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Vanessa Saint-Pierre Delacroix and her nightmare. Man that's a mouthful isn't it? Still, a title
like that certainly breeds curiosity. While the game itself may not be what one expects
from the title, the tone certainly is. In a very well told intro we learn that Vanessa
is a brainy puzzle loving young girl who feels ostracized from her peers at the schoolyard.
One day a strange puzzle box that she acquired from her father's antiquities shop breaks
and sucks the entire town inside it. Now it's up to Vanessa to rescue her classmates and
find a way out.
The game is certainly a bit of a mind bender, at least initially. The levels are a cube,
that you travel across side by side. The side you're inhabiting can be rotated clockwise
or counter-clockwise, and this opens up pathways to other sides of the cube. Initially just
the exit needs to be found (along with the special coin in each level if you so desire),
but the game starts becoming more complex with locked door requiring keys and blocks
er... blocking the way until they can be rotated and dropped into a switch mechanism. Each
level has a time and a number of turns that if the level is completed within those parameters.,
you are given a greater score on completion, but this is only for those looking to perfect
their playthrough (as the thirty-six currently available levels won't take puzzle aficionados
too long to complete) .
As you're making your way through this cubist nightmare, you will most certainly notice
the piercing soundtrack consisting of remixed, almost metal instrumental versions of classical
pieces you most certainly will have heard before. These renditions might be too sharp
for everybody's taste, but they do indeed lend to the atmosphere of the game. It's just
a shame that there are only three tracks endlessly repeating.
Vanessa's nightmare is a puzzle game with a great idea, and a good sense of the tone
it wishes to convey. The visuals could have accentuated this a little more (outside of
the intro), but puzzle fans should find themselves a momentary distraction with this title, at
least until new content is released.