Pocket Lint - ★✮☆☆☆
Image: Follow the Fun / IndieLoupe
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Developer: Follow the Fun
Publisher: Follow the Fun
Release: 21 January 2025
Price: €5,89/$5.99/£4.99
Playtime upon Review: 43 minutes
Follow the Fun are probably best known for their - at time of writing - 66-game ‘I commissioned some…’ series. It’s a hidden-object smorgasbord which sees players finding bees, or finding cats, or finding frogs, or finding dogs, or finding bunnies, or finding abstract bunnies… you get the idea. If you’re into that sort of thing, it’s a nice little series that executes the concept very well. Pocket Lint is a brief deviation from those games, offering a code-breaking puzzler where players attempt to get the correct combination of items in the right order.
If anyone remembers the board game Mastermind - where you have to crack your opponents 4-peg code through guesswork and deduction - it’s a little like that, but with cute little items (Pocket Lint, if you will) rather than colourful little pegs. Think Mastermind crossed with A Little to the Left. You might expect that it would have the structure of the former with the whimsy of the latter, which would make for a nice little way to spend an afternoon - instead, it ends up having the structure of A Little to the Left and the whimsy of Mastermind - i.e. not a huge amount of either.
“Having no legitimate campaign makes the game feel shallow, and the randomly generated alternatives don’t scratch any puzzle-solving itch I have.”
You can comfortably accomplish everything that Pocket Lint has to offer in less than an hour. The campaign is over almost as soon as it’s started, playing more like a tutorial than anything else, and then players are thrust into the procedurally-generated endless mode. There, they can enjoy relentlessly shovelling items into slots, brute-forcing the answers one item at a time. I like to give games as much time as possible before writing a review of them - there was nothing left for me to do after the 43 minutes I spent on Pocket Lint.
I’m just not sure who the game is for. I’d count myself amongst the people who typically like this sort of thing, but the lack of genuine puzzle design kills my interest dead. Having no legitimate campaign makes the game feel shallow, and the randomly generated alternatives don’t scratch any puzzle-solving itch I have.
Ultimately, though, the most egregious problem with Pocket Lint is in its price-point. Were it listed at a third of its €5,89/$5.99/£4.99 cost, I would still question if it isn’t a little light, but would likely give it a slightly more favourable rating. As it is, it just needs so much more to it in order to justify its price, especially when compared with other minimalist puzzlers which come with content aplenty. Perhaps there’s an argument that other developers in the same space are undervaluing their work… but not by that much. Pocket Lint is awarded ★✮☆☆☆ by IndieLoupe.com.
The reviewed product was purchased by IndieLoupe.com.
