Catherine. Or possibly Rapunzel.

It's a puzzle game. With a huge story.
And boss battles.

I love Atlus. I don't know what they put in the water in that company, but they come up with some crazy awesome ideas. Like the later Persona games - take a rather hard dungeon crawler and cross it with a sort of dating sim, and it turns out to be great. Or take a reasonable idea like making an operation game but then add magical abilities, viruses that are closer to monsters, and at one point have you operate on a bomb. And now there's Catherine, which is a puzzle game surrounded by a whole lot of plot about cheating and starring a guy in boxer shorts.

Catherine teaches good life lessons for the kids

I'm guessing I'm about half way through the game (I'll explain why later). Without giving much away, in general you follow Vincent through his day. First there are some cut scenes about his morning and afternoon, and then in the evening you hang out in a bar where you can talk to your friends and other bar patrons, and also send and receive phone messages. There's a gauge that appears from time to time that seems to measure whether you're choosing responses at various points that lean more towards faithfulness or cheating. It looks like it then effects some of Vincent's reactions in the portions of the game you don't control, but since I'm not done I can't say for sure how much it matters.

Pushing more than one block?!? Inconceivable!

The main part of the game takes place in Vincent's nightmares after he goes home. The general idea is there's a big wall of blocks that slowly fall away, and if Vincent falls off the bottom he'll die in his dream and actually die. In general, Vincent pushes or pulls blocks to make steps up to the next level. The blocks themselves have kind of interesting properties - they won't fall as long as they share an edge with a block below them, even if they're diagonal. The tops of blocks also make small ledges that Vincent can grab, so he doesn't need space to move to when pulling blocks, and can hang off the tower to move around the tower. The most common way this comes into play is that it means you can pull a block onto a single space, hang off the side (or just drop if there's a block there), and then move around to pull the block underneath it to make a staircase. Here's an awesome picture I drew to show the general idea.

Of course, it's very rarely this simple. Or this poorly rendered.

Sometimes there are also others trying to climb as well and you have to deal with them. And at the end of each night there's a boss where not only do you have to climb, but the boss can impede you in some way. On a recent level, there was an attack that reversed the controls for about 15 seconds if it hit.

Ok so it's a really fun game and I like it, so why am I only halfway done? This is why.

My nemesis

There's this game in the bar that's a mini-version of the main game. Just the box pushing part, not the sleeping with a hot 22-year old part. Unlike the main game, there's no time limit but you do have a limited number of moves (moves = box pushes/pulls). So you can sit and plan your exact route which is good because it gets really hard. Vincent gets three credits on the game per night, and loses them when you die (generally from getting into an unwinnable situation). You can undo the last 9 moves, but sometimes that isn't enough.

More fun than the main game

Anyway, Rapunzel is great! I've spent at least a couple hours playing it. I would totally buy it if it were its own game. But right now it's stopping me from playing the game because I can't figure out the current level and I don't want to waste my credits by leaving the bar and continuing the actual game. I knew I was in trouble as soon as the level came up. It's stage 21 or so, and all the previous stages were multiple screens high and had tons of blocks, some of which disappear after you step on them, or maybe couldn't be moved at all. And then this one came up - one screen, I think just 11 blocks in the shape of an H. And it's totally impossible.