Interlocked: Puzzle Islands Review – A Meditative VR Escape

I’ve loved puzzle games for decades. Myst showed me the immersive storytelling potential of video games. Intelligent Qube on the original PlayStation taught me new ways to think under pressure. Lumines opened my mind to the emotional impact of music, and Echochrome proved the healing power of games when it helped me process unmanageable grief.

But those are stories for another time. The point is, that at this stage of my life it’s almost impossible for a puzzle game to really surprise me. But Interlocked has been just this: a pleasant surprise.

The object of Interlocked: Puzzle Islands is ostensibly simple: solve a succession of increasingly complex burr puzzles. These are assemblies of notched blocks interlocked into intricate three-dimensional shapes. Each puzzle begins with pieces locked into the others by clever geometry, and your job is to study the shape, then push, pull, twist, slide, and somehow remove every piece from the assembled whole. Do this and you win. Do this 30-odd times, and you beat the game.

What is Interlocked?

Interlocked: Puzzle Islands is a sort of sequel to the unsurprisingly named Interlocked, a game originally released in 2011 as a browser-based game, then later released as an app on iOS and Android, where it has been downloaded by over 5 million users.

Now it’s out on Quest and coming soon to Steam, where VR has transformed it into something greater. Being able to lean in, change your perspective simply by moving your head and body, to manipulate the structures directly with your handheld controllers, it all adds a layer of immersion that flat screen versions of this and similar puzzlers simply can’t match.

There’s tactile satisfaction in testing a piece for movement, finding it locked in place, reapplying yourself and finally discovering the one directional movement that begins to unravel the knot. That core physical loop of test, fail, repeat, succeed is executed extremely well.

The controls are simple and intuitive in VR, where you can grab and manipulate the puzzle directly, turning the shapes naturally in your hands as if they were a real object sitting on your desk. You twist and poke and prod with perfect accuracy.

Video gamey controls are available at the same time: by simply twiddling the control stick and pressing some buttons, you can manipulate the puzzle without directly touching it in virtual space. Either methodology works intuitively.

While you’re puzzling, there’s no real urgency. There’s no ever-dwindling timer, no penalty for failure. You’re free to sit with a puzzle for as long as you like, rotating it slowly, thinking through the possibilities, touching each piece to see its silhouette shining through its fellow blocks, making moves or thinking about them or simply sitting and enjoying the pastel beauty and ambient tunes of the lovely world around you. It’s all quite pretty.

And then there’s the bird.

Very early in the game you’re introduced to a hatchling, a tiny chick that bursts from its shell to blink enormous black eyes at you as it flitters about the first of the game’s puzzle islands. It chirps and nudges your surrogate hands, flaps its wings, and eventually takes flight.

To say that this bird is a deeply written character may be a stretch. There’s a story here, but it’s told with an extremely light hand. Rather, the bird is a sort of ever-present companion that flits from island to island, occasionally growing or changing, keeping you company. It takes what may have felt like a lonesome, solitary experience and turns it into something warm and charming. Small companionship is just that, small, but it can have outsized meaning.

Immaculate Vibes, Solid Core

The bird, the world, the music, the puzzles: they all combine so that just a few moments in the world of Interlocked reveals the real object of the game.

As an ambient soundtrack of gentle strings ebbs and swells, as the weather changes and the sunshine or the rain washes your small diorama island, as the fall foliage drops away making way for snow to kiss the dark branches of the trees, there is a feeling of peace.

This is the real object of Interlocked. It’s a game that allows you to breathe and relax, to lower the heart rate and stretch the mind and feel that things maybe aren’t quite so difficult if you just slow down, hold the problem in your hand, and solve it one move at a time.

The facts that the game is so pleasant and lovely, and that you’re hanging out with a cute-as-hell bird are only icing on the proverbial cake. Because the game’s core mechanic, its puzzles, are great.

The game starts out, as you’d expect, pretty easy. You unlock a few interlocked blocks, clear the first island, and move on to increasingly challenging shapes. The difficulty curve is thoughtfully modulated so that new configurations and complications pop up at a steady and linear pace. Later puzzles become decidedly more intricate, requiring multi-step sequences and plenty of trial and error.

There are moments of genuine satisfaction, where you’ve been stuck for a minute or two, turning the complicated structure over and over, convinced you’ve tried everything only to suddenly realize a subtle solution had eluded you. You make a small adjustment and a piece slides free, and suddenly the entire structure begins to unlock. These classic “aha” moments are critical to the best puzzle games, and Interlocked delivers them consistently.

That said, if you’re an impatient person, Interlocked may frustrate you. There’s no avoiding that by the midway point of the journey, puzzles can be downright wild in their complexity. While the ambient surroundings will do their best to keep you calm, wiggling the same blocks over and over and getting nowhere closer to solving the puzzle may cause certain personality types to snap like a celery stick.

Then again, it may just teach you patience.

Interlocked: Puzzle Islands can be played seated or standing, and in room scale. The game is controlled with controllers and can be manipulated with analog sticks and buttons.

Interlocked: Puzzle Islands – Final Verdict

In a medium that often prioritizes excitement, tension, horror, and dopamine drip, Interlocked: Puzzle Islands feels radical in its serenity. It reminds me of what makes games like Lumines and Echochrome so impactful, not just as puzzles to be played and solved, but as experiences.

It’s a brief game (about four hours long), and a relatively simple one. It’s a journey across floating islands, meandering through seasons of the year and seasons of life accompanied by soft music and a curious little bird. It’s a place of comfort, a place to unwind, where your hands are busy, your mind engaged, and where everything else disappears for a little while. In today’s world, that might be the best gift any game can give.

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