The humble door. Not only a noun but a powerful symbol of keeping things in or out, new opportunities or missed chances and a fundamental part of buildings. And, it has to be said, they’re pretty effective at what they do.
And now here is a puzzle game devoted solely to the door. Doors: Paradox has you completing challenges and puzzles all so you can open a series of doors. Sure, door puzzles are nothing new for video games, but then again, there have never been so many intricate puzzles all crammed into one game just to open a door.
The doors you are tasked with opening are presented in a beautiful, diorama style. It can be rotated in full 360° and most aspects of the diorama can be zoomed in on by clicking on them. Each level is intricately detailed and has themes ranging from Japanese gardens, to industrial subnautical doors and even some fun ones like those based on pirates or tape cassettes.
Just like the wide variety of themes on offer, the puzzles themselves have a lot of mileage in them. These solutions are a little more point-and-click in terms of needing the right object for the right moment, but there is plenty of logical thinking required too. But for all the mechanics in use across nearly 60 levels, none of it in Doors: Paradox feels like repetition. Yes, you are only opening doors, but the wide variety of ways in which you do so gives the game a lot of depth.
Some doors will have puzzles that feel immediately familiar, like a maze or a quick codebreaker to solve. There are also the odd tile sliding puzzle, which after nearly 35 years on this planet I still cannot grasp the concept of, but thankfully, these are few and far between.
Each level also has plenty of collectibles to find around the diorama. There are two different coloured gems and a scroll that provides a bit of backstory to the world, and some context to the varied themes going on. But the gems aren’t just there to look pretty, as collecting all of them in one of the game’s three chapters unlocks special bonus levels. The bonus levels are more of the same, but they offer a choice in relation to concluding each chapter’s story. But choosing one over the other doesn’t block you out of playing the other one.
They’re not all that tricky to find; the gems are usually glistening away, almost as if they want to be found, and they still manage to stand out despite the warm, rich colours in Doors: Paradox. If the relaxing gameplay and the ambient soundtrack wasn’t enough for you, the colours on display will melt even the coldest hearts. It’s just a very calming game throughout.
But it isn’t without problems, and there are two pretty big ones. Firstly, playing Doors: Paradox with Xbox’s Quick Resume switched on seems to bring about a host of problems. There has been lost progress, and achievements not unlocking at all. That’s not an issue if you aren’t interested in achievements, but Doors: Paradox is an easy completion as long as you complete all the levels, so achievement hunters need to be made aware.
The second issue isn’t a game breaker, but it is frustrating. Many of the objects you need to interact with need rotating or opening to find the sweet spot or uncover their secrets, but the left thumbstick isn’t the easiest to manoeuvre. It doesn’t respond in the way that you would expect it to at all, and taking your thumb off seems to reset the stick: you will spend a lot of time rotating the thumbstick to find the right spot to begin interacting with the object, but stop interacting with it and the right spot will mysteriously move elsewhere on the stick.
That isn’t the only issue with the controls: On several puzzles you need to hold the A button to interact with an object, but on occasion it will glitch out and prevent the object from being manipulated, resulting in the puzzle having to be restarted. These doors may only take around five minutes to complete each one, but it gets tedious having to do them over and over again.
Doors: Paradox has the potential to be a great puzzle game. It is warm, vibrant, varied and full of just the right amount of puzzling. But there are quite a few issues that prevent it from scoring as high as it could.
It would appear that using Quick Resume brings its own set of issues, but the more frustrating issues lie with the controls. It was originally on PC and then ported over to Xbox, and playing with a mouse would make things easier to handle. On controller, the issues can even cause you to have to restart levels.Â
And as fun as these are, finding the solution but not being able to interact with it, isn’t much fun at all.
Doors: Paradox Unlocks a World of Puzzle-Solving Adventures on Xbox – https://www.thexboxhub.com/doors-paradox-unlocks-a-world-of-puzzle-solving-adventures-on-xbox/
Doors: Paradox is on the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/p/9PGCVD0WZBR1/0010
