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 Islands of Insight is "an epic shared-world puzzle game you play as a Seeker on a peaceful journey of exploration and puzzle solving" developed by Lunarch Studios (who previously made Prismata and Jelly Is Sticky), and published by Behaviour Interactive (probably best know for Dead by Daylight). The game is launching on February 14th and is available on Steam. Pricing has yet to be announced. A Steam Next Fest demo will be running from Feburary 5th to February 12th, however you can currently click here to sign up for early demo access which is available now This overview trailer is a good quick showcase of what the game is about : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oERzysRyg5M There's a good developer deep dive video here that goes in to a bit more detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JmHrUIZsMI An online, open world puzzle game reminiscent (broadly) in feel to games like The WItness and The Talos Principle, in Islands of Insight you'll roam through rather pretty floating island environments, seeking out puzzles at every turn. The devs have said that the game has 10,000+ puzzles - this is true though it's worth noting there are fundamentally 24 'types' of puzzle and that 10,000 number represents multiple iterations and challenges spanning across those broad archetypes. These range from logic grid puzzles with multiple configurations of different rulesets to environmental perspective puzzles that challenge you to work out where you need to position yourself in order to achieve a certain outcome like lining up and image or being able to see all pillars on a platform. There's also a number of hidden objects scattered throughout the world, shimmering away in Predator-esque invisibility but slowly revealing themselves as you move through or approach them. The game world is very vertical, and quickly as you progress through the opening stage of the game you unlock traversal powers like a double jump; eventually you'll also unlock the ability to glide which allows both easy traversal over long distances and may even be necessary to help solve certain puzzles. This isn't an action game however; plunge off the edge of an island into the void and you'll gently be warped back on to solid ground.  The campaign is broken down into a series of missions where you'll solve puzzles across a number of different large biomes on the main island, interspersed with small floating island Enclaves that surround it. Thankfully, at least in what I've played from a previous demo, objectives are largely open ended; often you'll be told to solve x number of puzzles in an area, but it's up to you what puzzles you want to focus on. Sick to your back teeth of logic grids? Go find something else. As you progress through the game you'll unlock new puzzles types that will flesh out areas, and there's a level of refreshing going on with puzzles despawning and new puzzles cycling through on a daily basis. Enclaves are single-themed areas used to introduce a new puzzle type, or are themed around a particular type of puzzle whether to showcase a particular specific mechanic or rapidly iterate on a single puzzle type. As you complete puzzles, you'll earn sparks that you can use in the game's skill tree to unlock traversal abilities, puzzle tools to help take some of the tedium out of solving more complex puzzles, and cosmetics for your character. The game is a shared world, and those words are chosen fairly carefully rather than say "co-op" or "MMO" - you'll see other players constantly, and can travel with friends if you're so inclined but your puzzle progression is your own and there's no collision between players so you can't be blocked or obstructed. If you're playing with a friend, you can certainly work together on puzzle solutions but there's no direct co-op and at least in the early game that's comprised the demo so far, no indication of any puzzles that require more than one player to solve.  I played a demo of this back in September last year and thoroughly enjoyed my time with it. There's no real sense of urgency, there are puzzles literally scattered everywhere, and I found it a pretty relaxing experience to just be able to strike out in whatever direction I fancied and tackle whatever puzzles caught my interest. For completionists, the map features ample numbers of Ubisoft-esque things to tick off and complete but as you've got a large degree of non-linearity on the path you take and the puzzles you tackle, I never ran into the feeling of being stuck engaging with a specific piece of content just for the sake of progression.  I've just got the demo downloaded myself and I'm looking forward to jumping back in and seeing what's been changed or polished since the September demo, and I'm excited for the release later this month. Mode 7 fucked around with this message at 14:07 on Feb 2, 2024 |
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Feb 2, 2024 14:01
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Demo's real short, not too changed from the September beta. I'm a bit concerned about how the open world puzzles constantly refresh, it feels pointless to do the harder ones when you can just do trivial ones over and over for money.
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Feb 2, 2024 22:31
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I jumped in when it dropped last night and think that in general the UI feels a little more polished and responsive from the September beta, there's a few more explicit hints given around puzzle types at the beginning as well that I think smooth the onboarding. Things like the Matching Fractal puzzles that were one of my least favourite things in the September beta feel both a little smoother to control and far less exactingly strict about 'matching' the pattern which is good because that was one of my least favourite things in the last beta and something I wrote a lot about in the feedback survey afterwards. A lot more of Verdant Glen is locked down in this demo, but the Crystal Path Enclave that has the crystal labyrinths and pattern cubes is new I'm pretty sure? It's a shame there doesn't seem to be a way to get into the big central pyramid Enclave in this beta as the multiple intertwining crystal labyrinths in there were one of my highlights of the last beta - just a bunch of people running around staring at each other through transparent walls trying to work out how the hell the other person had gotten around to <wherever>.
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Feb 2, 2024 23:04
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I had fun with the playtest last time and the movement and gliding around was very smooth. Only real annoyance was that the match-3 puzzles didn't really accept gamepad controls (unlike the rest of them). The last demo seemed to have too many kinda fillery medium-difficulty puzzles and not enough hard ones. But that's probably the right level of difficulty for a lot of folks and maybe the later locked-off areas would have more of the challenging ones.
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Feb 2, 2024 23:25
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Getting some nasty rubber banding this morning. I mean, hopefully a good indication for the devs that there's a bunch of people jumping into this demo (and anecdotally I feel like I'm seeing more people around generally) but I hope they can firm up the stuttering beyond launch. There's some one and two red star difficulty logic grid puzzles scattered around that I don't recall finding last demo, so definitely seems like there's room for harder puzzles. Feels like the variety of puzzles has been tweaked as well, I feel like the last demo was wall to wall logic grids through a lot of Verdant Glen and there seems to be a better intermixing of Armillary Rings/Skydrops/Matchboxes etc through it.
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Feb 2, 2024 23:55
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Games out now! I have to work like some sort of sucker so I won’t get a chance to jump in for a few hours yet but I’m more than sold enough to pick it up at launch.
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Feb 14, 2024 02:10
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This looks like my poo poo, hoping it runs well on the deck
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Feb 14, 2024 02:19
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The Saddest Rhino posted:This looks like my poo poo, hoping it runs well on the deck
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Feb 14, 2024 02:25
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Rubberbanding seems a lot better than in the demo (I guess servers are less overloaded now). It's fun running around the areas we haven't had a chance to look at up until now.
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Feb 14, 2024 02:53
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This seems neat. I wouldn't say it's as compelling or cohesive as The Witness, but assuming there's larger mysteries at play this is very much my jam.
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Feb 14, 2024 03:10
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I like the game but multiplayer continues to be pointless, and only seems to serve as an indicator of how poorly the game is selling, since there's nowhere near the amount of people running around as there was in the demo. Like, maybe a couple dozen people lol 
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Feb 14, 2024 04:58
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Are the puzzles timed? I personally would prefer not doing that because usually i play these sort of games while i'm doing menial tasks and may need to be away from the computer to work on something pressing
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Feb 14, 2024 05:14
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The Saddest Rhino posted:Are the puzzles timed? I personally would prefer not doing that because usually i play these sort of games while i'm doing menial tasks and may need to be away from the computer to work on something pressing
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Feb 14, 2024 05:17
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The 7th Guest posted:I like the game but multiplayer continues to be pointless, and only seems to serve as an indicator of how poorly the game is selling, since there's nowhere near the amount of people running around as there was in the demo. Like, maybe a couple dozen people lol I guess it could be instanced and you only see the people on your server partition. There are 1000 people playing now, so if they were all on the same map it would be flooded with arrows. Game is good, but it's mostly a delivery vehicle for the black/white puzzles which seem to be the main meat of the game. The other puzzles are mostly filler and don't require much in the way of thinking, but satisfy the "number go up" neurons. (Just unlocked the third main section of the island, so there might or might not be some more interesting puzzle types later)
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Feb 14, 2024 07:01
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I'm having a great time doing the puzzling. The puzzles and other player density seems a lot less than the beta test but that's to be expected.
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Feb 14, 2024 07:17
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From what I remember of the earlier playtest, the match-3 puzzles were pretty fiendish.
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Feb 14, 2024 07:52
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The filler puzzles can have some good signs of a human hand involved, especially the hidden object hunt and the chasing the ball one. But yeah, the black and white puzzles are the star attraction. I found a Witness style take on them near the newbie section and it was very satisfying puzzle solving.
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Feb 14, 2024 08:28
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There's a fair amount of variation on the logic cubes. I'd consider the match-3 and rolling blocks also real puzzles, and it looks like there could be a few more. Haven't seen any real indication there's larger mysteries or actual cooperative gameplay, and a few areas really ruin the illusion of handmade puzzles.
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Feb 14, 2024 08:35
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It saved my demo progress so that's nice. Enjoying myself so far and particularly getting to see some puzzles that weren't in the previous demos like the Rolling Block puzzles and the Sightseeing ones. I think being a completionist in this game would be a special kind of hell for me personally, but I love that I've got quest goals to follow if I need structure and if I don't want structure my ADHD-rear end brain can just go wandering for three seconds and find a stretch of land where someone has apparently upended a sack of puzzles. That said, completionist impulse adverse or not, I'm missing a single hidden ring buried somewhere in the Matchbox Enclave at the start of Lucent Waters and it's going to bug me like crazy if I don't eventually find it. To get the negatives out of the way: The game as presented matches my experience in the game as demo'd, so I'm super content with this, but I can't help but feel like the game as presented doesn't really match the game as conceptually marketed. If you read what they wrote about the game pre-launch carefully and watched their gameplay footage they made it clear that it's a 'shared world' game not a 'multiplayer' or 'co-op' game, but it doesn't take long to find comments from confused people who played the demo or bought the game and are confused that it isn't any sort of actual multiplayer experience. There's very little that I've seen that warrants this being an online title, and while I could probably grab some friends, jump into Discord and have a fun enough time running around together - particularly for bigger environmental setpieces like the crystal labyrinths - it's not even remotely a "co op" experience so I guess I don't understand why the devs went down this path. It'd be easy to ascribe live service model chasing or something but it's really not that sort of game, it's buy-to-play, there's no microtransactions etc. I guess I can't help but worry what happens to this game if it faceplants and keeping the servers up is no longer viable. None of this is going to stop me playing or enjoying the game, mind you, but it definitely feels like a strange choice.
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Feb 14, 2024 10:21
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Also there's something very, very satisfying about the way Armillary Sphere puzzles light up when you solve them.
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Feb 14, 2024 10:22
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Checked the forums and people said that the game is stuck at the loading screen on the deck so I think I'll wait until the devs work on it
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Feb 14, 2024 12:04
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Stumbled upon an island that let me unlock music grids and the shape dials, they're both alright in terms of "being real puzzles". Some of the Enclaves have been good and focused puzzles, but I've still yet to see larger mysteries or secrets at play. That said, I haven't unlocked a single entry under "Mysteries", so it's quite possible I just haven't stumbled across any.
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Feb 15, 2024 00:30
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You unlock some «mysteries» by finishing the main questline. It seems to be instructions to find some extra hidden puzzles where you have to do something special, haven’t had time to locate them yet. Also it seem like progress in the hub world isn’t saved? Could swear the puzzle are back in an area I scoured pretty thoroughly.
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Feb 15, 2024 08:06
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The hub world puzzles aren't all around at once, only a subset of them spawn each day. The tracker at the top of the map screen shows you how many of the ones today you've cleared, as well as how many of the total pool.
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Feb 15, 2024 08:18
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Finished the main questline, still lots of enclaves to go. Finishing it unlocks a bunch of clues for mysteries, but you don't need the clues in order to solve them - I found one before getting the clue just because something looked a bit Witness-style suspicious.
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Feb 15, 2024 14:44
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I spent all day yesterday playing this and am really enjoying it. Just a nice, chill game to fly around in with a big range of puzzle type and difficulty. I'm kind of confused by the fractal puzzles, though. Is there anything else to do except drag your mouse around until it decides the images match? Can you manipulate it further by how you drag on the screen...?
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Feb 15, 2024 18:11
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Hef Deezy posted:I spent all day yesterday playing this and am really enjoying it. Just a nice, chill game to fly around in with a big range of puzzle type and difficulty. It seems to be just https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_set fractals where moving your mouse affects the complex number that's used for the input parameter. I've found that it's pretty forgiving in how close to the actual number you have to get, the issue is that since they are fractals, there are points "far" away from each other that look similar, but have subtle differences, and you are required to get the correct one. One thing to watch out for is the number of "spokes" on circular structures - you might be looking at a five-spoke pattern while the target is a four-spoke one, for example.
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Feb 15, 2024 19:44
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I like this game a lot. I'm still completely baffled why it has to be online, but they've got some great puzzle designers, and now that I'm working on the Mysteries I'm finally getting REALLY challenged by the puzzles. It's no Talos Principle/The Witness/DROD, but it's a good game with a great deal of content for its price.
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Feb 16, 2024 10:45
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That's about where I'm at with it, having poopsocked it the last few days (I'm laid off and recovering from dental surgery okay). It feels like a mashup of fifty different puzzle games (most especially Hexcells) with the general layout of The Witness in the sense that you're wandering around a world stumbling over bite-sized puzzles everywhere you go. It compensates for feeling a bit more "budget" just in sheer quantity and variety of puzzles. Most of them are pretty breezy but towards the end can be very brain-burny. There are a few puzzles I've opened up and just been like "ehhh, no, not today satan". And a few times I've been like "ohhhh that's really cute". In particular the underclued puzzles are such a smart twist on the basic logic grids, and I don't think I've seen them anywhere before. Also gives me some old school budget MMO vibes, like not in the sense that it's a dumpster fire but that they tried online stuff that's a bit janky and experimental and not quite fully baked. From reading the launch AMA I think the devs charmed themselves more with the notion of people doing emotes at each other and helping point each other to locations than the actual reality of the thing, but I do find it cute to see people buzzing around in their togas and weird hats. (Incidentally the AMA itself was a real dumpster fire, I get feeling mislead that it's not more substantively multiplayer and having problems with the online stuff, but people really had their knives out. I was surprised by the level of vitriol! Felt bad for the lead dev guy.)
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Feb 16, 2024 16:31
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Managed to get inside the pyramid yesterday, I guess this is the real endgame. Didn't know what I expected, but was slightly disappointed - it's just a giant collection of puzzles, nested inside the space of the pyramid. About mysteries: Are any of them out on the islands, or are they contained in the main landmass? I know one is on an island - the very first one that has you go back to the starting area, so I wonder if there are more. I also discovered another weird choice - you get rewards for leveling up your character and areas, but you have to manually go into the screens and click on the rewards to claim them. ymgve fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Feb 16, 2024 |
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Feb 16, 2024 17:34
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ymgve posted:Managed to get inside the pyramid yesterday, I guess this is the real endgame. Didn't know what I expected, but was slightly disappointed - it's just a giant collection of puzzles, nested inside the space of the pyramid. I think there might actually be something beyond the pyramid -- you need a few mysteries to get in, and then even more mysteries to get to the top, so I wouldn't be shocked if there was something locked behind finishing all the mysteries. Can't say for sure yet though, I still have a few mysteries left. And yeah, the mysteries are all over the place.
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Feb 16, 2024 20:01
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ymgve posted:About mysteries: Are any of them out on the islands, or are they contained in the main landmass? I know one is on an island - the very first one that has you go back to the starting area, so I wonder if there are more. I've only found a few other mysteries but one of them was in an enclave.
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Feb 16, 2024 22:35
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I felt stuck in the pyramid with no way for a while, and turns out the reason I felt stuck is that there are two unmarked gates you have to click, they basically look like any other glass wall, and it tells me I don't have enough mysteries for those parts of the pyramid. Is the main goal even reachable without doing those parts? Anyone found a single "Echoes of Time" yet, by the way?
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Feb 16, 2024 23:10
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You get echoes of time on the rewards track for doing a bunch of hub world puzzles of a particular type. I'm not sure what they do?
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Feb 17, 2024 00:15
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Well, I have finished all the mysteries and nothing appears to have happened. Either I'm missing something or there's nothing locked behind it. I did notice that only the ones I finished *this session* are glowing, so maybe it's some kinda bug with that. I went back to refinish one of them and it didn't start glowing again.
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Feb 17, 2024 06:49
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Chomposaur posted:Well, I have finished all the mysteries and nothing appears to have happened. Either I'm missing something or there's nothing locked behind it. I did notice that only the ones I finished *this session* are glowing, so maybe it's some kinda bug with that. I went back to refinish one of them and it didn't start glowing again. Wow, did you finish all mysteries already? Some of the descriptions are so vague I might look for a walkthrough soon...
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Feb 17, 2024 07:11
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ymgve posted:Wow, did you finish all mysteries already? Some of the descriptions are so vague I might look for a walkthrough soon... Yeah I poopsocked the hell out of the game since I am in the process of being laid off and was in the mood to solve puzzles lol. There's still a ton of the game I haven't done, but I prioritized doing the campaign and then the main quest for all the enclaves which unlocks all the mysteries. I'm not sure there's a full walkthrough out, there is a thread with some solutions on the steam forum but there is a chance I'm the first person to actually get this done. I can write up some brief hints tomorrow if you're interested. What I will say is that (mild spoiler) a lot of the mysteries have wording that are specific hints, like if it says "this memory calls to mind your butthole puckering" or whateva then I'd start by scanning my map to see if there are locations with references to buttholes. That said some of them were basically down to just scanning the world for an object. Also I now appear to be unable to select the special customization option you get for beating the campaign so.... I submitted a bug to them for the mystery thing and the customization thing, will see what they say.
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Feb 17, 2024 07:45
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Chomposaur posted:I'm not sure there's a full walkthrough out, there is a thread with some solutions on the steam forum but there is a chance I'm the first person to actually get this done. I can write up some brief hints tomorrow if you're interested. Just as an update I went to look today and there's a solid steam guide with hints and solutions: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3162622194
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Feb 18, 2024 19:25
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I'm not sure this is a great game, and the map and progression mechanics are a bit confusing, but I'm having a great time just popping in now and then to solve whatever puzzles I run into. Just scratches that puzzling itch in a very satisfying way with some great variety.
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Feb 19, 2024 00:29
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I'm in the 5th area now and yeah it's a very 7/10 game, I'd say. For every decision that makes me go "oh wow, that's really cool" there's a lot of weird design decisions that don't really do a lot to serve the game as a whole. I'm still enjoying just jumping in whenever the mood strikes me and diving in to some puzzles, even if all of those puzzles are not created equal. I'm learning to dread any Enclave or quest that requires me to solve a bunch of Skydrops - something about them just makes them incredibly tedious to me to identify where I should be in order to solve them, though I don't have the same irritating at other perspective puzzles like Light Motifs.
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Feb 19, 2024 04:04
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