What Surrounds Us

Learning a world by watching it

What Surrounds Us puts players into a small, abstract ecosystem where something has gone wrong: a new, isolating creature is disrupting the natural rhythms of the world's other inhabitants, cutting them off from food and unsettling the balance that keeps everything running. The way to fix that imbalance is deliberately indirect. Rather than handing out explicit instructions, the game asks players to watch how each creature moves, eats, and reacts to its surroundings, then use that understanding to solve environmental puzzles that gradually restore harmony across three distinct biomes — described in the game's own marketing as peaceful, desolated, and lush. There's no timer counting down and no fail state pushing players to rush, which every reviewer in the sample singles out as central to the experience: this is a game built to be drifted through, not raced.

That observation-first design is the thing reviewers keep coming back to as What Surrounds Us's most distinctive strength. One reviewer, describing the puzzle logic as genuinely unlike anything they'd played before, praises how the challenges stay varied and engaging across a single sitting without ever resorting to a tutorial popup. Another compares the overall mood favorably to Nomada Studio's Neva and GRIS, citing a shared commitment to letting atmosphere and quiet visual storytelling carry as much weight as explicit mechanics. The minimalist art style comes in for specific praise as well — reviewers describe it as purposeful and well-matched to the pacing rather than a sign of limited scope, letting the small cast of creatures and their behaviors stay legible and expressive despite a deliberately pared-back visual language.

A short game that asks for patience first

Where the reviews are most consistent, aside from praising the game outright, is in flagging that What Surrounds Us doesn't hand its ideas to players immediately. More than one reviewer describes taking real time — minutes, not seconds — to understand how the game's systems actually work, since there's little in the way of direct explanation for what a given creature's behavior means or how it connects to the puzzle in front of the player. Every reviewer who mentions this friction is careful to frame it as worth pushing through rather than a flaw: one explicitly encourages other players who don't click with the game right away to persevere, describing the eventual payoff as genuinely rewarding once the underlying logic clicks into place. That's a meaningful distinction from games that are simply obtuse for the sake of it — the difficulty here reads as a deliberate pedagogical choice rather than sloppy design, even if it means the first stretch of play can feel uncertain.

The other point every review touches on, directly or in passing, is length. Outside press quoted on the game's own store page pins the experience at roughly three hours, and the reviewers in the sample don't dispute that estimate. None of them treat the short runtime as a serious knock against the game — one reviewer explicitly calls it a "short but delightful puzzle game" and recommends it without reservation — but it's worth being upfront about at the NZ$17.49 price point for anyone weighing the cost against expected playtime. One reviewer strikes a slightly wistful note, suggesting the game deserves more attention than a quiet, minimalist puzzle title without major marketing backing is likely to receive; that sentiment doubles as a fair warning that What Surrounds Us is the kind of release that's genuinely easy to miss amid noisier month.

Sound as the game's real storyteller

If there's one thing that unites every review in the sample without exception, it's the sound design. Reviewers describe the ambient soundtrack and audio work as doing as much narrative and emotional lifting as the visuals, with one review going so far as to specifically recommend playing with headphones to get the full effect. That praise lines up with the game's own framing of itself as an atmosphere-first experience: without a script or explicit narration driving the story forward, sound becomes one of the primary tools for communicating mood, tension, and the quiet relief of solving a puzzle correctly. For a solo-developed project, that level of polish in audio direction stands out as a genuine accomplishment, and it's likely a large part of why reviewers who otherwise struggled with the game's opening puzzles still came away recommending it without hesitation.

What outside critics said

Beyond the small Steam review sample, a handful of outlet reviews quoted on the game's own store page back up the same broad impression. The Verge is quoted calling the game's tight, roughly three-hour runtime an asset rather than a limitation, noting that "who knew a cute little donut had so much depth" — a nod to the game's abstract, geometric creature designs doing more thematic work than their simple shapes might suggest. Higher Plain Games scored it an 8 and specifically praised the game for trusting players to find creative, open-ended solutions rather than hand-holding them through a single correct path, a notable contrast in a genre that increasingly leans on auto-solving hints. LadiesGamers went further, crediting the minimalist gameplay and visuals with a level of craft that "takes skill," explicitly attributing the game's polish to experienced developers rather than treating its solo origins as an excuse for rough edges. Taken together with the Steam review sample, that outside coverage paints a consistent picture: a small, quiet game that critics and players alike come away from more impressed than its modest marketing footprint might suggest.

Final verdict

What Surrounds Us is a small, confidently made puzzle adventure that trusts players to learn its world by watching rather than being told, and the exceptional sound design gives that trust real emotional weight. The English-language review sample is small, but it's unanimous, and the shape of the praise — observation-driven puzzles, minimalist visuals that serve the mood, and audio work repeatedly compared to some of the genre's best atmospheric games — reads as consistent rather than coincidental. Its short runtime and an admittedly patience-testing opening stretch are worth knowing going in, but neither stops this from being a genuinely worthwhile way to spend an evening for anyone drawn to quiet, thoughtful puzzle design.