Please, Don’t Touch Anything is a puzzle game with a pretty wicked sense of humor. This title is an oddly casual yet mind-bending game that is well-executed despite its somewhat simplistic overall premise.
So what happens when you sit down in front of a big... red... button?
When your co-worker leaves to use the restroom and says to just keep an eye on things, but don't actually touch them, what are you going to do? I mean, there is a red restart level too. Red button. Red lever. Red button. Red lever. Red... I don't know what this says about my impulse control, but I think the game barely started before I poked that button on the gray metal box beneath an old green scale monitor.
The concept here is built around a series of puzzles that range from easy to boggling and everything in between. There are more than a dozen endings, tied to the type of puzzle you were solving. The puzzles themselves? Well, they are presented on the screen but the solutions are all around you. The interactions are simple. Pull and push as needed, serving as inputs. This is nicely assisted with the recently added Oculus Touch support. Not that there is anything wrong with using a controller, but given how simple the game's overall controls are, having that slightly more tactile experience certainly makes for more immersive sessions.
I have a harder time picturing this as a mobile title. Not because the visuals here are state-of-the-art, but because the ability to look around the room (and sometimes become quite startled or made to break out into laughter) was a big part of what worked for me here. The hand-tracking combined with the ability to look around the room for clues make this a different kind of experience.
Because there are so many puzzles and endings, Please, Don’t Touch Anything is generally good quick play fodder. Generally. Some of these puzzles I knocked out in less than ten minutes, but there were a couple that took me a lot longer than that. Obviously with any game of this nature, your mileage is going to vary. If you're smarter than I am (and odds are, all of you are), then the puzzles might be even quicker.
I like that there are so many small mini-endings available, though that particular dangling carrot loses some zip after a while. The endings are pretty lightweight, and while enjoyable, after a dozen they were not really all that enticing in and of themselves. It really comes down to how much you enjoy a good logic puzzle, and the best thing Please, Don’t Touch Anything has going for it is that the majority of the puzzles were pretty good - some even great.
This is a low action, logic-puzzling type of game. Despite some right or laughter-inducing visuals and moments, you will spend the majority of your time poking at buttons and flipping switches. I can see where this title is not going to be for everyone. All of that being said, I enjoyed most of the puzzles and felt my time here was well spent.
Game Information
PC - Oculus Rift
Developer(s):
Four Quarters
Publisher(s):
Bulkypix
Plug In Digital
Genre(s):
Puzzle
Mode(s):
Single Player
Other Platform(s):
Mobile
Source:
Provided by Publisher
Article by Nick
