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The Thinky Award Nominations have been announced. https://thinkygames.com/news/and-the-nominees-for-the-inaugural-thinky-awards-are/ It's mostly going to be jury selected but there's 3 community award categories: Community Vote: Game of the Year Community Vote: Most Anticipated Game Community Vote: Best Journalist / Content Creator
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Jan 16, 2024 03:04
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DontMockMySmock posted:Can I get a couple explanations for things in The Roottrees are Dead? I finished the game already but I'm curious about how I missed these: 1. For the first one, search for Miracle Jr. and it mentions his wife Edith has a checkered past. Search for her, and you find information about her past which includes her being caught by Miracle Sr.'s wife Helen. For the third one, There's a song you may have missed. It's a short "preview" of a song called Son by Jim and Diamond that implies his mother's name is Joan through a rhyme scheme. You find it by searching for "Cherry Tree album" or "Cherry Tree music" or one of a dozen or so combinations of similar keywords 2. If you search in Business Watch for Guy Hudson it mentions he was in an ad campaign as a kid. If you search for the ad campaign you get the photos 3. There's nothing in the ending sequence not in the game. One of those things is part of a massively important chunk of evidence. Not finding it probably made the game way, way more difficult. Specifically, Elias' Scandalous Will is part of Lauren's second diary. which gives you SO much more context on everything with regards to the ending. The History of Candy is found by doing a search for "5Pieces" in the normal search engine I suspect one of the reasons you had to do some guessing is because you never found the second diary , especially from the Free Spirits generation. The hints for who Gwyneth and Ernie are, including Gwyneth's job is found directly in there.
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Jan 16, 2024 07:17
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Superrodan posted:Elias' Scandalous Will is part of Lauren's second diary. Oh, I did have that, and you're right, it was massively important. I just didn't realize Elias' Scandalous Will was the title of one of the diary entries when I saw it in the ending sequence. Thanks for the answers!
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Jan 16, 2024 08:49
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DontMockMySmock posted:Oh, I did have that, and you're right, it was massively important. I just didn't realize Elias' Scandalous Will was the title of one of the diary entries when I saw it in the ending sequence. No problem. I have seen people complete the game without it, so I wasn't sure. The fact that you didn't ask about Steamy Correspondence is the real surprise. That's probably the rarest thing to find in the ending.
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Jan 16, 2024 09:32
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Superrodan posted:No problem. I have seen people complete the game without it, so I wasn't sure. The fact that you didn't ask about Steamy Correspondence is the real surprise. That's probably the rarest thing to find in the ending. I found that pretty easily, long before I found the second diaries. Considering how crucial they are, I thought they were a little too hard to find. I did see the clues, but didn't connect them.
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Jan 16, 2024 15:34
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Just finished The Roottrees are Dead. It was terrific. Certainly on par with something like The Case of the Golden Idol except it's freeeee? What kind of crazy world is this? 1: Let me say, it was extremely weird playing literally immediately after playing Hypnospace Outlaw, since both contain retro Netscape simulators with diagetic documentary elements. I think this game was much better served by the 'gamification' of the family tree to afford direction, as well as the game commonly (though not always) compressing information into a digest of "you find nothing here" or "someone mentioned this thing". It's less simulation and more game, and I can appreciate both, but this suits me better. 2: We missed that (minor mechanical spoiler for The Roottrees are Dead) Intuition was a thing for like half the game. v  v3: We did not find (minor spoiler for The Roottrees are Dead) the movie periodical at all which made us fully war-dial guess on a very late identity. But that leads into what I thought was great. (partially veiled ending spoilers for The Roottrees are Dead) I loved that the clues that were integral to the ending narrative are shown so you can see where you got it right and where you were making small leaps, and what you might have missed completely. In these narrative puzzlers, it's about that feeling of 'I'm so clever... but if I was just a little more clever, I would have noticed that part to! Ah!' That is what I am chasing in narrative puzzlers that I can't get in strictly logical puzzlers like Baba Is You or whatever. Kojima-san created the Strand-type, but now I'm happy we're getting more Dinn-likes.
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Jan 20, 2024 02:41
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Magnetic North posted:3: We did not find (minor spoiler for The Roottrees are Dead) the movie periodical at all which made us fully war-dial guess on a very late identity. But that leads into what I thought was great. (partially veiled ending spoilers for The Roottrees are Dead) I loved that the clues that were integral to the ending narrative are shown so you can see where you got it right and where you were making small leaps, and what you might have missed completely. In these narrative puzzlers, it's about that feeling of 'I'm so clever... but if I was just a little more clever, I would have noticed that part to! Ah!' That is what I am chasing in narrative puzzlers that I can't get in strictly logical puzzlers like Baba Is You or whatever. This is exactly what I was going for, so thank you for saying this! Some of the things, mainly Steamy Correspondence and the original ad for 5Pieces that lists EC were specifically meant to be really hard to find, but the ending was designed to be possible to get to without them specifically to create that moment.
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Jan 20, 2024 09:13
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I just loaded up The Roottrees are Dead so I could toss a reasonable purchase-price's worth of support, and while I was doing it I saw the top comment was "OMG the degauss button works!!" so of course I had to start it up and test it out (it does, in fact, work) e: and going through Superrodan's post history in this thread to find the original link, I also stumbled across an early post about the sequel to Quern: Undying Thoughts that's in development. Quern is my favorite puzzle game since Myst. So I'm just gonna drop the Steam page with the Wishlist link for anybody that forgot about it/hadn't wishlisted it yet. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2458980/Dimhaven_Enigmas/ E2: And the latest news update! "Dimhaven Engimas (December 20th, 2023) posted:Dear Explorers! bawk fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Jan 21, 2024 |
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Jan 21, 2024 16:55
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So I got a lot of press this last week I want to share with the thread, since I had some happy players here! This great article touting the game: https://www.droidgamers.com/news/solquence/ This youtuber played it for 2 hours! She enjoyed it, but was skeptical about how much she'd want to replay it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acqe3YKKy40 I def have two kinds of players. Helpless addicts, or people who are just kinda like 'hey cool game' I got a recommendation as one of the 5 new mobile games to get this week which was awesome https://www.pocketgamer.com/new-weekly-mobile-games/january-18th-2024/ or in video form, which was wild to find https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zj_ieD5I2c4 And I got a full review today! 3 stars... Not really anything negative aside from 'its repetitive' but then again, I was absolutely going for that. I love this quote though: "Solquence will appeal to puzzle game fans seeking an easy-to-learn game that challenges players while managing to uphold a calming, almost zen atmosphere." https://www.pocketgamer.com/solquence/review/ I've caught references to Solquence in a few spots, other forums, and multiple various sites from all over. Been an exciting week here as an indie dev! 
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Jan 22, 2024 15:55
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Finally finished Chants of Sennaar after many fits and starts Felt a major drop-off there at the end. * I was prepared for the fourth language to be the last, and then there was the Exiles one. * I was prepared for the big stairs to be the end, and then there were the four purple doors. * I was prepared for opening the big door to be the end, and then there was the long VR fakeout. Translating things for the links at the end was not fun because the game required you to mouseover glyphs one word at a time instead of just presenting them in a nice sorted way or any other affordance. The game doesn't keep around examples of full sentences in the journal for you to consult, so remembering the word order for various languages was pure guesswork for me. Getting around the world was tedious. The first "something in the tower has changed" was exciting to find but eventually I looked up spoilers for the rest. at least I know how it ends and can play a different game now yay edit: this all sounds too crabby in retrospect. I still think the game is a good accomplishment considering it was made by like, five people. I just really expected for it to be done so I could go to bed and then it just puttered on Sivart13 fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Jan 24, 2024 |
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Jan 23, 2024 04:32
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99% sure I cheesed one of the triangle puzzles in Talos Principle 2: If you position the gravity well right you can jump into it directly and carry a prism over onto the magnetic wall for an easy finish, completely ignoring the adjustable wall switch and whatever else I was supposed to be doing. Think this is the only one I've managed to really break, they seem to have locked down most of the shenanigans compared to the original game. Only time I've managed to steal an item was in the museum replicating a puzzle from Talos 1 and I couldn't find anything useful to do with the prism once I got it out.
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Jan 24, 2024 05:57
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There is one puzzle in West 3 that is intended to be solved a very specific way, but the item interaction is finicky/unintuitive and you can literally just platform your way to a solution instead. It owns.
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Jan 24, 2024 06:36
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I loved Chants of Sennaar, just bought 4 gift copies for friends and family haha (was still on Steam sale when I finished it)
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Jan 24, 2024 07:11
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Superrodan posted:This is exactly what I was going for, so thank you for saying this! Some of the things, mainly Steamy Correspondence and the original ad for 5Pieces that lists EC were specifically meant to be really hard to find, but the ending was designed to be possible to get to without them specifically to create that moment. Those are two of the three things I never found (the other being the alternate Bonnie and Guy pictures), although the second one in your spoiler I slapped my forehead for not trying once I saw it revealed at the end credits. I will just echo what others have said here, that was a great game and you deserve many donations for making something so polished and enjoyable
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Jan 25, 2024 18:08
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I did enjoy chants of senaar but I don't think its an unpopular opoinion that the game peaks around the third/fourth language, maybe probably around the third. I personally didn't have the same issues remembering the sentence structure as you did, but I also played through it all in one shot. Everything with the exiles and on is definitely weak, partially because decoding the exiles language isn't nearly as fun as the rest, and also the last part of the game suddenly becoming this weird action stealth bit isn't that interesting either. For me the highlights were solving the 6 terminal puzzles, serving as a google translate for the first four races. I did have a funny personal experience with the Alchemists where I missed the mural behind the minecraft for 5ever which includes translations for one of the most basic words in the alchemist language (I think the one for "to be"?) which made that part of the game MUCH harder for me.
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Jan 25, 2024 21:37
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I actually had something similar where I missed the crucial Rosette Stone for the third language. Honestly lead to an interesting experience where I kept having to update my idea of what those abstract concepts meant
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Jan 25, 2024 21:46
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I feel they shouldn't have revealed the "canon" answers to translated words. Would have been interesting to go through the game with my initial impression that the symbol for god was the symbol for the sun
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Jan 25, 2024 23:24
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not enough curse words
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Jan 25, 2024 23:26
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Honestly lol I had an ok time with Chants of Sennar through the first chapter, wasn't completely sold, but then got the stealth section very shortly followed up with a sliding-block-puzzle where you move furniture around a courtyard, and refunded that poo poo
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Jan 25, 2024 23:44
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I grabbed chants of sennaar on the winter sale and for anybody reading those posts and deciding not to get it: the stealth sections are very straightforward puzzle sections and getting caught sets you back all of five seconds, and the only block pushing puzzle I've come across five hours in is the one in the first act It's great so far! Also the roottrees are dead was loving great too nice job
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Jan 27, 2024 18:19
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Hobojim posted:the only block pushing puzzle I've come across five hours in is the one in the first act The stealth sections are all pretty chill, and thankfully well checkpointed. They just don't add anything to the language-understanding part of the game. I've never had patience for watching my little guy walk slowly across long scenes, going all the way back to King's Quest. At least that game had a "speed" slider, though it had the effect of making all animations look really dumb. I wish they implemented the travel-skipping thing some point-and-clicks have where you can click left-right quick on an exit to automatically go through. Or a map for quick travel. There's a maze section at some point that I just looked up the map online, though it might have been fun to make a map myself.
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Jan 27, 2024 19:14
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If that's in the second area of the game, it was a very small maze at least. I'm usually extremely bad at mazes and it went smoothly. If not I guess I have that to look forward to! I liked the stealth parts because of how checkpointed and puzzle-like they were; you can hover over a spot to see if you'll be hidden there and when you click he goes right to it, it's very simple. The sections are all about distracting guards or avoiding lines of sight, and there aren't many of them. I like how they reinforced the culture of the area nicely. Faster movement would have greatly improved the game though, making backtracking less tedious. I'm still enjoying it a lot though! Edit: Spelling Hobojim fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Jan 29, 2024 |
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Jan 27, 2024 19:48
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between the stealth and people calling each other "brother," Chants of Sennaar is basically a new Metal Gear Solid
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Jan 27, 2024 19:54
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The stealth in second second have a narrative purpose but the same narrative purpose would have been achieved if you got put into a disguise immediately rather than having to do something frustrating for an extended period of time first The stealth in final section, I get why it adds some tension to the proceedings but that entire section is kind of a step down anyway
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Jan 28, 2024 00:06
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In Chants of Senaar, I just got to the Exile section of the tower. I've restored all available (non-Exile) links and fully translated the devotee/warrior/alchemist languages.. I'm missing 4 confirmed words from the bard language which I'm pretty sure I know the definitions of but haven't found a page to let me fill them in. Do I need to go back and explore or will that page be forthcoming?
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Feb 1, 2024 04:11
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Thoom posted:In Chants of Senaar, I just got to the Exile section of the tower. I've restored all available (non-Exile) links and fully translated the devotee/warrior/alchemist languages.. I'm missing 4 confirmed words from the bard language which I'm pretty sure I know the definitions of but haven't found a page to let me fill them in. Do I need to go back and explore or will that page be forthcoming? You need to go back and explore.
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Feb 1, 2024 04:24
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Thanks! Finished the game in pretty short order after that. I liked the concept and a lot of the early execution of the game, but it definitely ran out of steam near the end. You could tell they'd needed a 5th language for their story, but by the time they got to it they'd run out of clever gameplay ideas for language teaching so they just reverted to a few rosetta stones that basically hand you the entire language. I think my two main disappointments stem from misplaced expectations more than any fault of the game itself. I'd heard a lot of people compare the game to Outer Wilds, so I was expecting slightly more coherent world building than the bard culture running a play on repeat whose script is just the directions through their super secret cave maze that they don't want anyone going through. It was also a bit too generous with word confirmations. Would have been nice to have a bit more time to jump at the shadows of my own potential misunderstandings, and I was kind of hoping for a twist where a word you thought meant one thing actually meant something completely different, but that's kind of precluded by how quickly word meanings are confirmed. Edit: The little twist at the end was pretty good, too.
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Feb 1, 2024 07:21
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I haven't tried it yet but Boxes: Lost Fragments might be fun for anyone who enjoyed the The Room series
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Feb 1, 2024 18:47
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This is entirely a vanity post but y'all my game is creeping up in the rankings on the App store. Currently 26 in paid casual. I've been watching it a few days and being one scroll wheel away from the front page is pretty amazing. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/solquence/id1620713883
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Feb 4, 2024 13:51
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That's deffo cool to see and makes me consider releasing a very barebones version of the puzzle game I recently came up with. But instead I'm stuffing it with cat-themed minigames that have nothing to do with the puzzle mechanics. Once it's a little more presentable I may ask this thread if they've seen the puzzle mechanic before. But I should probably flesh out the game first 'cause it would be very easy for some mobile games publisher to do a better and quicker job than me.
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Feb 4, 2024 18:30
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After playing the demo for https://store.steampowered.com/app/2071500/Islands_of_Insight/ I still don't understand what the MMO component does (probably the biggest puzzle in and of itself), but it is a fun open world variety sandbox of small puzzles akin to the Witness or Talos principle, with small self-contained puzzles, casual 3d hidden object areas, general hidden collectables, perspective puzzles, a small amount of casual platforming (dying to the bottomless pit just respawns you without any punishment) and a couple of overarching area puzzles where you have to stand somewhere where you can see two of the same symbol. That's just the tutorial area. Fun small dopamine hits. There's also a skill tree for some reason, with a double jump and glide, which you can unlock by solving puzzles and finding things. From the demos I played it was the biggest surprise of this year's next fest. I stopped after the tutorial area because I might probably get it as soon as it releases.
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Feb 6, 2024 17:26
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Oenis posted:After playing the demo for https://store.steampowered.com/app/2071500/Islands_of_Insight/ I still don't understand what the MMO component does (probably the biggest puzzle in and of itself), but it is a fun open world variety sandbox of small puzzles akin to the Witness or Talos principle, with small self-contained puzzles, casual 3d hidden object areas, general hidden collectables, perspective puzzles, a small amount of casual platforming (dying to the bottomless pit just respawns you without any punishment) and a couple of overarching area puzzles where you have to stand somewhere where you can see two of the same symbol. That's just the tutorial area. Fun small dopamine hits. There's also a skill tree for some reason, with a double jump and glide, which you can unlock by solving puzzles and finding things. I slammed this onto my wishlist, I'll be there on Day 1 wandering around to solve puzzles.
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Feb 6, 2024 18:33
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yea the MMO aspect is completely superfluous and seems to serve only one purpose, which is to ensure a future date where the game one day goes offline and no one can access it anymore it even has EAC which... you're worried about people cheating in a puzzle game?? who cares lol i still want it though. $30 is a bit pricey but it seems to have a ton of content
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Feb 6, 2024 21:59
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I want it to have prox chat so badly. Imagine trying to solve a difficult logic puzzle with a couple other people, only to have ConjugalCryptid69 show up out of the blue, solve it in 15 seconds, and disappear into the aether, all while micspamming the Sears air conditioner "another scorcher" commefcial
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Feb 6, 2024 22:10
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Can't wait for the people standing in the middle of the puzzle you're trying to solve and teabagging the tetronimos or whatever
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Feb 6, 2024 22:37
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bawk posted:I want it to have prox chat so badly. Imagine trying to solve a difficult logic puzzle with a couple other people, only to have ConjugalCryptid69 show up out of the blue, solve it in 15 seconds, and disappear into the aether, all while micspamming the Sears air conditioner "another scorcher" commefcial Small group co-operative with proximity chat like Lethal Company would have been the move but I don't think they get the funding that way.
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Feb 6, 2024 22:45
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Yeah I like the idea of playing a Talos-style game with friends but I can't see how having other randos around could enhance the experience.
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Feb 6, 2024 22:58
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There's a puzzle type where you have to navigate a glass maze, during the previous beta test it was fun to stand at the end of a big group of them and watch everyone else trying to muddle through. But yes the MMO stuff is mostly superfluous, or probably a way to pace out the puzzles instead of just dumping a huge list on you. The movement is pretty fun but only when it's not rubberbanding to all hell.
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Feb 8, 2024 05:41
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Thoom posted:The Outer Wilds ship is a puzzle where the solution is "remember high school physics". Also don't try to learn by piloting the model ship. It uses the same controls which are much more intuitive if you're actually sitting in the chair instead of looking at it from 3rd person. Edit: oh that post was from a month ago, not today.
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Feb 8, 2024 06:01
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  https://store.steampowered.com/app/1332180/CIPHER_ZERO/ has a pretty good demo.
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Feb 8, 2024 12:23
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