‘n Verlore Verstand

‘n Verlore Verstand is an abstract puzzle platformer played from a first-person perspective. It consists of several dream-like environments and in each of them the goal is to reach a tree to move on to the next level. Controls always consist of movement, jumping and crouching, but each environment has different mechanics. There are sometimes ways to interact and also different gravity levels. Many of the levels encourage exploration, there is a lot of platform jumping and a large amount of environment based puzzles to solve.

After a short introduction for the tree, the first main level is a cramped series of hallways in an old house. There is a maze-like structure with rotating rooms and trap doors. The second environment consists of white rocks floating in the sky, connected through bridges. There are moving platforms and fires are used to alter the environment, creating bridges to progress. There third environment is a road at night, with trucks coming up in front or from behind, crashing into obstacles at the end in an endless cycle. The character needs to avoid the trucks driving at a high speed. The next environment is similar to the second one, but with a different setting. There are no fires in this one, but platforms that disappear when the character stands on them for too long and there are also platforms moving vertically. In the next level the character is suddenly huge, in a city-environment with skyscrapers. By jumping between them the tree can be reached in a high spot, but there is also a puzzle to get the towers to move. The final environment is set at dusk with the tree looming in the distance. It is possible to move towards it right away, but giant columns drop down from the sky, crushing the character. These need to be avoided or the level is restarted.

In most levels the character dies often by missing jumps. There are checkpoints and an unlimited amount of continues. Aside from the environments themselves, there is no further story to the game. After completing all levels once, a second cycle is started with more difficult variations of the initial set of levels.