The Search Review

In The Search you start out inside a dark void with a couple of platforms ahead of you with different coloured pedistals. After checking them, and completing the first puzzle, you are transfered to a different world full of colors. With you, you have picked up a camera and a lighter. Walking through the new environment you encounter places where you can use the camera to take a picture of said object. This object ‘idea’ can then be burned by using the lighter and turned into pigment that later is used to create paint.

Throughout the game is also places where you can hang up a canvas. With the paint you have created you can thus paint objects you need or passageways to new places. This is the main objective of the game, mixed in with a few different puzzles, but the create paint and paint the canvases serves as the main objective. The story of The Search is about how important creativity is in life, and the search to find it heavily inspired by the late psycologist Jung.

A playthrough of The Search can be done in under an hour, making it a very short game. As a bonus the price matches the time you will spent making it a cheap game to grab. It is not a hard game, and if you are stuck there is the option to get hints on screen.

The game looks good, with nice looking graphics, and a fine soundtrack with quiet ambient sounds. When playing the game, it works sort of like a slide-show (akin to the old Myst games). At the very ending of the game the protagonists discovers the world to be 3D, where you are able to move around in any degree you fancy. It serves to punch in the point of the game, but does feel like a bit of a let down, and makes you yonder for the whole game to have been in 3D instead.

That being said, the game is a nice little commentary-ride, with nice backgrounds to look at and a fine short story.