Remember a while back I completed a game called FAR: Lone Sails? If not you can just click that link. I refer to it because the ending of that game was a bit of a damp squib and didn’t make any sense. Turns out, this sequel is actually sort of the other half of the game and that’s why.

Whereas in Lone Sails you had a land-boat where you travel across what appears to be a dried up sea, in Changing Tides you pilot a sea-boat across what appears to be a flooded world. The game plays out in much the same way, with the same sorts of puzzles and areas you get out of your boat to do things which allow your craft to progress (like open big gates or operate cranes or something) but this time there’s more water. In parts of it, you actually become fully submersible.

The tie-in to the previous game is a bit of a spoiler, but when you get to the end of Changing Tides suddenly everything – assuming you recall the ending of Lone Sails at least – makes sense.

So the game isn’t really any better or worse than before, although they’ve fixed everything being too small a bit (it’s still a little too small, but it’s easier to make stuff out – this might be just because I played this on the PS5 not the Switch). It’s just more of the same only not quite the same as it’s a slightly different. Which is fine, I think?

What even is this? I’ve completed it and I’m still not sure. I think it fits into the same sort of category as something like Electroplankton or Noby Noby Boy where although there is a goal of sorts, it’s the toy you play with along the way that’s the real game.

In Nour, you’re given a large restaurant table, and each plate on it takes you to a different scenario. In each, the controller buttons spawn different food and drink items, so you might be able to build a burger from component parts, or populate a stew with meat and vegetables. You may be expecting this to therefore resemble Cook, Serve, Delicious! or Cooking Mama, but no – it’s all sorts of weird instead.

For starters (that’s a restaurant joke there) you don’t have set meals to make. It also doesn’t seem to matter how or even what you make, even if it’s a horrible mess. In fact, just spamming the buttons eventually causes a jellyfish to appear, it then steals one of your items, and things get a bit trippy. There’s also some musical toy component to the game, as spawning items makes noises, and doing it rhythmically makes even more trippiness happen. Then there’s the tools to make things bigger or smaller, or chuck them about.

Look, it’s very strange and I’m not able to describe it fully.

The aim appears to be to make all the jellyfish happy or satisfied or I don’t know what, and then you can progress onto the next plate where you can bung stuff in a microwave or make smoothies with meat cubes in or re-enact a HowToBasic video with unlimited eggs. Do all the plates, and it’s time for the credits.

Is it a game? A toy? A very abstract musical instrument? A soothing bubblewrap/fidget spinner alternative? I don’t bloody know.

Imagine a cross between that weird hypercube animation optical illusion thing and The Stanley Parable, and you’re some of the way to understanding Superliminal.

Like The Stanley Parable, it’s a narrative discovery game in a series of corridors, offices, warehouses and… other places. Whereas Stanley is trapped in a Groundhog Day style scenario, your nameless hero here is inside a dream which has been engineered to help them deal with something in their life. So, almost the same thing.

However, Superliminal is much more of a puzzle game, in a similar sort of way that Portal or Q.U.B.E. is, but the puzzles in this game are based around perspective. Objects can be resized, or sometimes reshaped, by how you pick up and drop them. For example, if you pick up a box, it’s quite small, but if you place it down in front of you it will actually be dropped in the distance at the size it appears to you, meaning that you then walk up to it and it has become larger. It’s tricky to describe, and to make use of at first, but it’s Very Clever. You can then use this larger box as a step up or something.

The other main puzzle thing is to line up seemingly random markings, like paint or shapes, so that at a certain angle they become an actual object. In one room, for instance, there are various parts of a cube painted on walls and pillars. If you stand in the right place, the cube becomes whole and grabbable, for use in another bit of the puzzle. I’ve seen this sort of thing in other games (most of the environmental puzzles in The Witness are a similar mechanic), but it is still Also Very Clever.

Things get mixed up as you progress through your dream therapy (which itself goes a bit off the rails – I think the current gamer terminology is “the backrooms”), with items not being able to move in certain ways, or they duplicate when interacted with, or fall apart. Later still there’s some playing with walls and doors, with doors becoming walls and vice versa as perspective or proximity changes, or simply because you’re “reading” their colour “wrong”.

Disappointingly, there aren’t any toilets in the game when it really looks like there will be some, but other than that it’s a pleasant, stress-free brain scratcher that makes your eyes go a bit weird. It’s also pretty funny, in the doctor’s tapes you find to listen to, the GlaDOSy “guide”, and various whiteboards, posters and items you find along the way. Superliminal is only a few hours long, but, like all the other games I’ve mentioned, well worth playing.