NAIRI: Tower of Shirin

This review is for informative purposes
I have mixed feelings about the game. It's good yet I just can't recommend it.
Overall the game is quite short. The first three fourths of the game is very easy and is more like a mix of HOG and walking simulator than a puzzle game. Few easy puzzles where the main difficulty is to find a specific thing. If not for the lack of map and fast travel options this part would take much less time.
On the other hand the remaining part of the game shines. Nice puzzles, less backtracking etc. Unfortunately that doesn't last long as the story ends abruptly with a cliffhanger as it turns out this is only the first chapter. Later on I learned that the story will be continued in 2021 in NAIRI: Rising Tide
To sum up the game feels like a polished but incomplete title, with gameplay artificially extended by backtracking and story forcefully split into chapters.
At the current price tag(<€5) it's probably worth it, yet I would recommend to wait for the second part. If it keeps on par with the quality of the ending of this installment it will be a really nice adventure game. At the same time this title should be clearly marked as chapter one.

Cute, charming adventure with really nice characters. Seems like a fairy-tale at first, but there are some dark undertones. I sincerely hope in sequel, story and it's protagonists would deserve it.

Good adventure game, but ends on a cliffhanger to be continued in an as yet unreleased game. A Prologue demo for the sequel is all that is currently available, the full game release date is Coming Soon, nothing specific.
So while I would recommend this to fans of the genre, do keep in mind the game isn't finished and you will need to buy another game, which could potentially even end with another cliffhanger. -_-

My initial plan was to have a longer review for NAIRI: Tower of Shirin, but not far into the process I realized padding was taking over because at its core game is more-or-less a straightforward Visual Novel meets P&C adventure deal that accomplishes what it set out to do marvelously with aplomb.
Early on in her adventure Nairi ends up separated from her wealthy family and even their fallback extraction plan fails as she gets taken by a roving gang of cats. Turns out they're not so tough and friendship is soon formed as they help our girl return to the capital where she'll attempt to re-unite with her missing family. Hovering over this tale of cutesy characters and childish adventure is an underlying threat of unstable political and religious order, old prophecy foretelling of an unavoidable danger and another major player up to no good who ends up crossing paths with Nairi as she unwittingly gets involved in all of it struggling to overcome her trials. I just wish story didn't end on such unfinished note as sequel is in the works, though.
But what's gameplay like? For what starts out as a VN with very light puzzles from first-person perspective with some dodgy hotspot placement at times, like having to poinpoint positions for holes when game fails to telegraph where to EXACTLY do so, this turns into quite the puzzle machine in the finale. To such a degree you absolutely need to consult your journal where clues get saved in the very last “dungeon” and puzzles galore present there. It's a point where game shifts from “hey, a kid could play this” to radical cipher translations and lateral thinking.
If you ask me presentation is a huge seller here. I'd hesitate to call it purely watercolor, but art style has identity and charm that elevates it beyond that sterile modern digital look. Package is akin to a highly produced kid's playbook at times even if it comes at the expense of mostly absent animation, mouths flapping and slideshow “cutscenes” notwithstanding.

Long story short, it's a very cute game with a shallow, hole-riddled plot and a certain sense of emptiness under a polished veneer.
The gameplay, while manageable and even sometimes fun at first, becomes unbearably tedious in the latter half as the map becomes somewhat bloated, with tons of clicking between screens and not much happening in a series of fetch quests for random NPCs that distracts from the actual plot; it's about 30% filler overall, if I had to think up a percentage, and it really shows. It doesn't feel like like a wholly efficient use of the gameplay time narratively, especially since the story ends rather abruptly on a cliffhanger.
My biggest complaint is that the ending consists of a whole slew of sliding puzzle minigames, and the controls are very slippery; it made it more frustrating than I would have liked.
I do believe this is the studio's first game, and I plan on getting the sequel when it's released because I heard that they're going to address many of the issues this one had.
If I had to pick a 'perfect' demographic for this, I would highly recommend it for imaginative 3rd-5th graders that need something to occupy their time and creative thought. With the low price to time commitment ratio, it's worth picking up and clicking through on a rainy afternoon.

This game have soooooo many cuteness overload that make my life a little happier than before.

A nice little puzzle adventure!
Pros:
-Cute Animation
-Adorable Characters
-Decent Story
-Super intricate but satisfying final puzzle
Cons:
-Short
-Ends on a cliffhanger
-Needs a map / fast-travel system
I quite enjoyed this one. The puzzles are mostly pretty easy except for a few, especially the final dungeon which I had to take a break from and come back to later. You have to think outside the box a bit sometimes.
Character design is super cute, there's lots of funny moments and some surprisingly dark moments too. It's just hard to do a proper review for a game that's only half a story.
But looking at the page for the upcoming second installment, it looks like it's gonna be bigger and even better, so I shall eagerly await that one!