The Long Gate

The Long Gate bills itself as "…a challenging and elaborate puzzle game with puzzles based on real world physics and circuits." If any of those words frighten you, stay away, as its elaborate level setup and first-person point of view complicate things even further. But if you're within its target audience, it could be one of the most rewarding logic puzzle games you've played in quite some time.

The Long Gate took the fun parts of my Computer Science degree and mashed it back in with the tedious stuff. The puzzles are good, the world built around them is fantastic, but the marriage of the two is one destined for divorce. This type of first-person puzzler just doesn't work for me. Keep the First Person to the Shooters, and keep the puzzlers top down. I commend the attempt and vision of the game, but for me it was a combination doomed to fail.

There is an audience for The Long Gate and unfortunately, I’m not it, and unless you have an engineering background or enjoy this specific type of puzzle game, it’s a hard sell for the mainstream audience. It’s not a bad game and there’s a lot to appreciate in this puzzler, but appreciation doesn’t necessarily lead to enjoyment.

The Long Gate is not a bad game by any means, but it has some prerequisites for the player that not everyone can meet. If you exceed those requirements, there will be a series of challenging and satisfying puzzles in a mysterious environment that have enough to be worth it, but you are definitely dependent on getting past that wall. That the port to Nintendo Switch is very limited does not help.

While I firmly believe that there is value in The Long Gate, it is hard to recommend the Switch be the place you play it. It's unfortunate as there doesn't appear to be any reason the Switch version should run this badly. The Switch is an excellent platform for this type of game; unfortunately, the same engineering effort that went into the puzzle design doesn't appear to have made it to the port itself.

There's no doubt that at this point taking things in new directions or presenting them in uncommon ways is one of the best ways to differentiate yourself in a crowded eShop...

The Long Gate can be fun when it works, but a lot of the time it winds up being a frustrating experience for those without knowledge of circuits implemented in this fashion. This is not built for all gamers, and instead is better suited to those that understand a fair bit about math and engineering. Those with a in-depth understanding of how this circuitry works to begin with will get a lot more out of it, and probably have a blast with the more difficult challenges. The Long Gate's finer points are sadly lost on those of us without an advanced scientific background, however.