Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Game
Game2018
The Spectrum Retreat
Developer Dan Smith Studios
The Spectrum Retreat is a 2018 video game for PlayStation 4, Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. It was developed by Dan Smith from the age of 15, over a five-year period. The game was made noteworthy by the young age at which Smith was able to develop the game and secure a publishing deal. From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
207 reactions from 3 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky, Lemmy) · newest Sep 27, 2026 · last updated Oct 8, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
72
Fresh
142 positive · 55 negative
95% range 65–78%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 142 | 55 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Lemmy * | 0 | 0 | 0 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
10 newer reactions are still waiting for a label.
Steam's own rating
Mostly Positive
234 of 309 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What people are saying
A decent puzzle game with a strong story, but pacing and repetition hold it back.
Many players praise the game's story and puzzle design, calling it 'intriguing' and 'well-polished'. The narrative is described as 'compelling' and 'emotional', with good voice acting and atmosphere. [3][7][13][21]
However, common criticisms include slow walking speed, repetitive gameplay, and technical issues like soft locks. Some find the story predictable and the hotel exploration tedious. [1][9][27][35]
Praised story · puzzle design · atmosphere · voice acting
Criticised slow walking speed · repetitive gameplay · technical issues · tedious exploration
Summary drafted by an AI model from the 36 reactions it cites ([n] links open each post), then checked by code: every paragraph cites real posts and every quote is verbatim. Written Oct 8, 2026. Method
Reactions
60 of 207 · most liked firstIt was a nice, short puzzle game, but I really can't recommend it. The game itself is divided into two sections; first you explore the hotel to find a passcode, then you use that passcode to enter a series of portal-style puzzle rooms. Simple enough. The hotel exploration is definitely lacking. The entire time I'm sitting there, begging for a sprint key. (In fact you move at about half the speed you do in the puzzles, for no real reason.) Cool, physics-bending designs are ruined by the fact…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Sure, it's no Portal, but I'm happy that I played it, despite the flaws. The criticisms in the negative reviews are valid: * the walking pace is slow * there are some tedious repetitive elements * the story is a bit formulaic * the core puzzle mechanic starts to feel a bit monotonous * some of the more interesting exploration puzzles are annoyingly spoon-fed to you * there are some frustrating "soft locks" that force you to restart a puzzle That said, the comments about "rage quitting"…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I wanted to like this game. It's stylish, the voiceover work is excellent, and the puzzles, once you get to them are pretty good fun. But when I have to walk to one end of the unnecessarily maze-like hotel for the mandatory breakfast scene, then up to the 2nd floor looking for the next set of puzzles, only to be told I need to go back to the lobby for the next clue, then back up for the puzzles? Ugh, put in a sprint button and I might reinstall.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A decent lateral thinking puzzler/walking sim a la Portal. Unfortunately a few flaws make it hard to fully recommend. The story is not very subtle or clever. If you're genre-aware and you read all of the offered notes, you'll be well ahead of most of the developments. Even as walking simulators go, the environments are stretched out so that long dialogues can play out. Later on, with no in-universe justification, the game just starts teleporting you closer to objectives to reduce the…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game tries really hard to be the next Portal but fails on some really important counts. Pros : The narrative is griping. It compels the tedium forward and you really want to get to the end, and the narrative is interwoven with the gameplay mechanics in meaningful ways Cons : The game already makes you walk in circles for a puzzle you already know how to complete. For example at one point you find a locked door with a keypad. You need to walk all the way to the furthest point in the map,…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is pretty good. Generally there are more positive than negative things to say about it, but it does feel like there was a lot of potential left unedeveloped in both the gameplay and the story. Pros The puzzles are interesting, fun and increase in difficulty at a good pace. The art is nicely done and the voice acting is good. Some reviewers have complained about backtracking however as this is part of the plot and is helped in later levels I didn't find it that bad. Cons Unfortuately…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →While not a bad game per se, this is not a good game either. It's mediocre. The game has two parts, the puzzle part, and the misery/story part. The puzzle part is limited. There are five sets of puzzles. The first four either introduce or introduce and iterate on a mechanic. The fifth is the only real puzzle, and that one suffers from the problem of being too long. Since each level has a failure state, that doesn't work in it's favor. As for the story part. It tries, it really does, but it…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Nope. This game is an exercise in tedium and unoriginality. It's a shame because I started out liking the atmosphere of this game. It feels like they had a team with pretty good game development skills and zero new ideas. At some point I begin to wonder if indie devs keep coming up with this tired, overused story idea individually and just don't realize that others have beaten it to death, or if they know how often it's used and keep doing it anyway. I'll tag any direct story spoilers, but I…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's a puzzle adventure that sprinkles a bit of philosophy into its narrative. It doesn't break new ground, and the pacing can feel sluggish at times, but there's a quiet simplicity to it—neat and unpretentious.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's been a while since first person environmental puzzle (a.k.a. Portalesque) game this good has been released. In my opinion, it's weaker than Talos Principle and The Witness (the two greats) as well as Mind: Path to Thalamus, and Antichamber, but it's better than Q.U.B.E., Q.U.B.E.2, Qubeh-1, and .T.E.S.T: Expected Behaviour, not to mention story-less BLIK. It's also better, but not by much, than the Turing Test both in terms of puzzles and story. The brilliant NaissanceE and Vanishing of…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →🔴All of the colors in the game were replaced with rainbows... I think it's trying to tell me something... Playing The Spectrum Retreat in the Astral Labyrinth, so come hang out! www.twitch.tv/beau_astra #AstraLive #VTuber #VSky #TheSpectrumRetreat #VFur 🎨: @/zzzephyrvt.bsky.social
unlabelledView post →No checkpoints at 5 stage final puzzle. It represents several normal puzzIes in a row. In case you did something wrong you need to start all over from that first one (5-10 min repeating puzzles thatt you solved already). Don't even want to know what inside the head of designer who made this decition, I'm sure it is sad and spooky picture. Also want to mention female voice. Actress acts horrorbly, she overacts, constatly making sound like somebody strangulates her or she has covid in last stage.…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The Spectrum Retreat is a good first-person puzzle game, with some mechanics similar to Portal and Q.U.B.E.. The best part: the level design is quite good. On the other hand, the exploration part (you need to search for keys to access the next level of puzzles) is pretty mediocre. Also, the optimization of the game leaves much to be desired, and the story is no big deal either. In any case, if you like the genre it is an interesting option for the quality of its puzzles (buy it on sale, it…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game has too many soft locks that make you have to restart the puzzle. It's tedious, but didn't bother me too much until the last puzzle which is a longer one that has soft locks every step of the way. Its a puzzle game that punishes you for playing.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Pro: -nice story idea con: -mediocre graphics with boring art style -story only really picks up in the last few puzzles -only has a few good/complicated puzzles, the rest are more or less the same idea over and over again -no unique puzzle mechanics or unique ways of applying a known mechanic -walking in the non puzzle sections is frustrating due to the low walking speed and confusing same looking corridors -only 3-4 hours long Nothing about this game is really special or better than other…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Plays like a worse version of Superliminal with the wake-puzzle-sleep routine. The story-line is irrelevant to the puzzles and plays out too slow and boring to be of any interest. Walk speed is less than half of what it should be. Overall very mild. Could've played into the horror a bit more. Hated the forced gender roles and the fakeout twist of the player potentially being a murderer, even though the wife was played as a villain for most of the story. Would've been better with just the…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →While not on a challenge you're running on long and empty halls to reach some doors to do some boring challenges to complete them to return to the long and empty halls to reach some doors to do some boring challenges and so on. And PLEASE, optimise this game. It lags and stutters like hell.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Short but intriguing. The plot is a little predictable halfway through, but the puzzles are good and the horror tone builds nicely to a satisfying creepiness. If you can get it on sale, definitely do.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game will help you appreciate how good other narrative-based puzzle games are by comparison. The puzzles are mostly tedious and have absolutely nothing to do with story being told. And the story, incidentally, is quite weak. I might still have recommended this game to fans of the genre if the game didn't constantly allow me to softlock the puzzles, with no quick-save or undo. The puzzles are already repetitive, but it reached boiling point when I had to replay the first two thirds of…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really enjoyed this game, it surprised me with how good it was, and well designed. Highly recommended actually. A bit short maybe, but the price I feel is right for the length. It did have an issue at first where half the achievements were broken, but that has recently been fixed by the developer removing all the broken ones. If it weren't for this 1 thing I would have said the game had no bugs or problems, however it has now been fixed, so it's hard to even call this a fault. Would…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Hello everyone. This game is/was free on Epic June 24 - Jully 1, 2021 It is not a bad game, but it is not too excited one, so is it worth your time? Michal's answer: NO Caleb's answer: YES Visit us on https://www.youtube.com/shouldyouplayit/
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →EDIT as of June 15, 2021: The developer seems to have removed the non-functioning achievements - Thank you!** Overall, it's just meh. The puzzles don't seem to relate to the story, and the story isn't my thing. Walking is painfully slow and having to double-back repeatedly to progress the story is tedious. The puzzles often require you to restart if you get trapped, which is especially apparent in the last level of the game. I don't think the puzzle mechanics are quite on par with games like…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Howdy folks! I'm Dan, a Game Designer and writer. I created The Spectrum Retreat on PC/Xbox/PS and Switch. Currently working on some more fun stuff. Happy to see faces, familiar and new, away from the other place! 🎊
unlabelledView post →I liked the creepy mystery in the hotel-proper, and I liked the color manipulation puzzles, but ultimately it felt like I was alternating back and forth between two different games. The hotel portion repeatedly makes you hike back and forth as you unlock new areas; it feels like a design choice that was meant to pad for time. I'm guessing there was a lot of tester feedback about it after the map was already set in stone, because instead of reworking the layout to make it feel organically…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Rarely have I been this bored playing a game. This game has 1 puzzle. No seriously you do the same puzzle over and over: You have to get through a series of colored walls and have to set up alternating colors to pick up ahead of time. Sometimes the walls are jump pads, sometimes there are moving blocks and sometimes there even is a 3rd color, dare you dream! Story land and puzzle land exist on 2 different planes and don't actually interact much. Either you slowly walk through an easy puzzle…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP4d... Heya folks, here's a First 10 Minutes video featuring an indie puzzle game called The Spectrum Retreat by Dan Smith Studios and Ripstone. #thespectrumretreat #videogames #indiegames #puzzlegames #first10minutes #gameplay
unlabelledView post →The Spectrum Retreat is a puzzle game, where you play as a man named Alex as he woke up in a mysterious hotel run by robots. Later he receives a call from a woman named Cooper saying that something's wrong, and it is better if he were to escape. To escape, he must find 5 door codes for special rooms on each floor, which lead to a series of test chamber-like areas, and solve them. The main puzzle mechanic here is basically carrying colors. You will have a handheld device that absorbs the color…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →solid 4/5 stars. great puzzle design. actually made me feel nervous once or twice because of the lobby progression. would recommend to those who like spatial puzzles.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Started off in a cold hotel with no real direction, then after finding a random table and entering 1 code, it switched to a weird color puzzle game, that just got more and more difficult. Identity crisis. Horrible.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →So I would also recommend Antichamber, Manifold Garden, and Unfinished Swan. I would also add the following: **What Remains of Edith Finch** - while technically a walking simulator it really does provoke a child like sense of exploration while providing a very adult storyline. **Thomas was Alone** - this is a platformer at heart but the minimalist design, innovative mechanics, and great storytelling make this game a must play. **The Spectrum Retreat** - this is technically a Portal clone but…
unlabelledView post →I completed this game originally on Switch this year. I had to get it on PC as well because it is exceptional. I love puzzle games. More specifically, I love first person puzzle games. Even more specifically, I love sci-fi first person puzzle games. The Spectrum Retreat is up there with The Witness, The Turing Test, The Talos Principle, and Q.U.B.E. and you should totally buy it if you like any of those games. Sure, the whole untrustworthy narrator and "are you being lied to or not?" story hook…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Great game! Perfect level of difficulty. Compelling story. Interesting mechanics.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The setting is a vehicle for the puzzles. That's it. There's almost no meshing between the puzzles and the environment. After the first set of (mind-bogglingly easy) puzzles, I said to myself "If the next section is more bleeding light puzzles I'm quitting" and it was. Exploring the hotel is interesting, the puzzles are not.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I was making steady progress with this game and was about to have another go at puzzle 4_08, when I accidentally selected "New Game" instead of "Restart Challenge" in the main menu AND THE GAME IMMEDIATELY NUKED MY SAVEGAME WITHOUT A CONFIRMATION DIALOG. After confirming there was no way to recover my progress, I thought for a minute if it would be worth the effort to play the game again just to get back to where I was and see it through to the end - and to me it's quite clear that it's not.…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →[url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/9686972/]Follow "First Person Exploration and Puzzle Games" for more games like this! Firstly, the game has horrible performance. When it first came out it was literally unplayable on even the best machines. Now it's playable on high-end rigs, but the microstuttering is still terrible. This game shares a problem that most other puzzle games have: the puzzles don't really get harder, just bigger. There are no new "aha!" moments in the later puzzles,…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Competent if easy puzzles wrapped up in a story that thinks it's cleverer and more subtle than it actually is. Whilst the puzzles are alright, good even, they don't take long and the game is padded out by an obvious and largely uninteresting story which requires a large amount of backtracking. Also the voice over dosn't allow for even the slightest bit of exploration before explaining the solution to the Retreat's puzzles.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →From what little I got to play of the puzzles, they seem alright, but boy oh boy is everything surrounding them unpleasant. Bizarre, nauseating low-framerate feel to the graphics, even though it says it's performing well over acceptable FPS. No change at all even when turning the graphics down or trying what few tips I could find to fix this. This alone makes the game barely tolerable... But then there's also the forced walking sections in between chunks of puzzles. Man, these are bad.…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The Spectrum Retreat is a bizarre game that is quite uneven, and yet it’s somehow captivating. I will have to split the game into two parts: the exploring part and the puzzle part. Why the split? Let me try to explain it to you. Let me start with the puzzle part of the game. Puzzles are based on simple mechanics; you have a device that lets you use colors. They let you pass matching-color barriers and teleport. At some point, you will be introduced to room rotation, which will spice things up…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is sort of like 2 games combined into one. The puzzles are decent, and if you are a real puzzle-head they will be enjoyable. But the real star is the story. This way that the mystery unfolds and the manner in which they tell the story are excellent. That part was good enough to be a stand-alone game. I truly enjoyed this. None of the puzzles are super-hard, but they are not easy either. A medium level of difficulty for the puzzles. But the story experience is wonderful.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is slow, I mean really really Fn slow. Like a walking simulator for quadriplegics. The graphics are fine, the voice acting is pretty good, but the speed of the game is so so MFN painful. If you're like me and love these type of puzzle games you're probably gonna get this on sale, but buyer beware you will curse the day as you crawl down halls, wishing you could run, asking why doesn't the CTRL key work, why cant I run.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A well-polished puzzle game with a great story! It will probably freeze a few times, particularly on certain unusual transitions. A restart unfroze it for me. The ending is not as ambiguous as I think the devs intended... It makes it clear that Alex usually gets to the choice by himself. Without help, this likely results in him becoming the same person again. However, since Cooper interrupted this cycle and accelerates his potential escape, the memories don't re-surface in the same natural…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game is extremely boring. You have to execute simple orders and there are some puzzles, which are not very logical. I finished level 1, hoping that maybe next level will be more fun, but it was not so I will just leave the game.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The Spectrum Retreat is an excellent puzzle game that weaves an interesting, strong narrative with solid puzzle design. The game can be completed in around ~4.5 hours, and never overstays it's welcome. The whole experience was very polished, with great visuals, rich sound design and just the right amount of creepy vibes (although this game is not a horror game.) The puzzles are interesting and develop nicely in terms of mechanics and difficulty. They aren't too difficult, but some of them will…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →An actual good puzzle game with more than just puzzles, it has some very good story beats to follow that kept me hooked more than the actual puzzles. Easy to learn mechanics, decent game play loop, good difficulty curve and enough variety to keep you entertained as you go from story bit to story bit. Not a long game, can be completed very quickly, but this game has a lot of good moments that stick out. Note: It is no Portal, but definitely a diamond in the rough
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I bought it for 50 cents and I consider this game worth the time I spent on it. Although it gets pretty repetitive, it has a somewhat interesting story, nice puzzles and good voice acting. I also enjoyed the soundtrack. As far as the difficulty is concerned I would say it's average.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →There's puzzles to enjoy, and fiddle with, but the design gets in the way of a steady game and doesn't seem to have confidence for the player to find solutions or to deliver a powerful narrative themselves.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Lots of the reviews talk about how it mixes narrative and puzzle solving together, but it keeps them almost entirely separate. There are "flashbacks" and small documents you can read in the puzzles to flesh out the playable characters story but they are repetetive and don't add much. There are small collectibles in the hotel sections that give you the backstory but it pieced together out of order over the couurse of the whole game. You walk slowly (really really slowly) around a hotel in the…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Pros: - reasonable price for 4-5 hours of gameplay - interesting mechanics which are introduced at a good pace - engaging enough to make you want to play in one sitting - puzzles challenging but not too hard - gameplay almost flawless Cons: - rarely the game will bug out and you have to restart in order to get level transitions to load - walking is rather slow - story wasn't that interesting / good (but it's a puzzle game so who cares) Conclusion: If you like first-person puzzle games you…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is the sort of game I really should have liked. The puzzles are solid, and the atmosphere is what I generally look for in a game. However, the entire experience was consistently ruined by a lack of polish that was hard to get past. The overall game is broken into two segments. Hotel exploration, and puzzles. The hotel exploration is incredibly painful the entire game. You move absurdly slow for no apparent reason. The exploration is also ruined by the NPC companion. She constantly bugs…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Full Impressions Video: https://youtu.be/c5jo4cYMQO4?t=10m07s What happens when a superintelligence takes on hospitality? In the Netflix series, Altered Carbon, AI hotels have not seen a single customer in half a century. Why? They’re “too clingy”. The Spectrum Retreat’s narrative revolves around this central question and comes to a similar conclusion. If an AI’s goal is to get a patron to stay as long as possible, how far will they go to meet that objective? This games spins a beautiful and…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →First-person puzzler with great storytelling. The puzzles are the right level of challenging and are satisfying to complete. Only takes about 4 and a half hours to play through. Too short for full price but well worth it when you find it on sale for 70% off.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is a pretty difficult game to beat, tbh. I don't know the people who says it is "easy" -- are you trolling or something? This is not easy, it requires high IQ to make it fast. Personally, I take +22% than the average to beat.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It is a decent enough first person puzzler to recommend playing, even though I have some nitpicks to its structure. Due to the nature of the puzzle elements, it is very easy to 'brick' yourself inside a puzzle without any indication, having to restart the whole puzzle. It's usually not a big deal, as the puzzles are pretty short, but the last puzzle of the game spans a few pretty big rooms with no checkpoints, so if you mess up with a puzzle piece, get stuck in the jumping physics or…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Now you are thinking with colours
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →fun atmosphere. too small brain for the puzzles though
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →As much as I like this game, I would have to agree with some others. If you think you enjoy the aesthetic and want a relatively short puzzle game, go for it, but I say go for it when it's on sale, and if you have a decent to good computer. First-person walking puzzle game. The story is intriguing (sort of simple, though), but expect to take your time because of how slow the game makes, and sometimes expects, you to move. Atmospherically, it's wonderful, but the pace is a little off. The puzzle…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Interesting story, good puzzles and pretty scenery. Would like a sprint option or just a faster walking speed option. The only thing the was really annoying was the character Cooper constantly telling you to go to where the game wants you to go while you are exploring the area and looking for the blue glowing cubes. Maybe if she started telling you go to every 20 mins and not 5 would be better. Overall I would recommend it to anyone who likes puzzle games.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Spectrum Retreat is a story-driven puzzle game. It's not as funny as Portal. The puzzles aren't as good as Portal. It's more repetitive than Portal. But it does tell an emotional, profound and somber tale. The music is likewise melancholic and sets the tone. Puzzles do increase in difficulty as teleporters and gravity are introduced. Some are a little complex, but nothing too brain-straining. The first hour seemed like the game would fall flat due to it's repetitive, almost Groundhog…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game tries to be 2 games at once. The puzzle aspect of the game is novel and entertaining enough, but the other half of the game is a walking simulator in a mystery/detective context. They should have been 2 separate games and they would have benefited from that. As of now, the puzzles are OK, the colors are a nice mechanic. The rest is slow, not as mysterious as it pretends to be, and unnecessarily dramatic. It just feels disconnected. Stopped half way through because any mistake forces…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
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