolling side-view environment that morphs to match the current chapter's mood. Unlocking a door floods the screen with swirling light and particle bursts. The aesthetic sits somewhere between dreamlike illustration and fluid 3D animation, not pixel art, not photorealism, something that looks closer to a very expensive animated short. Cutscenes carrying a wordless story about a small robotic cube traveling between damaged ecosystems are genuinely pretty to watch, even if the narrative itself is abstract enough that you supply most of the meaning yourself. Here is where honesty matters. Kenshō is not a demanding puzzle game. There is no fail state in any meaningful sense: if the board fills, you keep your progress and try again. There is no timer. The key-assembly puzzles that bookend each door, where you slide coloured keys onto matching pegs, are the only moments that feel explicitly hand-crafted and requiring deliberate planning, and there are not enough of them. An endless mode exists after credits but lacks any scoring or leaderboard hook, so there is no reason to return once you have seen the eleven levels. The whole journey runs two to three hours for most players. Puzzle purists who want logical deduction and consequence will find the tile randomness frustrating and the lack of punishment unsatisfying. That critique is legitimate. What Kenshō actually is, is a mood object with a mechanical shell. If you approach it as a short, beautiful, headphone-worthy experience rather than a brain-teaser, it earns its runtime without question. Steam's small review pool sits at 90% positive, which tracks: the people who want what Kenshō is offering come away charmed; the people expecting a Zachtronics-style puzzle box come away baffled. Know which one you are before you open the first door.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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