Supraland

Supraland is a first-person puzzle-exploration game built around one simple but potent idea: what if a child's toy sandbox were a real world, and you had to solve increasingly devious physics and logic puzzles to save it? The developer openly compares it to Portal, Zelda, and Metroid, and for once that's not PR bravado. The Metroid DNA is the strongest - abilities you unlock don't just feel like progression ticks, they physically recontextualise every corner of the map you've already visited. That itch of backtracking to a sealed door with a new power is real and satisfying here. The puzzle design is the headline act. Supraland gives you a small toolkit - a Force Cube you can spawn and shove, a laser-redirecting crystal, magnetic boots, and a handful of others - and then builds an entire world around combining them in ways you didn't see coming. At its best, the puzzles feel like the game is rewarding you for thinking sideways rather than harder. You'll hit a room, stare at it for five minutes, feel mildly insulted, and then feel absurdly pleased with yourself when the solution clicks. The density of optional secrets and upgrade caches scattered off the critical path is genuinely impressive for a one-person indie project. I'll be honest: the RPG tag on the store page is generous. There are upgrade nodes - a simple flat stat tree for health, damage, and a few passive perks - but nobody should come here expecting build variety or character arcs. The story is a thin, self-aware comedy about two plastic toy civilisations at war. It knows it's thin, it winks at you about it, and it mostly gets away with it because the writing is light and occasionally funny rather than trying to be profound. If you need a narrative engine driving you forward, this is not your game. The worldbuilding charm comes from the toy-box aesthetic: everything is painted wood, plastic figures, and household objects rendered at giant scale. It's coherent and delightful in a way a lot of bigger games manage to bungle. The combat, however - and the game's own Steam description calls it "terrible" - really is the weak link. Enemies are basic, encounters are repetitive, and the melee feels like swinging a foam bat. It's sparse enough that it never becomes actively miserable, but any time the game puts a fight between you and the next puzzle room, the rhythm stumbles. The 12-to-25-hour playtime estimate is accurate depending on how thoroughly you poke every corner, and the back half does occasionally stretch thinner than the front. A few late puzzles lean on execution precision over creativity in a way that feels like a different, less interesting game slipping through. For puzzle fans and Metroidvania completionists, Supraland punches well above its budget. The ability-gating and world design are tighter than many big-studio attempts at the same formula. Just don't expect RPG depth, don't expect combat that respects you, and do expect to spend several minutes staring at a wall before feeling like a genius. Monika, Scout Team