4 Months of You

4 months of you is an interesting game. It's a puzzle game with a little bit of resource and inventory management.
The game is painfully dark and you'll have to lit your environment with a lighter you find, but the light isn't free as you'll have to use lighter fluid to refill it every time you run out. I do not like any battery mechanics in any game, however having the lighter fluid does add a bit of agency and stakes to solving puzzle, as the resources you use to solve the puzzle are finite. Even when you interact with a piece of paper and get a closer inspection, without a lighter you won't be able to tell much even when you give a closer inspection. There are lamps scattered throughout the game that you can install light bulbs you find in the environment. However these don't help with visibility as they are just at random location and give light to a small area, though their purpose is more than to give light, however I do not want to spoil their utility.
The game gets you thinking on which items to pick up as you have 4 inventory slots, one will be occupied with the lighter, and usually two more slots will be occupied by lighter fluid and light bulb, though you don't have to pick them up, I found myself collecting as I didn't want to be stuck without lighter fluid as that would hinder my ability to solve puzzles, and I always wanted to be able to install a light bulb in case I come across a lamp for their great utility. I can see that the dev want you to think "Should I collect lighter fluid now or should I keep space for a puzzle item?" which adds depth to the game as you're not mindlessly picking up items. Though there is no button to drop items as far as I know so managing your inventory is very important.
There is a monster roaming around as you solve puzzles, and even with the monster there's a bit of resource management, though I'm not gonna spill the beans to not spoil the gameplay. But it is a balance of how much distance you've created between yourself and the monster, and how fast you are with a certain mechanic. It makes the interact with the monster less mindless. While sometimes the monster will interrupt you while doing a puzzle and be annoying, it's a common issue with most games that have a monster and puzzles strung together. Though I believe the developer found the right balance with the monster. As many of the other games I've played with similar gameplay either had the monster be relentless and get in the way of solving puzzles to the point of utter annoyance, or the monster being so dumb it feels like he's not there at all and can be ignored or he's just there for decoration. Games striking that delicate balance are quite rare.
Puzzles and puzzle difficulty mostly consists of you not having the whole picture, if something doesn't make sense, you usually don't have all the pieces in place for it to make sense, so in a way while puzzles look and feel very cryptic, they're not actually difficult as usually instead of thinking something out, you just missing something. I did find myself thinking of how it would be nice to think of how to solve a puzzle rather than the solution always being that you don't have the big picture yet. Most of the time puzzles are solved through exploration of the puzzle pieces and environment as oppose to thought, in exception with one puzzle which requires exploration and a little bit of thought/attentiveness, which was the puzzle I enjoyed the most, I wish the game had more puzzles like it that require you to think.
Not a big fan of what happens when you're caught, instead of dying, every time you're caught you need to find your way back through a vertical labyrinth of stairs. The game has a save system like ink ribbons in resident evil, which I thought may increase the stakes and make the game more fun, but instead every time you're caught you need to take a while to climb back the labyrinth of stairs to get back to the game and you don't lose any progress on the puzzles. I can see how it can be frustrating to lose progress on puzzles so I don't mind it, but having to go through the labyrinth each time feels more like a chore when it happens, it makes the save system pointless and I wish you'd just die and respawn next to where you save as opposed to going through the labyrinth of stairs each time.
Lastly the game has a very pleasing visual aesthetic, probably one of the better looking PSX-like looking games out there. Which goes hand in hand with the back and forth the game wants you to have with the environment, as you get lost looking for the next puzzle piece and while exploring.
All in all 4 months of you is a cool game.