Short Version: It’s pretty good, but we’ve seen many of its kind before. It’s pretty well made and the puzzle solving is fun, along with some charming music, sound and fantastic art and animation. We’ve been through this song and dance before, but none can deny how well made and full of heart it is. If you are looking for an easy to consume, but very solid puzzle game, I say you give this one a go.

Long Version: Artsy puzzle games with vague stories and soft music are a dime a dozen on Steam, especially now when it’s so easy to create the foundation for a game and work on it with a handful of people. For every piece of successful work, there will always be hundreds of imitators who will try to share in that same success. Due to this, it is always difficult to discover the diamonds within the enormous waves of puzzle games with vague stories and soft music; also accompanied by puzzle platformers where everything is a silhouette and has soft piano music in the background. She Remembered Caterpillars is a pretty good one of those.

Color-Coded

Developed by Jumpsuit Entertainment UG, She Remembered Caterpillars takes you through 40 puzzles in which you need to take adorable looking, color-coded creatures from point A to point B to beat the level. Many of the elements in the puzzles are also color-coded such as bridges and gates, which combined with the colored characters, can create a set of rules that makes the puzzles more intricate and head scratching, but very fun to go through.

It is fun simply due to the fact that it has very good pacing. Most games of this nature (that I have played, at least) tend to start by giving the player a simple tutorial or a few easy levels. After that, the difficulty takes a sharp turn and leaves me struggling very quickly, to the point that I get sick of playing, shut the game off and probably never go back to it again. She Remembered Caterpillars becomes the complete opposite of that by very carefully feeding you new mechanics bit by bit, rather than overwhelming you with really tough levels, and then using that as a selling point to brag about how “hardcore” they are.

Soothing Brain-Bending

By barely saying any words, the game effectively communicates what you are suppose to do and what new additions to the gameplay you have to work with. The game doesn’t punish you for banging your head against the wall and feeling stuff out, since there really isn’t any death or punishment for not solving the puzzle; you simply don’t progress to the next level if you don’t figure it out. There aren’t any time limits, star ratings or opposition at all, which means that anyone can go through all the puzzles and understand the new mechanics at their own pace with no pressure, making the game significantly more fun. You will definitely need that relaxing atmosphere, because the game will get really hard after a certain point, like most puzzle games tend to go.

Going back to the atmosphere, I think it’s outstanding and personally found it more enjoyable than the actual puzzles themselves. In what the Steam store page calls a “fungipunk aesthetic,” the game looks like something out of a fantasy picture book, with beautiful animations and bright colors that properly distinguish background from foreground. This, along with the soothing soundtrack makes for a pleasant atmosphere, potentially granting you more patience when head-scratching your way through the later puzzles.

It Makes The Grade

When thinking of this experience as a whole, It makes me think that maybe this game would’ve been much more popular if it had come out during 2007-2009, when independent games started to reach an audience and a level of relevance to the point that most people don’t make any distinctions between an indie game and a “normal” game anymore. It is the oversaturation of imitators and copycats that make the same kind of game, looking for the same type of success, that will inevitably make She Remembered Caterpillars a difficult game to either find or not dismiss. However, I am here to tell you all that I recommend it. If this kind of game interests you, then this is a good one of those. Go check it out!