
User reviews: Mixed (131 reviews)
Release Date: Jul 23, 2013
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Recommended By Curators

"Because it was made in Australia."


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Objectively 7.5/10 – Objective Game Reviews

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About This Game


Key Features

  • Meet a majestic and enigmatic humpback whale
  • Works great with keyboard and mouse or your Xbox 360 controller
  • A completely original soundtrack by musical genius Jonathan Yandel

System Requirements

    • OS: Windows XP SP3/Vista/7/8
    • Processor: 2.0+ GHz processor
    • Memory: 2 GB RAM
    • Graphics: SM3-compatible video card
    • DirectX: Version 9.0
    • Hard Drive: 2 GB available space
    • Processor: 2.0+ GHz multicore processor
    • Memory: 4 GB RAM
    • DirectX: Version 9.0
    • Hard Drive: 2 GB available space
Helpful customer reviews
24 of 32 people (75%) found this review helpful
1.6 hrs on record
Posted: September 29





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22 of 30 people (73%) found this review helpful
6.1 hrs on record
Posted: July 10
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8 of 11 people (73%) found this review helpful
0.9 hrs on record
Posted: October 10
After compelting the second puzzle-cube I must have exited out of the wrong side of it, because the game locked my progress. I could no longer enter the cube (there were not enough 'blue orbs' left to activate the torch), I could not get around the cube. After jumping into the ocean the game reloaded me back onto the wrong side of the cube; my progress was completely haulted.
Up until this point I found the game boring and full of perplexing design decisions. More than half of my time investment consisted of "non-game" elements: rolling the ball through long boring forest corridors, collecting blue orbs with no explanation, no decision-making, and no challenges to be found. I can't comment on the difficulty of the puzzle elements because the game broke on me so early, but what I experienced was a frustrating camera and somewhat janky controls. The two puzzles were uninteresting.
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24 of 42 people (57%) found this review helpful
1.2 hrs on record
Posted: August 16
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6 of 9 people (67%) found this review helpful
1.1 hrs on record
Posted: September 10

I loved the game concept; I've had InFlux on my wish-list for ages, and finally got it from Humble Store 2 days ago.
I'm a little upset at some of the issues I've had so far though :|

There is lag, which is ridiculous. I'm playing it on 800x600 and normally I run games at much higher resolution with zero issues.

The flash when you get into a puzzle or out of it, is pure pain. I had to emphasize that, it's just that bad. I hate sudden full screen flashes in games, and have left many games as a result of them, if there is no way to dim or remove them, I will not bother any further.

And the worst issue of all was, if I get a puzzle that takes longer than a minute to solve, I get nauseated, might sound like I'm exaggerating, but I am not. I get a headache and feel sick...

I was looking forward to playing this game, sigh...
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3 of 4 people (75%) found this review helpful
5.1 hrs on record
Posted: December 9
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4 of 6 people (67%) found this review helpful
4.9 hrs on record
Posted: September 23
I really want to enjoy this game, serious, but after I had reached to middle I'm tired.

- first, dev still trying to help, it's good news, but...
- game crashing often, not for everyone but more people are have this problem. It could be "UDK stop working" or "run out of video memory"
- optimization is poor, I had off all effects, changed to lower screen resolution, but game still shuttering
- it's hard to control ball, you just can't feel it
- problem with collision system, a couple of time I get out of map or ramp
- orb (important things) could get stuck and it's hard to get them out
- checkpoints don't work too good
- before I wrote this I have been in underground and air flow must send me to next cave. It's always sends me to central where are blockade, and one time when I didn't fall I was trying to jump in, but I found invisible walls

Anyway I want to finish this, but it could be hard.
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7 of 12 people (58%) found this review helpful
5.2 hrs on record
Posted: November 10
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2 of 3 people (67%) found this review helpful
2.9 hrs on record
Posted: November 26




Overall, I recommend you in buying this game. :)
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3 of 5 people (60%) found this review helpful
5.7 hrs on record
Posted: July 28
Beautiful, granted. but ultimately boring and unintresting,

First of all, the game is short, i usually have no problem with short games. they are good as a little appetizer for when you don't have enough time on your hands.
but there is two kinds of short:
1. Short and sweet
2. WHAT?! THAT'S IT???
Guess which one influx is.

Second of all, the puzzles are super simplistic and braindead. i never had to stop and think, i just mindlessly blazed through them all.

And lastly: technical issues. i experienced screentearing even with vsync on. and there was plenty of framedrops and stuttering here and there. and the controls -while responsive- was frustrating, this was due to the physics. it reminded me of the vehicle sections in mass effect 1. i.e steering a shopping cart through a bouncy castle.

EDIT: The game isn't actually 5 hrs long as my playtime would suggest. i had the game paused but running for a couple of hours while i was eating pizza. i would estimate that the actual playtime would be about 2.5 hours. might very well be shorter than that if you don't stop and smell the roses.
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4 of 7 people (57%) found this review helpful
0.6 hrs on record
Posted: October 10
The main problem with InFlux is that it doesn't matter that you're a ball. Rolling physics games, like Marble Madness, rely heavily on conservation of momentum as a game mechanic. InFlux does not. You have very good control over your movements and can arrest your forward momentum at any time.

Moving slowly often makes the uneven ground difficult to traverse, but that's more an annoyance than a gameplay mechanic. There's no incentive to dash madly through levels, not in the least because you spend the navigation levels searching for hard to spot motes of light that you need to unlock the next puzzle.

The game has some ramps, but you don't so much roll up them as you hit them at speed and bounce into the air. Once the game introduces the boost mechanic all semblance of ball relevance goes right out the window, as you can use it to easily turn on a dime at tight angles and even essentially freeze time in mid air to target perfect landings. Overshot your mark? No problem, just boost again and turn yourself around.

There are some puzzles that involve rolling a ball into a receptacle but that ball is not you. It's a different ball. And you don't manipulate it by hitting it like a cue ball or a bowling ball -- you have telekinetic powers. These puzzles would have been much better if you were the "scoring" ball and the game actually forced you to behave like a ball.

But instead, InFlux is just a mediocre first-person puzzle game with some reasonably pretty landscaping that is in no way relevant to navigation by a ball. You might as well be a tiny person with a gun that fires attracting and repulsing waves -- in fact, I have definitely played games where I was a person and my momentum was more difficult to control than it is in InFlux. At the end of the day you are a character with a motor skills deficiency trying to solve spatial puzzles. The net result comes across as unfortunately frustrating.

It's obvious that the developers put a lot of work and care into this, but it suffers badly from some poor design choices. I can't in good conscience recommend it to anyone but the most diehard of spatial puzzle fanatics. I definitely don't recommend it to anyone looking for a ball physics game.
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6 of 11 people (55%) found this review helpful
0.9 hrs on record
Posted: October 2
A game about rolling.
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1 of 2 people (50%) found this review helpful
1.5 hrs on record
Posted: November 29
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1 of 2 people (50%) found this review helpful
4.0 hrs on record
Posted: July 3
a visualy stunning platformer/puzzle/exploration game with a great sound track.
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1 of 2 people (50%) found this review helpful
0.5 hrs on record
Posted: July 12
It's like Marble Blast for cool kids. 8/10!
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1 of 2 people (50%) found this review helpful
1.0 hrs on record
Posted: July 31
Very nice game, great graphics and the sound gives the game a good vibe, nice to chill out to. Game has a lot of frame rate drops though. Brought a smile to my face to see an Aussie dev here on Steam! :) Keep it up and looking out for your next game.
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1 of 2 people (50%) found this review helpful
0.1 hrs on record
Posted: August 9
Really like it.... and its a neat little puzzle map 10/10
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1 of 2 people (50%) found this review helpful
0.6 hrs on record
Posted: September 1
I'm not a game critic by nature, so I'll just say this. When I play Influx, I have a lot of fun. It's a somewhat calming game, until you get to a part that needs control precision, then it's possible to get somewhat...agitated, however it is still a fun experience.
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1 of 2 people (50%) found this review helpful
3.5 hrs on record
Posted: September 2
Buy? Likely

(TL;DR? See Summary)

Overview and Gameplay
There's not a ton to say about InFlux other than it is clear that the college that the developers attented, RMIT University, is clearly a million times better than the scamtastic joke that is ITT Tech that I went to for game design. InFlux is a simple and fairly relaxing ball puzzle game that is best described as Marble Blast meets Q.U.B.E. . If you played any 3D ball puzzle game like those or Super Monkey Ball, then you have a rough idea. The game world is continuous in InFlux, as you gather orbs of light with your attact ability spread across an island paradise and drop them off into to totems/torches that activate puzzle segments. You then can enter these segments which are relatively easy puzzles involving trying to get an orange orb into an orange box (in one case, there was a second, green orb and box). Solving the puzzle activates a pillar of light and when all the puzzles in an area are finished, some sort of sequence will activate, allowing you to the next area. Puzzles generally involve rotating the room or parts of the room with blue switches and moving yourself and the ball around with the help of platforms, air vents, and bouncing mechanisms. The hardest part of the game and puzzles is probably the platforming, and I belive most gamers, even those not good a puzzlers should be able to solve most of these relatively easy puzzles.

I really like the art style, specifically of the ball, it's lighting effects and look and sound of it's abilities. The island has a nice asthetic, though graphical quality is comparable to a mid-era PS3/360 game - textures up close can be pretty muddy. It's unclear as to what or why anything in the game world is happening. You're a high tech looking ball with an internal light source and "magical magnetic" ability rolling around what looks like a real world, primitive tribal island where human-like life exists or used to exist. There are tree stumps and man-made structures all over the island, but no signs of life beyond flora and a single whale-like mammal you encounter a few times in the game. *Mild Spoiler* It is implied that you are from another world OR that you are trying to escape this world. *END SPOILER*. Regardless, it is never made clear exactly what the story or plot really is; you roll around the level, entering puzzles that seem to take you to another dimension, finish them and eventually leave the entire location. That said, exploring the world is mostly calming, especially thanks to the very nice Chillwave/downtempo soundtrack from Johnathan Yandel - I have added it to my Bandcamp wishlist.

My few complaints are minor. Due to the level design and physics engine, your ball will easily hop around on some ground surfaces on the island, even if it is an apparently flattened trail, but this isn't a problem in puzzles and most of the game. I had a couple bugs where I got stuck behind geometry and once even went straight through a wall on a puzzle room - in that instance, I didn't see how I could complete the room without that exploit. Platforming is annoying as the ball doesn't jump and instead propels, bouncing off anything it hits, which sometimes means you will miss jumps or worse, bounce off a wall into oblivion. Thankfully, lives are "infinite" and you are generously returned to a checkpoint. I also had a bug where I lost some of my sound for the attract ability. Lastly, I'm confused into why I'm even playing this or what I'm doing exactly. InFlux ALMOST has the mark of something pretentious, but never clarify or signal much of anything.

Still, it's a nice puzzler that likely won't strain your brain, time, or wallet as it can be completed in under 4 hours and costs only $5. I enjoyed my experience, and I recommend it to fans of the genre and casual/semi-casual gamers. I even recommend it to gamers that don't like puzzle games - since the puzzles are generally easy. However, all that is the biggest drawback to some of the biggest fans of the arcade/puzzler genre: there little content or challenge, and next to no reward.
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1 of 2 people (50%) found this review helpful
4.0 hrs on record
Posted: September 19
I've played this game for 4 hours, and I still don't have a clue what it's about, or if I'm anywhere near an end, or even a middle... I love it!

InFlux is a neat, relaxing game where you take control of a small metal ball and do pretty much two things: 1. roll around looking at the pretty environment devoid of any other presence despite obvious signs of previous haitation and even civilization, and 2. roll around in giant glass houses where you push buttons and guide other objects to goals to move on to the next area.

While exploring this strange place, you'll find small lights that you can attract to follow you, and you need to gather at least 3 in each area to unlock the glass house for that region; I think this is brilliant, since it gives an excuse to explore the gorgeous landscape while breaking up the pace of the puzzling glass houses and still giving an excuse to go slowly through the game.

You'll also get access to abilities as you progress, like being able to push or pull some objects, charge up a speed boost, and slow down time for more precise manuvering; these add a freshness to the play, and the speed boost specifically can be used to pull of some really amusing tricks, including jumping over/on top of mountains or clipping through walls. in the short time I've played, I even managed to find a relatively large skip in the game using a clip in one of the early glass houses, which really appeals to the speedrunner in me.

For some negatives, if you're playing on a laptop more than maybe a year old, you'll probably experience some slowdown or lag, which for me is a pretty important issue. Additionally, as far as I can tell, there isn't really a point or story in the game; that might not be a bad thing, and maybe later in the game I'll learn something about why I'm alone in this big world and the complete absence will make sense, but for now, it's just a bit of a bother to me. finally, while the controls are fairly easy to use, it does take a bit of getting used to, and momentum plays a major role, meaning hairpin turns aren't feasible, and you'll have to constantly modify your speed and direction to keep going even in a straight line, a problem that's just compounded when you factor the environment filled with slopes, bumps, rocks, logs, and even just uneven ground.

Now the positives, first and foremost, the beautiful atmosphere! Your journey takes you through fields and mountain passes, caves, small villages, mountains, beaches, and A FREAKING VOLCANO! Combined with the very mild and unobtrusive audio, the experience is one that I'll probably remember for quite some time. Speaking of the audio, the backround music is faint and plesant, even in the glasshouses where it changes, it only serves to set a mood, and it does very well. Even the sound effects are simple and quiet, which is a major plus for me. The puzzles in the glass houses are also very well done; you are introduced to new mechanics slowly to give you time to understand each new concept and play with it for a while. You can press a switch to turn the entire room on its side, get blown up by a giant fan to a higher platform, be launched by a catapult, and tons of other things that will take up too much space in this already lengthy review to go into detail about. And having mentioned the controls in the negative section, I feel like it's only fair to mention that they are always fair. You'll never feel like the ball was just ignoring your input, and you always have plenty of room to move around so the tiniest mistake won't ruin your progress.

So tl;dr - I would definitely recommend this game. $10 isn't asking too much, and I think it's well worth it for the experience you get. If you're okay not having a ton of direction, you want something relaxing and calm, you don't mind thinking a little, and you apreciate beautiful things, you can't go wrong checking this out.
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