Museum of Mechanics: Lockpicking (itch) review

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by Kyle Weber

Yes, it's basically just an unfinished proof-of-concept for showcasing various video game techniques, but I didn't think the game ended up being a good medium for either discussing different technical decisions or showcasing different lockpicking techniques.  The lockpicking games themselves are very buggy (I managed to break two of them), and most of the analysis is not interactive at all and is just a wall of text.  The UI and visual appearance of browsing the text wasn't well done either, and it didn't utilize the options for conveying information that interactivity affords. 

If you weren't familiar with the lockpicking mechanics in the different games presented, you wouldn't really have a sense of what makes them special with the extremely minimalistic presentation (e.g., audio cues or visual styling are actually important for some of the games featured here and stripping them out doesn't give you an idea of how these mechanics "work").  If you were familiar with them, you'd probably prefer to just play the game again to remember how the mechanic works.

I get I'm not a developer so I'm not the intended audience of this game, but I am way more interested than the average game player in video game design.  Since I didn't find it very informative, I can't imagine that someone with more video game design experience (who was particularly interested in adding lockpicking to their game) would either. Overall, very disappointing and a waste of the talent the developer has shown in other games.