Secrets of Rætikon is as gorgeous and ethereal as it is tedious and poorly designed.

It’s a game about exploration and discovery, hampered by convoluted level designs and the inexcusable absence of any sort of map. It’s a game of peaceful puzzle solving and nonlinear exploration disrupted by annoyingly persistent enemies, and no means of attack to ward them off. More than anything though it’s a game of false allegations of an overarching mystery, that in the end is nothing more than a horrendously incomprehensible and random moment, preceded by an unnecessarily grotesque event that quite frankly made me sick.

At it’s core, Rætikon is constructed like a large fetch quest collectathon, requiring you to explore levels in order to collect scattered shards which can then be used to power up ancient machinery. These machines exist both in opening new pathways for you, and in presenting you with larger shards which must then be brought back to a sort of hub and deposited into the sockets of yet another large machine.

Though it had the potential to be an enjoyably open experience, allowing you to freely traverse the world as you hunt for these shards and machines, Rætikon idiotically forces you to spend an aggravating amount of time back tracking through levels in order to return to the hub. This could have been avoided with a better connected world, but with only two paths into the hub, you’re required to haul your luggage through numerous screens over and over again. This is made even more frustrating do to the inevitable games of keep away you get into with other animals, which can sometimes make the simple act of getting from one side of the screen to the other almost painful in how aggressive the other creatures are.

This all adds up to make Secrets of Rætikon an absolute chore to get through. It’s a gorgeous game, with some incredible origami-like artwork, a fantastically ambient soundtrack and great sense of atmosphere, but it’s all brought down by some horrible design decisions that sour the entire experience. When you finally get to the end it only makes matters worse, with a disturbing and baffling turn of events that sells home the point that the designers seemed to have little idea where they were going with their game, nor a clue how to get there.

Secrets of Rætikon is one of the few games where you play as an 'realistic' animal in a 2d metroidvania like world. After the game started I was smoothly flying around and enjoying the relaxing atmosphere in a world with a nice Сubism art style. The game explained simply is; find collectables to get other collectables to finish the game. Which sounds stupid but while you do this you will encounter many obstacles and enemies. Also there are other things to explore which can add to the story of Rætikon. Sometimes you really have to think about your movement so you can get to that certain area. I liked that in this game I sometimes felt sad because I had to kill other animals or plants to get health. I have to say that I didn't enjoy Rætikon to it's fullest because on my laptop I played some parts without sounds. Which really reduces the feeling of being in nature. I have to say I didn't really like the ending. But I think that may had something to do with the studio having to rush that part. Because this game didn't and still doesn't get that much attention. What I respect the dev's for: They kept on going to finish the game, because they know that these kind of games are missing in this industry. The only positive side of the game not being popular is that you really have to find everything out by yourself.

Workshop community:
Dead.
No support at all.


Short:
A nice relaxing game where you explore around flying as a bird.

This game is, in a word, frustrating.

This is a game that can't quite decide what it wants to be. On one hand, its an exploratory world with puzzles and secrets to uncover. On the other hand, it's an RPG with fetch quests, trials, obstacles and things trying to kill you. These two halves do not mesh as well as they should and the mechanics that would be forgivable in a pure exploration game do not hold up for a battle-less RPG.

Boiled down to it's core, the game play is find the glowing bits, collect them all, feed them to a machine and then activate the machine which either gives you a different glowy bit to bring back the big machine in the middle, or helps you open a door to go through to continue the cycle. This on it's own, isn't bad. Standard RPG/puzzle quest. But the controls do not have the proper fine tune to allow the player to actually accomplish these goals easily. After activating one machine by a door, it dropped down a battering ram that it took me a good 15 minutes to get to actually hit the door in a way that actually broke it down.

Another section involved a maze of thorns that you had to fly against the wind to navigate. Flap wrong and you're thrown into the waiting thorns much like a ping pong ball and it's near impossible to recover without being thrown into another bed of thorns. In another, after successfully activating a machine, I was presented with another challenge, having to get a glowing bit from a running stag. Due to the limitations of the controls and the flaky flapping mechanic, I eventually just gave up as I was never able to get my character to do anything that got it even close to the runner.

The visuals of the game are pretty impressive. Stylized, but not in a way that comes off as pretentious. If it weren't for the aggressive birds, excessive thorns and fighting against the controls to try and get from place to place, it would be a very nice, laid back exploratory game, which the ambient sounds and lack of any narrative present it as. But at it's heart, this game more comes off as a frustrating, non linear puzzle platformer who's mechanics just can't hold up to what the player needs to do. Perhaps with a game pad or under windows, it would work better, but I have neither of those things to test it with, and the graphics and atmosphere alone are not enough to make up for the high level of frustration this brings.

The game has great graphics and atmosphere, but there are awful bugs (I got trapped in geometry five times in two hours, once so badly I had to restart the game entirely). The controls are not responsive (and there are points in the game where you really need them to be), and while the storyline is compelling, it just can't overcome the repetition and annoyances that crop up (like having to wrestle a shard from a magpie and squirrels almost every. single. time. you get one).

In short? It could be really good. It's not. It's frustrating, and there's just not enough rewards to overcome that.

To be honest, i'm pretty much neutral about this game. I like it, great astetics and concept, but I feel like the one thing that really makes it a rotten egg is the protagonist. They're too underpowered, and you haft to do some things over and over again if you even want to do it. All you can lift into the air is the animals, and they never like you. On top of that, the special-looking blue triangles are pretty much useless. It's only a rez @ the spot you died, when you can just fly back to where you were. Pretty animation, though. As I said earlier, none of the animals like you, pretty much everyone wants to bar your way except for the little red and yellow birds. You can't even fight back most of the time, unless you throw them into thorns. Being able to hatch birds dosen't help at all; the buzzards still attack you and the magpies still take your stuff.

In conclusion, I feel that for most people, this game will eventually send them into a rampage and they'd quit, saying it's too hard. Add some allies or strengthen the protagonist and it might make a decent game, but until then, it's not worth the 10 bucks, unless you like looking at the pretty stuff.

That ending. I need to call a priest.

Secrets Of Raetikon is an indie gem.
This game is all about atmosphere.
You play as a bird in a very oniric mountain landscape, and yuo need to find some kind of orbs, and activate some ancient "Ruins".
Some obstacles will be in your way, like some other animals or terrain formations.
The best part of the game is how if feels.
You are immersed in a relaxing, dreamy and magical world, where the sound gently keep you company.
This game feels like poetry, it talkes to the heart.
I highly recommend this game, but only if you can appreciate these type of games, which tend to feel more like art (even though this one actually has a smooth gameplay)

Secrets of Raetikon is a 2D exploration game where you control a bird that uncovers the ruins of ancients civilizations.

The game handles very well. The flying mecanic is fun to use and the fact that you can grab and move pretty much anything is very fun. This makes fight interesting too since you don't have any attack move. Instead, you have to use the environment or find creative way to get rid of your pursuers. The one thing that really set the game aparts is its unique artstyle.

However, the game makes you do a lot of flying and searching for where to go. At least, since the world is fun to naviguate this problem is less important than it appears. There's also a few glithces that can make some important objects stuck somewhere unreachable.

While not being a masterpiece, Secrets of Raetikon is an interesting game with a great atmosphere.

Awesome game with good controls and amazing graphics!

Control a birdman and learn of history of the land by deciphering the ancient runestones.

Perfect game to play when you are looking for something fresh!

If you are looking for a memorable, but quick, game this is a great choice. The style fits well and the game delivers enjoyable exploration with a unique-yet familiar- feel.

Awesome game, creative and full of things to do, I do encourage for people to buy this.

beautiful game

Crushed a family of bunnies with boulder.

10/10 would crush again

I really enjoy this game! People who only focus on the cons, and while there are some, the pros decimate the cons by a longshot.

PRO'S:
- Amazing level design
- Great graphics
- Full controller support
- Level Editor
- Achievments
- And epic story!
CON'S:
- No multiplayer
- A bit frustrating.

People only play for 2 mins, say the graphics suck, and leave. It's the same thing people say about Minecraft. Play this game! I recommend this game!

Astonishingly beautiful game with the most ♥♥♥♥ed up ending of all time.

Again an really beautiful game!
Very nice gameplay.
Truly art.

Whike I have issues due to my graphics card being a piece of poop, this game was a lot of fun and game me an excuse to get my controller out again.

Sweet little game.
Beautiful design. I can't say much about the story cause I didn't bother to translate the runestones scattered throught
the game world which I will do on my second run.

Controller-Support seems wonky so I played with keyboard.

8/10
Absolutly worth the money
Controller-Support needs improvment
No Replay-Value (yet?)

The game is absolutely stunning. The controls, once you get used to them, are amazing. The purely-triangular art style is amazing. The enemies may, at some times, be annoying, yet are amazing nevertheless. The only thing that can come as a shock for such an amazing game is the end, which you will remember forever. Want to see it? Play the game. I will only say one thing: it is absolutely unexpected, and it will leave you wanting to know what. Buy this game now.