‘Flow Weaver’ Is A Deductive Puzzler’s Dream (Review)

I love solving contained deductive puzzles and mysteries. Whether it’s an in-person escape room or an artisan-crafted puzzle box, it’s a thrilling challenge knowing the solution is hidden somewhere before me. It’s just a matter of noticing the right details, from those hidden in plain sight to those masquerading as unimportant. Then, in making the required connections, that blessed “eureka” moment occurs, the solution satisfyingly materializing in the mind’s eye.

Yet, there are inherent pitfalls with deductive gameplay. It presumes players not only are able to notice every detail but have the expertise required to do so. Furthermore, they need to have the mental finesse to put seemingly random details together. Because if a player can’t, if they’re not an experienced, well-rounded expert in all things, they’re in trouble.

Herein lies the problem when playing Flow Weaver. In this VR escape room experience from Stitch Media, players encounter a variety of deductive puzzles and problems to solve across a series of breathtakingly gorgeous environments. While clever and creative work on the player’s part is constantly required through engaging and rewarding gameplay, sometimes no amount of expertise or knowhow allows a puzzle to be solved.

Leading up to Flow Weaver’s release, I was excited to play it. My two favorite VR games are I Expect You To Die and The Room VR: A Dark Matter. Both are high concept escape room-like puzzlers, requiring a keen-eye and critical thinking to play. From the promo materials and trailers, Flow Weaver appeared to be a perfect peanut-butter and chocolate combination of those two games — I Expect You To Die’s stationary seating where everything is within “reach” paired with The Room VR’s focus on tone and genre worldbuilding.

On this high-level comparison, before delving too far into its specific play-by-play functionality, Flow Weaver is a worthy addition in the VR escape room game catalog.

In playing through the game as a nameless protagonist mage, you’re armed with a magical ability that allows you to travel between realities. Each of these realities is more engrossing and arresting than the last, a luscious amount of environmental detail at work. There’s a stunning environment in the clouds, where I sat for several minutes simply taking it all in. Another hellish landscape has me suspended over the abyss of a gigantic cavern, where I delightfully dropped items, watching them grow smaller until disappearing below. With each reality feeling and functioning so differently, I forget I’m in my living room, believing I’ve traversed space and time to reach these faraway realities.

Within Flow Weaver’s first minutes it’s clear the primary way of solving most puzzles is to instigate changes or move key items between realities. First and foremost, the controls are easy to understand and accessible, allowing gratifying gameplay. Opening the path between realities is seamless, never becoming dull. Stitch Media also has a clever, built-in narrative reason on how I can reach any item, even when far away. Major props to Stitch Media as other games simply rely on this standard VR function being a concept requiring the player to suspend their disbelief.

More importantly, the moving between realities fosters a highly original level of difficulty in solving puzzles. Each time I’m able to find an item or detail of seeming importance, I’m left to wonder not only how I can use it but where to use it. And which where for that matter too. Often I grab an item, examining it to trigger that moment of mental recognition, where it’s importance in relationship to everything occurs. When it does, with all the clues and details bouncing around in my mind snapping into focus with crystalline clarity through deductive reasoning, Flow Weaver makes me feel like a magical genius.

Unfortunately Flow Weaver doesn’t consistently allow me to feel like a genius. Rather, several puzzles ask me to become a mind reader, requiring that I get into the developer’s head and think like they do instead of relying on diegetic cues and quick thinking. While this speculative guesswork can resonate with some puzzlers, I find experiences that exclude calling upon common knowledge or general expertise to be unfairly challenging. While these types of mind reading puzzles are very few and incredibly far between in Flow Weaver, when totaled up they are noticeably frustrating, possibly preventing puzzlers like me from completing the game.

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(A minor and major spoiler to follow in the next two paragraphs. In short, clues on how to solve puzzles are not clear several times with a few being so minute or undervalued that it requires googling the solution.)

There are several puzzles where it’s not only unclear what I should do, with the ultimate solution I’m trying to reach is opaque. A chief example is how I struggled through the major set piece puzzle for reality in the clouds. Essentially I needed to move around a bunch of floating rocks with jewels in them to bounce a laser light around the sky. There are no apparent clues to provide guidance. Not necessarily a problem. Some puzzles simply require brute-strength trial-and-error to crack them, taking note of what combination of details work best. But where I was supposed to be reflecting that laser light was totally unclear. I only reached the solution by sheer accident. While I could see where other players could deduce the solution in advance, it would never occur to me.

Worse, there’s a small handful of puzzles and details that I believe no one could possibly deduce as important. In the primary reality, a medieval storage closet turned jail cell, there’s a cobweb against some wood crates and a stone wall. It’s a nice little detail, making the environment feel lived in. But that’s a standard video game set dressing element. I gave it no further thought. Yet, I was to burn it, leading to a series of events that finalizes my escape. There are two hint systems in Flow Weaver but neither clue me into the importance of interacting with the cobweb. As far as I can tell, I was just supposed to know to burn this random cobweb of my own accord. If I had not gone to Flow Weaver’s Discord server and message Stitch Media directly for help, I’d still be stuck in that makeshift jail cell to this day.

(End spoilers)

As the cherry on top of some of Flow Weaver’s puzzle problems, the story itself is rather dense. There was little narratively to grip onto when the puzzles stump me. Terminology and worldbuilding lore are haphazardly thrown about, another mystery that requires my attention on top of solving puzzles. Just when I’m getting a handle on the story, Flow Weaver ends on an abrupt, yet tantalizing, cliffhanger.

For all these issues, I believe the cause is Flow Weaver functions and feels like what would be an amazing in-person escape room. The best escape rooms I’ve done are the ones that have me going on an adventure, bouncing between multiple areas solving puzzles. Flow Weaver always had me excitedly on the edge of my seat, pushing and challenging me to not only use critical thinking but the limits of what I can figure out myself. Stitch Media clearly has a great sense of what works and doesn’t in escape rooms. It seems they have undervalued the importance of how either help from someone else or an on-the-nose hint from a Game Master is an equally important component.

Because at the end of the day, I did enjoy my time playing Flow Weaver. There is a lot to love here. While I couldn’t recommend this game to everyone, I would vehemently do so to any diehard and experienced escape room or puzzle players. We also need more narrative, cognitively challenging games like Flow Weaver on VR — especially on Oculus. These are the types of games that showcase VR’s potential to heighten gameplay, both in function and in the experience itself. While there are a few tough spots, for their first major public VR game release, Stitch Media has a winning formula on their hands that works well. With everything they’ve accomplished in Flow Weaver, I can’t wait for what Stitch Media does next.

Flow Weaver is available now for $19.99 on the Oculus Quest platform.

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