Essentially Portal filtered through an anime lens, this puzzle adventure has you flipping gravity to walk along walls and ceilings, carrying size-altering jelly-like cubes to marked destinations, and leaping through portals that offer mind-twisting perspectives on the 3D environments.
Alongside its themes of Japanese folklore, the game draws inspiration from the four seasons, while its storyline revolves around collecting precious seeds by completing themed trials. The changing seasons also ensure that you’re never looking at the same scenery for long – unless you become well and truly stuck, which is something increasingly likely as things progress.
We’re introduced to Kiko, a young girl who finds herself in a fantastical realm while out collecting mushrooms one day. It isn’t long until she befriends the creatures that live there, who set her on the path back to the real world. Whenever she returns to the Crossworlds hub, conversations move the story forward before a moment of tranquillity sees Kiko sit and contemplate her situation. Indeed, Nomori is a rather chilled experience thanks to its mixture of soft visuals, pastel hues and ambient sounds.
Each puzzle takes place in a unique abstract location, often filled with floating platforms, and involves carrying a rabbit-faced jelly cube to a portal whose silhouette is always marked on screen. Cubes can be stretched or shrunk, used as platforms and carried through portals. They can also smash through barriers and acquire bouncy properties. Much later, their movements can be recorded and rewound, essentially turning them into moving lifts and similar contraptions. There are also a few variations on the main objective, including missions that require you to collect a handful of items for an NPC, such as ingredients for a stew.
As you’d expect, Nomori is welcoming during its opening hours – or rather, its opening season, autumn – before the difficulty begins to rise. New mechanics are introduced regularly and then layered on top of one another, so cast aside any expectations of an easy ride. The level design does not hold back, and the environments eventually resemble those of a modern 3D platformer. A couple of later stages took me close to thirty minutes to beat and required several restarts. It pays to study how each stage is constructed: wooden fences may prevent you from carrying the jelly cube through a particular route, while small, isolated platforms float in mid-air. Almost everything serves a purpose – it’s your job to figure out what.
I would even go so far as to say that Nomori is a little deceptive for something with such a cutesy exterior. There are no hints or level skips, so if you’re stuck, you’re simply going to have to work things out for yourself. This goes against the grain of similar modern puzzlers, which more often than not include some sort of accessibility feature to keep frustration low. Younger gamers, too, may find the game rather more taxing than its visuals suggest.
One other thing to note is that the Xbox Series version needs a patch, as pausing the game sometimes causes the screen to go black. Considering how severe this issue is, it may even have been fixed by the time you read this.
If you’re seeking a challenge, this surprisingly demanding yet unassuming puzzler has a lot to offer. It tests your spatial awareness from start to finish while telling a story that’s equally easy to become absorbed in. It’s less of a walk in the park and more of an uphill jog; with plenty to look at during its regular and welcome breaks.
Enchanted Works’ Nomori is out now on Xbox Series and PC.