Halver is a minimalist physics-based puzzle game about a rectangle on the most important quest of them all – to reach the level exit. Designed to require the use of your brain cells as much as it needs perfect timing for the jumps and block-pushing, it does so without bells and whistles to offer a simple yet appealing blueprint visual style with a charm of its own. Recommended for fans of puzzle games, Halver more than delivers on what the crowd is asking for, which is simplicity at the service of fun and mind stimulus.

Block Party

The levels in Halver are created with significant attention to detail, often small spaces where every wall, every step is measured to the extreme, preventing you from cheating your way to the end. This doesn’t mean that you don’t have the occasional opportunity to improvise your way through the stage, mainly when you have bullets to spend and carve your path through destroyed blocks, but most of the time it’s about a keen eye for perception, interpretation, and execution. It’s a dream come true for players who love challenging themselves, bolstered by a dreamlike soundtrack that almost transports you to another place inside your mind.

Despite looking simple, Halver actually has a lot of things going for it in each scene. It’s a fairly busy background for the puzzles, sometimes high-tech but still a very clean and readable one, with some levels that can be a breeze to solve by a few well-time jumps; others, however, require your full attention and the use of many props that are gradually introduced as you progress, from areas that allow for double-jumps, lava pits, raindrops, and enemies that chase you around, among other devilish concoctions.

The title Halver isn’t a random choice; it’s based on your rectangle’s – or hero, as it’s called – ability to shoot bullets that halve other blocks, consecutively, always with symmetric perfection until they finally disappear. This isn’t something to be taken for granted, as you are assigned a limited number of bullets per stage, whenever so, often to the point where one missed or wrongly used shot leaves you no choice but to press that restart button and try again. Once in a while you may find one of those more enjoyable stages where you have dozens of bullets and need to halve your path through endless blocks, shooting them in ways that still allow you to use the resulting ones as platforms to reach the exit. Physics work nicely and are a joy to experiment with, and you’ll have to get the hang of it as this is something that will be an integral part of the solution for many stages, if not all.

But no matter how much polish and thought you can get into a puzzle game like this one, it leans too much towards the unforgiving side – make one mistake and it’s over. Approach the final section with a slip of the finger and there’s no option but to give up and start all over. There are very limited hints to use, but no undo button whatsoever, which would be a heavenly thing to have – better yet, make it a rewind feature that you could use a few times per level, avoiding the boredom of having to restart from scratch. Unfortunately, this idea that could literally halve the game’s frustration wasn’t implemented.

There aren’t many levels to beat, 48 so far, but completing them fully is another thing, as each one includes several light dots to be collected. When you’re done, it’s time to create your own designs in the level editor, a feature that wasn’t yet implemented in this review build.

Blocks of Patience

A genuinely interesting puzzle game with a defined personality beyond its deceiving simplicity, Halver is a good addition to the library of any players looking for a game to challenge their wits. It’s not going to last you an eternity, but the feeling of completing one more stage and the promises or additional random stages are not to be ignored. This is the rare type of game where squares are hip, so become the hero and show the others that you can halve your way through the exit.

Pros:

• A solid physics-based puzzler
• Strong minimalist visual identity
• Level editor for more creations

Cons:

• One mistake and it’s a restart; could have a rewind ability
• 48 levels for now seems a bit on the slim side

Rating: 8/10