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Game Debate #201: Puzzles, Puzzles, Puzzles

Reed Rothchild

By Reed Rothchild
in The Gauntlet

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28 members have voted

  1. 1. The Witness

    • 10/10 - One of your very favorite games of all time.
      0
    • 9/10 - Killer f'ing game. Everyone should play it.
      2
    • 8/10 - Great game. Easy to recommend.
      2
    • 7/10 - Very good, but not quite great.
      0
    • 6/10 - Pretty good. You might enjoy occasionally playing it.
      3
    • 5/10 - It's okay, but maybe not something you'll go out of your way to play.
      1
    • 4/10 - Meh. There's plenty of better alternatives to this.
      1
    • 3/10 - Not very good.
      0
    • 2/10 - Pretty crappy.
      0
    • 1/10 - Horrible in every way.
      0
    • 0/10 - The Desert Bus of painful experiences. You'd rather shove an icepick in your genitals than play this.
      0
    • Never played it, but you're interested.
      8
    • Never played it, never will.
      11

  2. 2. Baba Is You

    • 10/10 - One of your very favorite games of all time.
      2
    • 9/10 - Killer f'ing game. Everyone should play it.
      3
    • 8/10 - Great game. Easy to recommend.
      1
    • 7/10 - Very good, but not quite great.
      0
    • 6/10 - Pretty good. You might enjoy occasionally playing it.
      0
    • 5/10 - It's okay, but maybe not something you'll go out of your way to play.
      1
    • 4/10 - Meh. There's plenty of better alternatives to this.
      0
    • 3/10 - Not very good.
      0
    • 2/10 - Pretty crappy.
      0
    • 1/10 - Horrible in every way.
      0
    • 0/10 - The Desert Bus of painful experiences. You'd rather shove an icepick in your genitals than play this.
      0
    • Never played it, but you're interested.
      12
    • Never played it, never will.
      9

  3. 3. Return of the Obra Dinn

    • 10/10 - One of your very favorite games of all time.
      0
    • 9/10 - Killer f'ing game. Everyone should play it.
      2
    • 8/10 - Great game. Easy to recommend.
      0
    • 7/10 - Very good, but not quite great.
      1
    • 6/10 - Pretty good. You might enjoy occasionally playing it.
      0
    • 5/10 - It's okay, but maybe not something you'll go out of your way to play.
      0
    • 4/10 - Meh. There's plenty of better alternatives to this.
      0
    • 3/10 - Not very good.
      0
    • 2/10 - Pretty crappy.
      0
    • 1/10 - Horrible in every way.
      0
    • 0/10 - The Desert Bus of painful experiences. You'd rather shove an icepick in your genitals than play this.
      0
    • Never played it, but you're interested.
      16
    • Never played it, never will.
      9

  4. 4. Tunic

    • 10/10 - One of your very favorite games of all time.
      0
    • 9/10 - Killer f'ing game. Everyone should play it.
      1
    • 8/10 - Great game. Easy to recommend.
      4
    • 7/10 - Very good, but not quite great.
      0
    • 6/10 - Pretty good. You might enjoy occasionally playing it.
      0
    • 5/10 - It's okay, but maybe not something you'll go out of your way to play.
      1
    • 4/10 - Meh. There's plenty of better alternatives to this.
      0
    • 3/10 - Not very good.
      0
    • 2/10 - Pretty crappy.
      0
    • 1/10 - Horrible in every way.
      0
    • 0/10 - The Desert Bus of painful experiences. You'd rather shove an icepick in your genitals than play this.
      0
    • Never played it, but you're interested.
      13
    • Never played it, never will.
      9

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Gloves
Gloves

Never played, never played, never play, 5/10. I don't do puzzles cuz I'm big dumb. 

DefaultGen
DefaultGen

You're missing out on EVEN BETTER line puzzles 🤩

Sumez
Sumez

Maybe this trailer will  

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Brickman

Brickman | 3,987

Posted
Posted

Haven't played these but I really want to get around to it. I'm planning to put one of them on my backlog for next year. Which one would be the best out of the 4? I'm leaning towards The Witness but would try any of them if one has more support over the other 3.

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DefaultGen

DefaultGen | 5,407

Posted
Posted (edited)

The Witness and Baba is You are my two favorite puzzle games.

I love the vibes and look of The Witness and the puzzle design is amazing. Every puzzle adds a new a-ha moment. It’s never simply the same concept repeated in different way for filler. Filler gameplay?? Jonathan Blow would never! It is easy to see where the many years of design and polish went. It’s a masterpiece. The only bad part of the entire, very long game is a few audio puzzles that might as well be impossible.

Baba is You gets ridiculously hard and some later complex words are unintuitive for my small brain. Every time I thought I learned some fundamental concept of a puzzle solution, new mechanics would make me start from square 1. Very un-sokoban-like in that way.

Both games make you break out graph paper and do like… math. They are frequently sit down and work on one frustrating puzzle type games, not sit down and breeze through a dozen puzzles for dopamine hit games.

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Sumez

Sumez | 2,963

Posted
Posted (edited)

Why are poll responses anonymous now? 😞 I need to be able to call people out!

The Witness, like Braid before it, made me think in completely new ways I've never done before to solve the problems presented in the game. The game looks really basic - but like I said recently in my comparison to Talos Principle, the way the entire game is meticulously hand crafted for one singular purpose (whatever it may be) is just something that can  subtly elevate a game above anything else of its kind.
8/10

Baba is You is the newest 10/10 on my "list". When I first completed it, I rated it a 9, but the more I think about it, the more I realise how much the game just manages to showcase pure excellent puzzle design at the absolute best it can. If a game of this sorts makes you think about the puzzles you left behind while in bed and trying to sleep, and if you actually start solving them while you aren't even playing, that says a lot about the effect it has on you.
10/10

Obra Dinn is a game that I appreciate a lot more than my objective rating communicates. The puzzle design has its flaws, and it rewards brute forcing. The story, as you uncover it, really loses its steam after the initial shocking reveals early on. But man, the game should be forever cherished for being basically the only existing game of a type that should be much more prevalent. And its look and style is fantastic, really elevates it to something special.
7/10

Tunic is basically Fez 2. The puzzle aspect of it, in the context of this debate, is really good, but hard to even discuss without spoiling things. My biggest gripes with the game is that it's trying to do too many different things and never really maintains focus.
8/10

Edited by Sumez
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wongojack

wongojack | 215

Posted
Posted
6 minutes ago, DefaultGen said:

The Witness and Baba is You are my two favorite puzzle games.

I love the vibes and look of The Witness and the puzzle design is amazing. Every puzzle adds a new a-ha moment. It’s never simply the same concept repeated in different way for filler. Filler gameplay?? Jonathan Blow would never! It is easy to see where the many years of design and polish went. It’s a masterpiece. The only bad part of the entire, very long game is a few audio puzzles that might as well be impossible.

Hmm.  I've played The Witness the most of these (Steam says 8.9 hours), but I quit because it was just one line puzzle after another.  Line puzzle on a surface, line puzzle in the walls, line puzzle across the island.  It really seemed to use the same thing over and over to me.  I mean, I like line puzzles, but I didn't realize the whole game was going to be made up of them.

Maybe I was playing it wrong and there were some other puzzles to discover.  I didn't really seem to understand where to go on the island.  At least, I couldn't really make sense of how I was supposed to progress through the various "connect the line" puzzles.  I eventually started wandering around looking for things that might connect into a line.  That got old, and I quit.  I figure I'll go back someday, but it wasn't really a great first experience.

 

 

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DefaultGen

DefaultGen | 5,407

Posted
Posted
13 minutes ago, wongojack said:

I mean, I like line puzzles, but I didn't realize the whole game was going to be made up of them.

Maybe I was playing it wrong and there were some other puzzles to discover.

You're missing out on EVEN BETTER line puzzles 🤩

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spacepup

spacepup | 2,404

Administrator · Posted
Posted

I still need to play Tunic and Obra Dinn, which are both high on my list to get to,

but I just wanted to say that I consider Baba Is You a 10, and honestly one of the best and most creative / unique puzzle games I've ever played.  The game is brilliant in its simplicity but also depth and complexity/difficulty.  It's wildly creative and executed extremely well.  

It is unironically one of my favorite puzzle games of all time, and I URGE anyone who is remotely interested in puzzle games to give it a try if you haven't.

I can't wait to get to Obra Dinn and Tunic!!!

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wongojack

wongojack | 215

Posted
Posted
10 hours ago, DefaultGen said:

You're missing out on EVEN BETTER line puzzles 🤩

Tell me this (in spoiler tags if you have to).  Is there a required vs not required set of puzzles in the game?  Is there some sort of "main track" and a way to discern when you are on it?

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Reed Rothchild

Reed Rothchild | 9,540

Editorials Team · Posted
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Posted
4 minutes ago, wongojack said:

Say more

Spoiler

Completing an area has a very visible indicator that you've accomplished something.  The game is also very overt in revealing how many "things" need to be done.  It also becomes very apparent what the optional other main thing you can work towards completing is.  

 

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DefaultGen

DefaultGen | 5,407

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, wongojack said:

Tell me this (in spoiler tags if you have to).  Is there a required vs not required set of puzzles in the game?  Is there some sort of "main track" and a way to discern when you are on it?

There are 11 main areas and you need to complete at least 7 of them to get to the credits. A big laser appears when you beat each area. There's no linear path through the game. You sometimes have to bop back and forth between areas because you'll eventually hit puzzle concepts that you'll only understand from the other areas.

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CT

CT | 91

Posted
Posted

I love puzzle games.

Baba is great, although it gets very tough!

I like Jonathan Blow's work, I got pretty far in The Witness but got stuck. Worth revisiting.

Return of the Obra Dinn - Amazing game, especially if you like being a detective. I agree about brute forcing some aspects.

Tunic - it's on my list but I thought it was more of an action-adventure game

 

Other puzzle games:

Patricks Parabox (never played but heard was good)

Stevens Sausage Roll (never played)

Limbo/Inside (more like puzzle platformers but still good)

Gorogoa (short game but pretty solid)

Portal 1-2? (prob it's own genre but worth mentioning, great stuff)

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DefaultGen

DefaultGen | 5,407

Posted
Posted
4 hours ago, CT said:

Tunic - it's on my list but I thought it was more of an action-adventure game

Is Tunic not an action adventure game? The only reason I haven't played it is because I've played literally every Zelda game so I kind of don't need more.

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Sumez

Sumez | 2,963

Posted
Posted
6 hours ago, DefaultGen said:

Is Tunic not an action adventure game? The only reason I haven't played it is because I've played literally every Zelda game so I kind of don't need more.

Tunic is exactly the same as whatever Fez is.

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