Heal ★★★☆☆

Who is this game for?

• Achievement hunters
• Art aficionados
• Escape roomists
• Indie game supporters
• Psychological seekers
• Short-on-time gamers
• Silent protagonist

Game length

Less than 2 hours

Where can you buy?

• Available on Steam
• Available on Switch

Explanation to Negative Feedback

Movement and interacting

In order to move, you’ll have to click the area you want to move to. And then click again. And again. And so on and so forth whenever you want to start walking. I really wish they’d made it so you could just hold the mouse button down and have him walk, but…that isn’t the case.

I just don’t see why we have to constantly click a button to move when we already hold buttons to interact with things.

And speaking of interactions, like I stated, you have to hold the mouse button down in order to engage puzzles or look through doors and such. Which I constantly mess up by clicking once, since you only need to click once to move. And when you only click once when you have to hold the mouse button there’s a short moment of time where you can’t hold the mouse button down in order to engage it.

You have to wait like a second or something.

It’s not long, and it’s not a huge problem, but it is an annoyance after a while of getting it wrong.

Some puzzles were tedious

Listen.

I’ve solved a lot of puzzles in hidden object games and many of them were difficult and took a while because I hate skipping or asking for hints unless I cannot get it at all. But when you add in a speedrun achievement to a game that requires you to be very specific in some of the puzzles that you have to get right to get the proper time for that achievement, it really sucks.

The puzzle I’m speaking about is a ball puzzle where you have to stop a timer four different times on the correct numbers in order to move the ball along the length of the maze appropriately. If it hits a side or if it doesn’t reach the end hole, you have to redo it.

This puzzle is tough to get right on the first try, so that whole speedrun achievement can be easily ruined by just this one puzzle.

And then there are other puzzles that you get clues to solving…but I feel like the clues aren’t in any set order, and you’re left wondering in what order do you place the information you’ve acquired. It takes too much time when everything is basically handed to you otherwise.

Vague storyline until the end

The game is called Heal, but all throughout the game, there’s not much of a concept to that title. Heal what? Heal from what?

Occasionally we get to play the piano at the end of some chapters, but again, without concept. There’s really no clue, except maybe when you start tinkering with the television.

It all pieces together at the end, and I just kind of wish the build-up was better.

We’re going through a house with odd puzzles and that’s it. There’s definitely a psychological aspect to the game, maybe the old man is interpreting things in his own way to his own memories, but it’s all beyond me.

Explanation to Positive Feedback

A lot of puzzles

First off, I really like the amount of puzzles they’ve placed into the game with it being so short, and second, the puzzles are all different and unique and of varying levels of difficulty.

That doesn’t mean that I like all the puzzles, obviously, but…I like the fact that they aren’t all easy and they aren’t all difficult and time consuming. I’ve played a lot of hidden object games that offer a variety of puzzles and while some of these aren’t new, I enjoy the refresher on how different puzzles can be from game to game.

And of course not all of them can be done just by engaging the puzzles themselves.

Sometimes you have to look around for clues first.

Variety of environments

We aren’t just stuck to a household scenario in one chapter after another. We do go outside, and when that happens, you’re also able to change the settings of the weather, so to speak. This goes hand-in-hand with the puzzles you’ll be doing during this chapter, but I still like the unique way to manipulate what the weather might be like and what time it is.

Even in the house, however, you’re in different rooms, so it’s not the same once you exit through a door and enter a separate chapter.

Not to mention there’s so dark aspects to the house you’re sometimes in that’ll make a more ominous effect.

Links Worth Checking Out

• Our pros and cons review on YouTube

100% Heal Review (with spoilers)

First off, there are seven chapters total, as seen on the main menu screen, but they’re all blocked off aside from the first one until you start completing them.

I really like these games that show you the chapters at the start. It’s a lot easier to backtrack for achievements that you didn’t get the first time around without having to go into the game at the start and make your way through it to a specific section.

Not only that, but the chapters have a preview image, making it a whole lot easier for you to remember which chapter had which puzzles.

You start off at level one called Desolate – Part One.

I’m not sure why they labeled them as levels when really they’re suitable for chapters, but it’s whatever.

This chapter takes place in a household environment and right off the bat if you’ve ever played the game Distraint (created by the same developer), you might feel some similarities between the two games. Of course, Distraint is pixelated and leans more into the horror genre than Heal does, but the similarities are still there.

Right off the bat you’re faced with your first puzzle that’s tutorialized.

But before getting into this little puzzle, note that there’s a hand symbol above, meaning you can interact with it, however you’ll need to hold the mouse down in order to fill the circle. Hot take: clicking is better than holding a button down in order to progress with something.

I’m so used to just clicking things that I kept forgetting to hold the mouse button down and it became a bit aggravating after doing it too many times.

Once you get to the main screen of the puzzle, the tutorial wants you to pull the tabs that are sticking out…well, out. But you have to wait until the tutorial cursor is gone otherwise you’re yanking downward for nothing. When it disappears, I thought that it wanted me to take these things all the way out, and so I kept trying to yank them, except you’re meant to pull them enough that the orange slots raises up.

So…it became obvious after a minute but man.

Puzzle games really make me reflect on my intelligence sometimes.

When the tabs are finally out enough that all the orange slots are up, the tutorial hand comes back and wants you to slide the panel to the right, which will then reveal B 35 on the inside as well as earn you the achievement Solve the First Puzzle.

Pretty simplistic, yeah?

Don’t worry. They get more stressful.

It’s nice to know that when you do complete a puzzle, there’s a checkmark that shows up on the bottom right as a visual confirmation that you’ve completed it, and then you can exit the puzzle via the bottom left.