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I am determined to write about Pan-Pan without spoiling any of its delightful surprises, and since the game's stock in trade is surprise and delight, this isn't going to be easy. Here is the closest I am going to get, hopefully, to truly wrecking something for you: the whole thing clicked for me after about a quarter of an hour or so, when I realised that the flowers I had been stepping on for the last five minutes probably weren't purely for decoration. (This isn't a particularly huge spoiler.)Pan-Pan is a sort of open-world puzzle game centered around a narrative that's one of the true video game classics: you've crashlanded your spaceship somewhere strange and beautiful and perplexing, and now you have to fix it. In Pan-Pan's case, this means venturing out across a compact but gloriously tactile landscape, interacting with machines, working out how to open closed doors, and generally trying to make sense of the the fascinating place you've been dumped into.
It's a bit like Myst, except I hate Myst and I love Pan-Pan. And I wonder if that's because I'm just a closer fit for the people who made this game. Stick with me here. I've had a bit of time off work recently, and I spent most of it reading. This has made me think about the games I really like - which tend to be puzzly games - and the things I really like about them. And this is because I think the things I really like about them tend to hinge on a process that feels a little like reading.
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