VELONE

Inspired by Opus Magnum is a nice way of not admitting that you copied everything from Opus Magnum but just gave it a new aesthetic. Given how blatant a copy it it is, let us compare it with it's aforementioned 'inspiration':

- First of all, advertising other games from your publisher leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I would expect it from a f2p game, but not from a game I paid money for.

- Whilst Opus Magnum had a story, you could skip it and get straight to the puzzles. In Velone, I couldn't skip the opening dialogue that I could not care less about, given its godawful voice acting.

- Tutorials are especially important in setting up a player to learn how to play a puzzle game. In Opus Magnum, it was done perfectly. You were given a partial solution and were shown how you could complete it. In Velone, your hand is completely held through the puzzles, telling you where to place parts and what commands to use.

- Opus Magnum encourages you to attempt different forms of optimisation, be it using the least resources, least area, or ignoring both and going for the fastest solution, by allowing you to save several different solutions to a single level. There is built-in functionality to save a looping gif of your solution. There's a level editor and steam workshop integration. Velone doesn't have any of these features.

- Velone simply feels far less intuitive compared to Opus Magnum. Even in the first level of Velone I could not figure out why my solution was not working. The arms were not releasing the stones despite being given the 'drop' command:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2797707377

TL;DR: The lack of polish and QOL in Velone compared to Opus Magnum has made this a far more frustrating experience. If you're trying to copy a good formula, you have to do it better, not just slap on a different uglier aesthetic.

Refunded. I'd rather go back and replay Opus Magnum

A Bad Copy of Opus Magnum

TL; DR: Not recommended at all.
I'm surprised that this is a completed game, not a tech demo or something. It feels largely unpolished. The quality is bad.

First and foremost: Ads
I’m certain that 10/10 players will say that it is a VERY BAD IDEA to put ads in a paid game. Before the menu even shows, you are greeted with 3 ads. That’s the first impression you will get for this game.

In the menu:
Restarting the game (aka save wipe, hard reset) is right above exiting the game. There’s no confirmation whatsoever. If you clicked on it, even unintentionally, the only option for you is to force-quit using alt+f4. So good luck on that.

More on the menu:
Localisation is terrible. Phrases that nobody use are everywhere (I’m using Chinese localisation), and the control menu is not even localised.

Going in to starting cutscene:
Terrible voice acting, definitely not a TTS engine. But I guess it is somewhat acceptable for a low-budget game since it does not affect core gameplay.
And the game is named VELONE right? So, what is VALONE in the cutscene (on a screen)? Is this the quality we are talking about?
Animation feels ancient, almost like a student Flash project from 10 or so years ago

Tutorial:
Confusing. You are given little information as of how to really design and control the stuff. Instead, you are given a holograph that tells you to put items here and there. Program like this. Tutorial is to help you “learn”, holding hands or not. A good tutorial is supposed to teach players to solve puzzle on their own, from easy to hard. Apparently, the tutorial does that poorly.

UI/UX/SFX:
Hideous control. The toolbox which contains all the items you will need to complete the level is so unnecessarily large that it’s a chore to drag the items to the place covered by the toolbox. The only way to delete an object is to drag it out of the screen, which is by no means reliable. How about just right clicking? Or toggle the delete mode?
And the programming is even more terrible. You must drag and drop each instruction into the panel. If you missed one rotation in the middle or start of your automation, good luck correcting that. Since there is no MOVE, or INSERT. What you have is REPLACE, so you can only drag each instruction forward one by one.
UI is, as I stated above, ancient and Flash-like. Also has kind of a Cthulhu-esque vibe. (Talking about our Paul, and how disgusting the germ power plant is) But I guess it’s okay, just don’t advertise it as “relaxing and meditative”.
Sound effect is… well, low-budget.

Punishing gameplay:
You cannot save your schematics mid-game, so that if you screw up you can just revert. Instead, what you have is an energy gauge, which slowly depletes as you place items and it’s not refilled each level. If you used up all the energy for trial-and-error, you are greeted with the powerplant. This minigame is… boring.
The solution will be just trial-and-error to create a path for those germs. But you must finish it, or you cannot continue anything.

Overall, the playing experience for Velone is frustrating. I personally do not recommend it. Just go buy Opus Magnum or whatever.

Oh no. This is not really inspired by Opus Magnum. This is what you get when you show someone a screenshot of Opus Magnum and say it's about puzzles, ask them to make it, then rush it out the door half finished.

A very strong not recommend.