In my book, a good puzzle game is determined by how well it articulates its gimmick. Portal uses its titular wormholes to mess with physics. Braid lets you rewind time to rework obstacles and perspectives. Return of the Obra Dinn is essentially one sprawling logic conundrum. And Skala, a free puzzle game by Gustav Almstrom that launched on Steam this week (opens in new tab), lets you tinker with scale in order to overcome its 90 brain-teasing levels. What starts out straightforward quickly snowballs into a head-scratching affair, whereby each stage teaches you something new, that in turn informs how you tackle later, more challenging levels.
With simple but well-matched visuals, a striking monochromatic palette with the odd flash of color, a wonderfully relaxing melodic soundtrack, and a patient but rigid learning curve, Skala has me hooked. I love a good puzzle game, I must say, but this is one the best and most original I've played in some time.
In Skala, progression is gated by collecting one single star at the end of each level. In level one, that entails simply walking from one end of the screen to the other, picking up the star, and moving on. Level two introduces steps that must be hopped over to reach the end-of-level goal, while level three includes a pit that must be leapt across to succeed. Level four, however, is when things begin to get interesting, because it's here that Skala's primary gimmick – manipulating scale – comes into play.
Facing a wider chasm than the one featured in the previous level, jumping across is no longer possible. But shifting the ground below is – which looks something like this:
A few variations of this ground-moving quandary follow, before later levels switch things up further
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