Age of Rock: The Puzzle Quest

One of the (many) generalisations mass-media likes to accuse games of is their dangerously ‘addictive’ nature, with one supposedly learned commentator recently comparing the harmless hobby with ‘doing a line of coke’ (the drug, not the drink).

Putting aside the ridiculous nature of that statement for a second, most games do try and lever in some kind of reward structure designed to keep people playing, often taking the form of new levels, new modes, or new weapons to play around with.

Age of Rock: The Puzzle Quest isn’t having any of that though – it’s gone clean.

Brainy

Age of Rock is a brain-training game disguised as a puzzler, with a small plot revolving around proving your worth to the tribe of stone age humans by performing a series of mental tasks.

This being the Stone Age, these mental tasks take the form of simple memory, numbers, and logic games like sudoku (is this right?)

There are ten different games on offer, all unlocked from the word go. Each game, bar Sudoku, is performed under a time-limit and failing to solve an arbitrary number of puzzles in each category before the time runs out.

The selection are the usual brain-training games, so you’ll be taking part in adding up numbers one second, then dividing them the next.

Stick it together with the tape

The main issue with Age of Rock isn’t so much the games themselves - which are all perfectly playable, if a bit ordinary - but in how the game is structured.

Whereas the brain-training games set daily targets and use pseudo-science to keep the player’s interest high, Age of Rock treats each mini-game with a quiet air of disdain.

There are no scores, no punishment for failure (other than starting the puzzle again), no daily limits, no surprises, and nothing to aim for – each mini-game is its own separate entity, devoid of interest beyond its small walled area.

It results in a title that, when taken as separate parts, makes for a decent collection of mini-games, but doesn’t stick well enough together to hook you.

Age of Rock: The Puzzle Quest

An uninspired but perfectly playable collection of brain-training games, Age of Rock’s lack of structure or rewards removes any sense of accomplishment and desire to play on
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Will Wilson
Will Wilson
Will's obsession with gaming started off with sketching Laser Squad levels on pads of paper, but recently grew into violently shouting "Tango Down!" at random strangers on the street. He now directs that positive energy into his writing (due in no small part to a binding court order).