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83 of 85 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
First impressions can be deceiving!, August 20, 2003
An actual letter sent to the developer, Knut Mueller:Dear Mr. Mueller, My wife and I would like to extend our deepest gratitude to you for creating such a wonderful adventure game. We have been avid players of adventure games for several years now and, like many others, we got hooked on the genre by playing Myst and Riven. Even to this very day, those two games have been the standard by which we judged all subsequent games. On our list of favorites, your game is now in the same strata as those other two. In the years since Myst and Riven, adventure games have gone through an incredible metamorphosis. Each one trying to outdo its predecessors in game-tech ("eye-candy" graphics, lush soundtracks and mesmerizing plots). While I, too, can appreciate the work that went into these games (Schizm and Exile, for example, were absolutely, drop-dead gorgeous), in the end, they all felt like they missed out on being truly good games. Mostly it was because the developers failed to integrate good, challenging puzzles into their games. To make their puzzles seem difficult, they would often times resort to pixel-hunting or poorly-conceived "lateral-thinking" puzzles. All the lateral thinking in the world couldn't come up with what they were after most times. Hardly a game went by where my wife and I didn't have to resort to getting hints or checking a walk-through to help us past some of these stinker puzzles. In RHEM, we never once had to take a peek at a hint or walk-through. That is not to say that all of the puzzles in RHEM were too easy. Some of them were quite hard, in fact, but overall they were the best, most integrated puzzles we have seen since Riven. We got really stuck in a few places, but each time we resisted the urge to find help because we knew, up to that point, the rest of the game had made perfect sense and we were just missing some crucial, but obvious, clue from somewhere else. After finally figuring these tough ones out, my wife and I were often hugging each other or giving each other high-fives! And, at the end of the game, we were truly disappointed that it was over because we were having so much fun. Other reviewers have said they were put off by the "low-tech" look and feel of your game. Initially, we kind of felt the same way after playing so many of the spit-and-polished games recently. But, that feeling quickly faded once we saw the true beauty of it. Soon we weren't even missing the background music, lush 3-D graphics and full-motion videos of the other games (and don't get me started on the voices and actors!). We were totally absorbed in the puzzles within puzzles on top of puzzles. One other thing these reviewers obviously didn't realize was that this game was developed entirely by one single person. That is a huge feat in today's world. We hear that you are hard at work on a sequel to RHEM and eagerly await the results. We know that, being an independent developer, it will probably take a while to finish it. But, some things are worth the wait. In the mean time, we will continue to support the first-person adventure game genre by playing the other games coming out soon, but I will wager that none of them will fulfill our high standards until we play your next offering. Best regards,
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