N.E.R.D Review

                Developed and published by Forever Entertainment S.A, N.E.R.D  is a puzzle game with some drama and a thriller theme. If high tension with a thick claustrophobic feel gets your juices flowing then this game may pique your interest.

You play the part of a husband who is a bit of a jerk. Its his wedding anniversary and he is late and unpleasant. After the evening plays out your wife is abducted and you are knocked unconscious. You are then placed in a compact room and confronted by your abductor in a mask and scary movie style modified voice. This action is carried out in FMV sequences with some questionable acting at times. I appreciate the craft and realism it adds to scenario to try and make the feel of the game more impactful. The tormentor in the mask is confronting you about your jerk behaviour and wants to test you by making you solve a puzzle to save your wife. But you have to do so in a timely manner otherwise the toxic gas he is pumping into the room will eventually kill you.

                There is no hand holding in this game and some if not most of the puzzles are down right confusing. You are starved of information other than you are a jerk who needs to step up and save the day. Every puzzle around the small room you are in is connected to your life and relationship with your wife, but you are not given this information beforehand. You are supposed to believe your character is such a scumbag he doesn’t know or remember anything about his wife. When and where they met, what her favourite drink is, her favourite writer and what music they like. He seems to know nothing making it really hard to motivate yourself in helping such an unsavoury character save his wife who he seems to not know a thing about.

                But the more you play and the masked man torments you, the more that seems to be the theme of the game. He has to re-discover his life with her and understand the bad things he has done to her and how bad he has treated her. So, you have to trawl through your phone finding messages from your family, looking at the calendar for important dates and just literally trying to scrape every piece of information you can to help progress some of the puzzles.

                I myself am more of a logic puzzler. I can enjoy escape room games. But this is not like those, this leans more into the dark atmosphere of the game. Every time you turn or interact with something you see a FMV sequence with some acting in it. It becomes a bit tedious and distracting when you cover the same ground and see the same repeated clips. The atmosphere starts to lose its lustre and I find myself hoping my character gets gassed out as it feels like he deserves it. It also loses some of the thriller aspect the way the character walks around with his hands out in front of him like a zombie or someone playing with a VR headset for the first time.

                The time you get to solve all the puzzles isn’t long enough really, especially for the type of puzzles you have to solve. You can continue and extend the timer if you are struggling – which I very much was. I have some patience with these kinds of games, but when too much of it becomes trial and error my patience and enjoyment wears incredibly thin. This game cried out for a hint button as I found myself unable to get out of the first of the 3 rooms available. There are only so many times where you can read the same text messages and emails over and over and not get anywhere.

                Some of the puzzles feel more point and click mouse based, like the TV remote control puzzle. You don’t really know what buttons work or do anything and there is clearly a pattern you need to solve so pressing anything and everything becomes a chore very quickly, especially when you see yourself getting mocked and gassed out over and over.

                I understand the need to make puzzle games tricky as they usually have little replay value when you have solved it once. I know there are 3 rooms to go through as well so if I found the first room that tough, I imagine the ride only gets rougher from there. But if there are no hint options you run the risk of frustration and boredom overtaking enjoyment. There is an argument that perseverance and progress is more rewarding when its challenging. But to me that applies to skill-based games or games with logic. This is more akin to a mobile escape room puzzle where you aimlessly click on anything and everything and hope for the best as interest starts to fade.

Conclusion

N.E.R.D does deliver a thick creepy atmosphere. You’ve been captured and punished into play a survival game in a style of the Saw movies with impending doom. You get locked in to the drama and want to solve the puzzles. But clunky repetitive FMV clips begin to chip away at the atmosphere and overly tricky puzzles with little logic and more trial and error may leave you feeling that death by gas is happy ending after all.

This game was reviewed based on the Xbox Series S/X release played on Series S|X. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. The reviewer purchased the title.