Tetragon by Cafundo Estudio Criativo Eireli
Tetragon is a 2D puzzle game built around navigating square chambers in order to progress deeper into a mystical forest where dark secrets hide.
The story follows a father seeking to find his lost son who disappeared into the forest. Pursuing, the father finds himself exploring a strange world of gravity-bending challenges.
Flashing Back to Classic Narrative Platformers
Tetragon opens with an ominous scene of a child and his father in a forest. The son notices an eerie green glow, and moments later, he vanishes. The father notices and soon finds a strange gateway. Naturally, he follows. Tetragon’s story, from this point on, is mostly delivered via text-based dialogue as the father explores the forest and the dangers beyond. It seems there are powers at odds with one another deep inside the forest, and it quickly becomes clear that the child and the father are being used for some mysterious purpose.
Tetragon’s puzzles are all primarily built around careful navigation to ensure the father doesn’t fall to his death. Manipulation of both gravity and the environment is needed to facilitate this journey.
In terms of movement, the game lends a weight to the protagonist’s stride that reminded me of the classic adventure game Flashback. This isn’t a high mobility platformer; every movement feels heavy and even a short fall is lethal.
Circling Makes the Square
Tetragon soon provides the main tools for exploring its world. First, magical stone controls are dotted around most levels, and they can be used to rotate the square world of Tetragon and thus change the orientation of gravity. Second, pillars stretch into each level from the four sides of the world and can be slid back and forth to set positions, opening up paths or providing ledges to stand on. The interaction between these two features makes up the bulk of Tetragon’s challenge.
Speaking of challenge, Tetragon remains fairly relaxed for a good portion of its length but begins to throw out more tricky puzzles towards its latter half. These usually take the form of giving the pillars particular qualities, such as allowing them to grow hot as they’re moving or to make them subject to gravity, allowing them to crush you if you aren’t cautious.
Angling for a Better View
The visuals of Tetragon are quite lovely; everything is rendered well, but it’s the design work that shines. Everything has an angular, geometric style that serves to deepen the sense of the arcane setting established by the story. One of my favorite features of the game is the way in which levels can be seen ahead in the background behind the current square chamber. The camera cruises forward at the end of each level to take us into the next area.
The music is also solid, providing a feeling of mystery and danger as the father wanders deeper into the depths of Tetragon’s world.
Tetragon is a solid puzzle game that offers a decent challenge at times. It isn’t especially long, clocking in at around three hours, and unfortunately, there are a fair few glitches; I often found the camera could become misaligned from gravity if buttons were pressed during rotation, leading to some fiddly moments. I also had a couple situations where the protagonist would float in the air and become immovable. None of these issues are game-breaking, however, and if you’re looking for a short and sweet puzzler with a charming story then Tetragon could certainly be worth a look.
Tetragon is available via the Nintendo Online Store, Sony PlayStation Store, Microsoft Store, and Steam.
Watch the trailer for Tetragon below:
