“Fossil Corner” by Brady Soglin, Dylan Payne & Bobby Volpendesta.
“In [this game], [you are] a retired paleontologist, collecting fossils and solving evolutionary puzzles in your old garage.”
Full disclosure right ahead:
Sebastian Standke used a free key of “Fossil Corner”, provided by Brady Soglin, to play the game and write an article about it.
If you fancy cozy puzzle fun with sprawling fossil collections and home decorating mechanics, you will have a great time with “Fossil Corner”. Here, as a retiring paleontologist who still enjoys scientific work, you can take care of tracing the evolutionary ‘family trees’ of shells and trilobites without any time stress. All you have to do is use your computer to request a box of preserved remains from your old colleagues and you are good to go.
After you open the crate, up to a dozen of the specimens will be presented in front of you. Each sample is in one of four different colors that vary in each puzzle, representing the age of each piece. Of course, the relics also differ in many other properties. For example, shells may be ribbed but do not have to be, or they may be twisted from right to left instead of the other way around, while trilobites can have optional eyestalks as well as different types of horns. You will have to use logical deduction to find out the relationship between them, since only one individual trait can change per generation, except for the color.
This basic principle, although easy to understand, does not get boring thanks to the abundance of different characteristics and some special features like samples that were not assigned an age or the so-called ‘missing links’. At the same time, the puzzles are not too complex and, at worst, can be solved with a pure trial-and-error approach. However, this should not be necessary, since “Fossil Corner” offers a neat help system that shows you a connection between two relics per use.
After a successfully completed task, you get some coins and can choose one of the specimens. The money, on the other hand, you can use to buy more furniture to have more display space for your own collection. You will need it urgently, because not only old friends and colleagues will contact you, but also specialist journals! They all want photos of your collectibles for different reasons and under certain conditions. Sometimes you should take a snapshot of four fossils of the same color, other times the pieces shown should be particularly rare or have certain characteristics.
If you cannot get enough of tasks of this kind, you can also solve randomly generated quests on the in-game platform “Fossil Finders” and thus not only accumulate more money, but also unlock special furnishings like glass shelfs or comfy beanbags. In this way, the researcher’s life in “Fossil Corner” can be designed even more personal, which is a lovely continuation of the modification variety of Brady Soglin’s “plant daddy”, which was released back in January 2020). So let this wonderful little puzzle game surprise you with what else it has in store, because I have not mentioned all the features by far! [PLAY]
