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Spent some time in Islands of Insight last night and came away happily anticipating the full release - I’ve enjoyed my time so far enough that I think I might sink some more in even though none of this is carrying over to release which I think speaks to them having hit upon something good. The trailer had made me think that the game would be a bit more overtly co-op or at least more specifically cater to playing through the game in the group and what’s implemented here definitely feels pretty barebones. As a single player experience however I’m really enjoying the inherent exploration involved in traversing the world to find puzzles, and the bite size nature of the puzzles just scattered around are a nice contrast to the more focused nature of some of the specific Enclaves like the invisible maze pyramid. I’ve enjoyed the way the encyclopaedia functions where - at least with the logic grid puzzles, I don’t know if this is also true for any others? - a puzzle will demonstrate a technique to help solve more complex iterations of itself and then you’ll have that recorded to refer back to. I guess if I had one concern about the long term experience of playing the game, it’s that having a fixed set of puzzle categories may eventually feel quite repetitive - I hope they can work some more unique/one-off experiences in as well even if it were just as capstones for areas. The game clearly needs more work, both technically in terms of optimisation and bug fixing, as well as I think clarifying some of the mechanics a little, but the core skeleton that’s here feels really great and suspect this will be a day one purchase for me when it does hit release. If you’re at all curious the current open playtest runs until 21st September so I’d encourage you to check it out and give the devs some feedback.
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Sep 17, 2023 06:34
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just finished 100% on Stuffo the Puzzle Bot after finally clearing enough of my backlog to get to it. Good game! very strongly reminiscent of Snakebird, although i don't think it ever gets quite as hard.
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Sep 19, 2023 00:16
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Started playing Exapunks the other day and I am completely stumped by the TEC Redshift puzzle. Any tips?
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Sep 21, 2023 01:50
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 Played Shenzhen IO for the first time. Ive done like 8 puzzles
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Sep 23, 2023 01:06
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Control Volume posted:Played Shenzhen IO for the first time. Ive done like 8 puzzles It’s cool how they included a little programming minigame for when you want a break from solitaire.
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Sep 23, 2023 01:17
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Playing through Taiji now. It is remarkable how shamelessly it is biting the Witness, something I don't particularly blame it for. There's some good stuff here, but it does drive home how much Blow benefitted from spending so much time and money on testing; by comparison, this game has many more severe conveyance issues, particularly with mechanical ordering. When I get stuck and get out of it, it rarely feels like I've learned something so much as that I've excavated a poorly communicated concept that I might not have even stumbled across as "intended". ...jeez, I really hate saying even indirectly positive things about Blow.
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Sep 28, 2023 07:26
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We Were Here Expeditions: The FriendShip is out on Steam and is FREE for the next two weeks. It's a co-op puzzle/communication game. The puzzles themselves are okay, not anything super special, but the production values are high and the setting and theme are super charming. It's also extremely short -- I finished it with a friend who's fairly new to games in ~90 minutes. But hey, free. Definitely a pro grab if you have a friend and an afternoon to play through it.
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Sep 30, 2023 15:27
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Grabbed Cocoon since I'd seen some brief footage of it a while back and wanted to see what the maker of Inside and Limbo was up to. Relatively short game, I was able to finish it in ~5 hours but think it filled out that run time well. The dimensional sphere concept could have become overbearing with its difficulty if they wanted to go crazy but they did a good job designing interesting puzzles without running into any brick walls. Tried to be attentive but ultimately missed one of the eleven hidden collectibles, not sure if getting them all changes anything about the ending.
NoEyedSquareGuy fucked around with this message at 08:38 on Oct 1, 2023 |
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Oct 1, 2023 03:39
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It was fun but a bit underwhelming as a puzzle game, to me, which I guess I should have expected given the credentials-- the focus is more on vibes than gameplay. I clocked in just north of 4 hours and I'm going to go see if those collectibles change anything, but it felt like every time the mechanics started getting Very Interesting (both the "sending items through orb chains" and "recursive orbs" were mechanics I was fully ready to run into some more Weird poo poo with) they immediately dropped it there and said "alright that's enough of that, moving on" Guess I'll be seeing if there's anything special behind or about collectibles but I'm not holding my breath
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Oct 1, 2023 06:41
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I gave up on Taiji when I hit the endgame and the "below the island" area and just felt all remaining energy drain out of me. I can see what it's going to do and the idea of forcing my way through another 30 puzzles didn't feel worth it.
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Oct 1, 2023 07:54
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Not seeing it in this thread, but The Talos Principle 2 got a release date of November 2nd. The first game, if you're unfamiliar, is a great Portal-like from devs of Serious Sam of all people. The game is absolutely incredible and is probably the best first person puzzle game you can find right now, featuring a lot of optional secrets, exploration, multiple endings, and even a pretty good story. It usually costs pennies on Steam so I absolutely recommend it. Actually upgrading my PC so I can run the second one, easily one of my most anticipated titles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SMuZ__qjG0
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Oct 1, 2023 08:57
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One of my favorite puzzle platformers is 80% off for the next week. You've spent more money on worse games; give this one a chance.
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Oct 3, 2023 04:24
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ultrafilter posted:One of my favorite puzzle platformers is 80% off for the next week. You've spent more money on worse games; give this one a chance. This looks right up my alley  I'll pick it up now to play later, right now I'm about 50 hours into Tametsi.
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Oct 3, 2023 07:03
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Finished Cocoon. There's a lot to like. The bosses in particular are great -- each one has their own bespoke gimmick, a neat last-phase twist, and ends before it wears out its welcome). But it left me with a bit of a sour taste in my mouth when the last room pointed out which areas I missed collectibles in but wouldn't actually let me backtrack for them even though it was in a perfect place to do so. Maybe the ending is more satisfying if you find all of them, but I'll leave that to other people.
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Oct 4, 2023 04:59
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Thoom posted:Finished Cocoon. There's a lot to like. The bosses in particular are great -- each one has their own bespoke gimmick, a neat last-phase twist, and ends before it wears out its welcome). But it left me with a bit of a sour taste in my mouth when the last room pointed out which areas I missed collectibles in but wouldn't actually let me backtrack for them even though it was in a perfect place to do so. Maybe the ending is more satisfying if you find all of them, but I'll leave that to other people. The way they did the "loading" is forgiving-- it says "you may lose data" but you don't really; you can jump back to a 20% load, find a collectible, and jump back forward to a 98% and confirm you've collected it. I think the game has a strict idea of what you're "supposed to" have at every incremental checkpoint so the only data loss is if you somehow managed to put something in a spot the game didn't expect you to and loads it back into the expected location.
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Oct 4, 2023 07:13
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Vookatos posted:Not seeing it in this thread, but The Talos Principle 2 got a release date of November 2nd. There's a demo available, by the way. It doesn't appear on the game's store page on steam yet, but you can download it by going to steam://install/2312690 I posted some thoughts and screenshots in the SH/SC GPU thread (because it was mostly about the graphics technology used) Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:Okay, the Talos Principle 2 demo is available, and this game is pretty nice looking. I'm really vibing with everything about this game so far. It's stunningly beautiful and atmospheric, and I'm very intrigued about what this game may be building up to. It appears to be bigger and bolder than its predecessor, and I can't believe they're selling it for only $30 ($27 pre-order, or less than $25 if you own the previous game/buy the bundle)
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Oct 4, 2023 08:20
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Croteam lucked out in that the Talos Principle aesthetic is basically already "Unreal Engine tech demo". That simultaneously looks exactly like what the first game looks like in my memory (but obviously way prettier in actuality) and also exactly like every demo I've seen Epic give for Nanite and their procedural terrain system. Edit: To be clear, I think it looks great, it's just an eerily good fit for the UE5 tech. Thoom fucked around with this message at 09:01 on Oct 4, 2023 |
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Oct 4, 2023 08:32
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:There's a demo available, by the way. It doesn't appear on the game's store page on steam yet, but you can download it by going to steam://install/2312690 Can't agree more on the price. I would have easily spent thrice that amount. And the original Talos Principle was quite long, so I don't think this will be done in an afternoon either.
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Oct 4, 2023 08:43
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Thoom posted:Croteam lucked out in that the Talos Principle aesthetic is basically already "Unreal Engine tech demo". That simultaneously looks exactly like what the first game looks like in my memory (but obviously way prettier in actuality) and also exactly like every demo I've seen Epic give for Nanite and their procedural terrain system. I remember a friend's older brother playing Serious Sam when I was a little kid and explaining that it had the best graphics in the world, but looking up the reception at the time, I guess it did push the envelope quite a bit huh?
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Oct 4, 2023 11:51
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Serious Sam was released in a time when I wasn't paying too much attention to graphics, but I guess it looked pretty good? I don't know if it was the absolute best graphics of its era or anything, though. Serious Engine's two main claims to fame were its abilities to have absolutely massive levels as well as manage a huge number of 3D enemies on screen at once without totally choking. It's kind of sad that TPP2 marks the transition away from Serious Engine for Croteam, but SS4 was pure jank, and I've heard that their lead engineer has since left the company, so I guess their hand was forced. The game looks good on Unreal Engine, at least. Dr. Video Games 0031 fucked around with this message at 12:38 on Oct 4, 2023 |
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Oct 4, 2023 12:34
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I just saw some videos of that physics Tetris game スイカゲーム and it looks like fun. Does anybody know of a similar game on PC or Android? I don't even own a switch let alone a Japanese one.
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Oct 4, 2023 12:45
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VictualSquid posted:スイカゲーム and it looks like fun. Does anybody know of a similar game on PC or Android? Never heard of it before, but searching the name pulls up what appears to be the official Android version.
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Oct 4, 2023 14:28
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WhiteHowler posted:I've been playing through the Rusty Lake games the past couple of weeks. It's an excellent puzzle/adventure series with a creepy backstory. The new Rusty Lake game, Underground Blossom came out last week.  It's up there with the best in the series, alongside Rusty Lake Roots. I love these games: Creepy setting with weird characters, lots of (cartoony) murder, and lovingly campy production values. The puzzles are pretty good too. Maybe a bit easier this time around, but I also didn't get stuck on anything that was just too obtuse, probably a first in the Rusty Lake series. Anyway, it's $5, on sale for $3.50. A bargain for a few hours of puzzle-y fun.
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Oct 4, 2023 16:00
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VictualSquid posted:I just saw some videos of that physics Tetris game スイカゲーム and it looks like fun. Does anybody know of a similar game on PC or Android? I don't even own a switch let alone a Japanese one. There's this on steam EDIT: There's also these websites. Zathril fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Oct 4, 2023 |
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Oct 4, 2023 16:02
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ultrafilter posted:One of my favorite puzzle platformers is 80% off for the next week. You've spent more money on worse games; give this one a chance. Done the first seven levels so far, pretty solid game! Liking the design of the puzzles so far, definitely has some thought put into it.
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Oct 4, 2023 20:27
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definitely making sure any backpack I ever buy from now on can turn into a ghost when I do
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Oct 4, 2023 23:16
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Speaking of puzzle platformers, one that you might have through various itch bundles is Rising Dusk It advertises itself as an anti-coin collecting platformer, but that's not really the case. This description makes it feel like a level from a Mario romhack stretched out to a whole game. It is, however, a game, where the state of the world (many colored platforms) are affected by your coin counter. It's a very charming game where every level has a unique gimmick, with quite a few secrets, and some collectibles. It looks and sounds great!
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Oct 5, 2023 09:30
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Played through the Talos Principle 2 demo. Super pretty and really feels like it picks up where the previous game left off. I got really stuck on one puzzle until I looked it up. Turns out there was a bug in that one which could render it impossible. That's a bit of a damper and I hope that such things will be fixed in the proper game. Also there are still meta-puzzles where you break out of the box. I found the start of something like that and managed to direct a hidden laser to a mountain, but unfortunately, I didn't find any payoff for that in the demo. Either I didn't look hard enough, or you need to access more to use that. Anyways, I'm really looking forward to that game!
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Oct 5, 2023 22:11
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Super envious of people trying out Talos 2. I'm actually upgrading my PC for it. Sure, playing any other title that came out in the past 2 years is a nice bonus, but I don't want to miss it at all. I think the meta puzzles and exploration was my favorite part of the original and is something I always love in games (for example, Baba is You). It's such a nice bonus and makes the progression feel much more rewarding than it would be with just numbered doors and hubs. Seeing that blocked off door, for example, was the moment I knew the original game was truly special.
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Oct 6, 2023 09:10
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There are definitely at least a few hidden macguffins you can collect by solving some secret meta puzzles in the TPP2 demo. There are "only" 12 puzzle hubs this time (that we know of), but each one is way larger and more detailed than anything seen in the first game, and there is bound to be a lot happening beneath the surface that we are not privy to in the demo. So the exploration aspect seems even more fleshed out than in the first game.
Dr. Video Games 0031 fucked around with this message at 05:47 on Oct 7, 2023 |
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Oct 6, 2023 12:36
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Yeah, I need to upgrade my PC for TTP2 as well. My GPU is just too old for it. Probably won't happen any time soon so I'll need to avoid spoilers for a while!
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Oct 8, 2023 03:51
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TTP2 demo was good, might finally go back and finish the original game. I keep returning to it periodically and trying to play it in VR since I rarely have an excuse to use my headset but then I quickly remember that I can't tolerate playing anything in VR for more than an hour or so and drop it.
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Oct 8, 2023 04:23
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The demo for Talos 2 is incredible. I love it when games start like exaclty what you'd expect only to pull the rug from under you. I do hope they explain why the gently caress the robots are gendered, though.
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Oct 9, 2023 09:52
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I made a game that I'd describe as a low budget Obra-Dinn-like, with hints of Her Story and elements of text adventures in it. It's going to be free (The core gameplay loop revolves around a significant amount of AI generated art so trying to sell it would be a minefield I don't want to traverse) so I made a build that can be played in a web browser, and am now doing somewhat of a soft launch. The fastest anyone has ever completed it in was between 7 and 8 hours so even though its low budget and you play it in browser, don't think of it as quick. Essentially, I've tested it a ton with players who played it in a standalone .exe build, but now that it's in browser I expect there might be some new bugs or things I didn't expect. DM me if you're interested (or post here if you don't have DMs and I'll find a way to get it to you) Also, If anyone would be able/willing to record themselves doing so I'd love to see people play it (I'm not asking for a facecam or anything but it's probably only worth watching if I can hear your voice). Also, alternatively if you're down to play it and record yourself but want to do it with an .exe instead of in a web browser, I can make that work too. Superrodan fucked around with this message at 08:38 on Oct 10, 2023 |
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Oct 10, 2023 08:21
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That game sounds interesting, but my I-feel-like-playtesting-out-of-goodness-of-heart time is currently occupied by IFComp, tbh. I might be able to do it in a few weeks, if you're still interested. In the meantime, I think more people might bite if you post some juicy screenshots or something.
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Oct 10, 2023 22:02
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Vookatos posted:The demo for Talos 2 is incredible. I assume they draw inspiration from the people they named themselves after and chose to adopt some of their traits. Superrodan posted:I made a game that I'd describe as a low budget Obra-Dinn-like, with hints of Her Story and elements of text adventures in it. I might find some time to check it out this month. PM me the info. cant cook creole bream fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Oct 10, 2023 |
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Oct 10, 2023 22:29
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Megazver posted:That game sounds interesting, but my I-feel-like-playtesting-out-of-goodness-of-heart time is currently occupied by IFComp, tbh. I might be able to do it in a few weeks, if you're still interested. In the meantime, I think more people might bite if you post some juicy screenshots or something. No problem, it's more of an "if you're interested hit me up" kind of deal. I have a few takers already that DMed me and this isn't the only place I'm reaching out, so no pressure. It's not really a screenshottable game persay, but  
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Oct 10, 2023 23:06
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I played it a bit and I think I'll enjoy it and that others in this thread will too. It has some feel for early internet nostalgia. Edit: I went through that game. I enjoyed it a lot and left a more detailed review in PM. cant cook creole bream fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Oct 11, 2023 |
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Oct 10, 2023 23:18
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Hey puzzle game thread! I made a puzzle game, I'm beta testing version 2 right now, and I'd love to get some puzzle game enthusiasts' takes on it. Here's the current itch.io page: https://contentatogames.itch.io/solquence the game's got updated graphics and effects and I've smoothed out the edges. The itch page is still version 1, but I'll be updating that when I publish. Short version, its a bit like match-3 meets solitaire with some poker thrown in. Its got emergent strategy and ramping difficulty, and I'm proud of how its turned out. If anyone's interested, just PM me. The test is closed so I'd need your Apple ID or Google ID email to add you to either TestFlight or the Play Store list. I'm planning on publishing in a month or so barring any major bugs in the release (right now there's just a few minor ones) so it seemed like a good time to start getting it out there. Thanks!
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Oct 12, 2023 00:06
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WhiteHowler posted:I've been playing through the Rusty Lake games the past couple of weeks. It's an excellent puzzle/adventure series with a creepy backstory. (Also some other puzzle games that I think no one has spoken about in this thread like Line Path, Slap The Rocks, and Colorgrid. I have no idea how any of those are, though.) dirby fucked around with this message at 20:05 on Oct 30, 2023 |
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Oct 30, 2023 19:43
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