Before survival games came along and asked us to fill our pockets with the entire contents of a forest, adventure games were the most item-hungry genre around. But there’s value in stripping it back to just the mouse cursor and some puzzling things, as Myst proved. That trend continues in adventure game Her Trees.
There are no keys or other items to collect. Instead, your inventory is letters of the alphabet – Ato I – which you have to type in as the solution to every puzzle. Finding these passcodes is the tricky and quite ingenious bit, as clues are hidden in every orifice, in twisty bones or bits of twig, in empty pint glasses or torn-up missives. Sometimes the letters themselves are hidden, waiting to be revealed as you puzzle around, or sometimes clues take the form of diagrams that you can use as a guide to the alphabet grid in the corner of the screen.