Oppositely Opal

This is a fun, relatively short game with a great sense of humour and a lovely writing style. The puzzles aren't too tricky (although I occasionally felt that I'd come up with a valid solution that simply didn't work), and the in-game hint system is great at nudging you in the right direction without spoiling too much. The game embraces its light-hearted quirkiness, resulting in puzzles that are a joy to solve. The story is slightly more poignant than I'd expected, which was a nice surprise.

In this game, you play a witch who has been confined to a single room during a potion competition. You must brew a potion to win, however, you suffer a major disadvantage, because there is something wrong with your magic.

I was hesitant about this game at first, because I found the language annoying (imagine the writing by Anna from Frozen: "I am SO going to catch her!"). Also, the first few puzzles were almost trivial.

However, I realized as time went on that the writing produced a consistent and interesting worldview (as the backstory unfolded), and that the first puzzles were just an easy tutorial. The game got progressively more difficult, until I needed 3 hints to get through puzzles.

The hints are very mild, provided entirely by your cat's actions.

There's a few red herrings in this game, and a bit of 'guess the author's brain', but by the time I finished, I realized that I genuinely enjoyed this game.

Enjoyed the one-room format and lighthearted, quirky characters! The puzzles and magic were creative and just the right amount of difficulty.