These two games are not really related, other than being somewhat-obscure, abstract games that I have come across recently. Both are confusing at first (at least they were for me), and neither has an easily-accessible guide to take away its mystery (or possibly its frustration).
Kromaia Ω is a game that I picked up just this week in a PSN sale. (It’s also on Steam.) I’d been curious about it, and just as it seems at first glance it’s kind of a Terminal Velocity-type experience, as filtered through Rez. (I kind of hesitate to mention Rez, though it seems like an obvious influence, because that’s a tough standard that this and most other games can’t hope to live up to.) It’s kind of a like a rail shooter without the rails. There are fast-action parts and fun boss encounters, and you can also optionally take your time and explore the areas, finding hidden items, either before or after contending with the enemies.
To get the “true” ending, you have to play each level with each ship. Which feels like artificial padding if you are trying to finish the game and move on to something else. But I see it as more of an excuse to pick the game up occasionally and play it again while still “making progress.”
Ilamentia is a Steam game that I must have picked up in a bundle at some point. While both of these games are confusing at first, this one is much more so. Kromaia becomes clearer after you spend some time with it, but Ilamentia remains intentionally abstruse. It’s a first-person puzzle game in which each puzzle has a different goal. For some, that primary challenge is figuring out what that goal is. For others, it’s carrying out the solution after figuring it out. Even the level selection area is a puzzle. Almost nothing is immediately obvious, in a way that reminds me of Icefishing V or Memory of a Broken Dimension.
Which brings me to why I thought to mention both of these games together. In both cases, I was stuck at some point and my instinct was to look up a guide or a forum discussion for help. But there was no help to be had (at least, for my particular issues). Sure, I could have probably posted something somewhere and eventually received an answer, but to do that would have been to admit that I was only the lazy kind of stuck, and I could probably succeed with a little more effort. Which is what I did. This occurred for me more than once in Ilamentia, and there are plenty of areas that I haven’t been able to get through or haven’t even seen yet.
The other reason I wanted to mention these games is that I like both of them and others might too.