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AGON - The Mysterious Codex is a physically painful slog, but it brings enough board gaming to beat back boredom.

Though a true point & click, AGON attempts to simulate a 3D environment by forcing the player to navigate through 360 degrees of panoramic nausea. Each "step" forward brings another small slice of motion sickness, while artificially ramping up the difficulty... and the frustration. Points of interest are only accessible from one of the faux-3D layers, so examining the top of a desk can take spins from three or four different angles, and... hold on, have to let my stomach settle... and that reveals how sparse most of these environments are. The gameplay loop consists of step forward, twirl in place for a minute or two, panning up and down to discover the lone hotspot, and then brace yourself for your next step.

Meanwhile, Professor Hunt (your player character) may as well be mute, as those rare interactable areas are often met with "Hmmm... interesting". No helpful advice, no character revelations, not even a description of the item that now sits in your inventory, just bland vagueness or total silence... or, even worse, "That's gibberish" when you locate a vital riddle. With no on-screen text and no examine mechanic, you're left to blindly click the cooking pot on the bag of... is that rice? Might be rice... and hope for the best.

Of course, once you have your pot of... could be rice... the time has come for puzzling, and AGON varies wildly in that facet. The game itself is broken up into three distinct chapters. Most of the challenges take the form of standard inventory manipulation, made all the more irritating by the aforementioned interface. That said, there are a handful of logic problems and ciphers to solve, as well as one much more complex endeavor per chapter, requiring researching in-game books and affecting items in multiple locations. Those gems are almost worth the vertigo.

However, the true highlights of this game are the games themselves. AGON is the story of one man's obsession with ancient board games, and once those enter the narrative in the second chapter, my planned thumb's down got flipped around. The board games are just plain fun, with fascinating rules and an actually challenging AI to play against. Once unlocked, the games are accessible from the main menu, further inflating my enjoyment... and my playtime.

In the end, AGON took roughly 15 hours to complete, with another 3 hours (and counting) of bonus board gaming, which (barely) justifies its current, non-sale price of $10. Granted, you may have to be as board game obsessive as Professor Hunt for the paltry pros to outweigh the collection of cons. As for me, I'll dose some Dramamine before I start the sequel.