Flux Caves
Connect pipes and push blocks in this 3D puzzle
Flux Caves is a puzzle game by Fubenalvo, inspired by The Witness and shrines in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Flux Caves is about solving puzzles, to push pipe blocks around to connect them to allow balls to flow from the start to the end of the puzzle unimpeded.
In Flux Caves, you’re solving puzzles in two distinct environments. Some puzzles take place in caves, placing you in a “classic” puzzle chamber environment. Outdoor environment puzzles invert the puzzle chamber expectation and present a new challenge by spreading out and using more of the world—such as a puzzle built in the top of a radio tower. The world of Flux Caves is colorful and well made—the vibrancy of the puzzle elements mesh well the outdoor aspects of the world.
Flux Caves has a gentle difficulty ramp—you won’t find yourself getting trapped on a puzzle for too long. New mechanics are introduced and have accompanying puzzles to you understand and include them in your repertoire. Take care not to overthink your puzzle solutions, though. I wound up having to restart some puzzles because I tried to outsmart the puzzle design in attempting to anticipate problems. Instead, I should have spent more time looking around just to understand the puzzle a bit more.
Polish wise, some later puzzles need you to move so many blocks that it may feel tedious to execute on your vision, and some block and player movement lacks smoothness. Also, if you’re an environment explorer, the game offers surprisingly few invisible walls to prevent you from hopping off-path—perhaps more player clips will appear in a later version. Despite this, the game is playable, and you will enjoy your time solving the puzzles.
If you enjoy puzzle games, Flux Caves offers several invigorating puzzles and is perhaps worth a bit of your time. Flux Caves is available on itch for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and will be available on Steam later this year. I played Flux Caves version v0.93 on a modern Windows gaming PC. It took me about three hours to complete the game.