Lara Croft GO is a very simple puzzle game which was clearly designed for mobile phones. Using a click and swipe interface, it is entirely concerned with navigating Lara Croft through a series of simple-seeming but at times surprisingly complicated puzzles.
The game is very, very limited mechanically; your commands are to move Lara around an isometric square grid, to have her pull a lever she’s standing on the same square as, and to push or pull a movable column she’s standing next to.
The overall puzzle mechanics are also quite simple – there are snakes which stand still and kill Lara if she steps in front of them (but which can be killed from the side/back), there are spiders and sawblades that move back and forth on fixed tracks (the only difference being that sawblades run in rivets, which can turn, while spiders will keep walking until they hit a wall and turn around), and salamanders, which will start pursuing Lara if she walks two steps in front of them, but which will immediately kill her if she moves directly in front of them, just like a snake; while in pursuit, they will exactly mirror Lara’s motions, and if the path ahead of them becomes impassable, they will stop where they are.
These are combined with the level mechanics of buttons you, enemies, or pillars can sit on to active, which generally move parts of the level around, but which will sometimes instead shoot deadly darts out of walls (which will kill Lara or any creature) or will push a section of wall out to block progress and knock anything in front of it away (including over the side, which can be fatal). These are also used to activate boulder traps, where giant boulders roll along a straight line until they smash into a column or wall or fall off the map.
Finally, there are sections of breakable ground which crack the first time you step on them and form a hole the second time, plunging Lara (or a pursuing salamander) to her death (or, if on a climbable wall instead of level ground, send her falling to the bottom of the wall), but which can also be filled in with columns or boulders.
All of these things combine together in a number of fairly ingenious ways; the levels start out simple, but do a good job of teaching the player how to play the game and deal with and exploit the various level mechanics. The game gradually introduces the mechanics over time, growing ever more complicated as the game goes on, and requiring the player to figure out how to use them all together by the end.
This isn’t a bad game – in fact, it is a fairly decent puzzle game that I played while doing other things like chatting with people (my playtime is inflated – it only took me 5-6 hours of actual playtime to beat).
However, at the same time, it is hard for me to *recommend* this game, especially on the PC platform. It was really a time-waster, not something you’d really sink your teeth into. There’s no story to speak of, and it is hard to really say that I enjoyed the game so much as simply thought it was decent.
Overall, this is an okay puzzle game, and you can certainly do worse – but at the same time, you can do better, too. After beating the game, I was left thinking "Well, that was a thing," and I doubt I'll ever really think of it again.
2.5