Carto

Knew I would love this game and I don't know why it took me so long to grab it. Such a lovely time with more surprises than you'd expect. They really make the most of the gameplay mechanics, and the story is endearing the entire time. A great sprinkling of fantasy and whimsy as well.

Carto is a short puzzle game with an interesting mechanic of moving the map's tile pieces around to change your landscape and manipulate your environment. Some puzzles are a bit obtuse, but overall this is a short ~5 to 6 hour game that's worth a playthrough.

Carto is a very cute puzzle game where you explore the world as Carto, trying to find your grandma you got separated from. Along the way you meet quirky characters and use your mapping abilities to rotate and put together map pieces on a separate screen to open paths or solve puzzles. The presentation is cute with an artstyle that's very nice on the eyes, and the music is soothing. It's only a few hours long as well and never gets too difficult. Overall Carto does a good job at guiding the player to figure out what the puzzle solutions are and how map pieces fit together without explicitly spelling out the solution. The only area I found annoying was the second-to-last area, but other than that the puzzles were fairly easy and intuitive. The only problem I have with the game is that it took me several months to finish even though it's just four hours, mostly because it's very boring, I hate to say. There isn't much challenge and something about the game made it hard for me to play without getting incredibly bored after just twenty minutes. For four hours or less, though, that's barely tolerable and it's still a good time if only because it's a cozy puzzler with a cute artstyle and a heartwarming story, but I would wait for a sale.