actually seeing the trailer i have to admire j blow for still making xbla exclusives all these years later. never forget where you come from.
5 Likes
Blow was known to be like this for a good bit now, maybe I just know that from hanging around puzzle game spaces but people there have been treating it as old news for at least the past few years.
(BTW among the puzzle folks I’ve seen discussing this the almost universal reaction is “this looks like it costs way too much for what any block pushing game is gonna earn.”)
What is funny is that I’ve tried Mirror Isles a few times now and while admittedly clever I always end up bouncing off of it, so on a personal level it’s like the wrong game to yoink. This does admittedly push me to just buckle down and try to get into it one more time rather than play the fancy version of it. Try yourselves if you like: Mirror Isles
5 Likes
So I got past the part that always scared me away in Mirror Isles (turns out that bit is only a few puzzles long) and managed to play through the rest of the game in an evening. Credit to Mr. Blow it’s a good one to rip off, the mirror warping mechanic is a fresh one, it has a few utterly devious if terrifying twists on the formula (there is a bit where you can line up mirrors so that it creates multiple versions of you, which is what always scared me away) but at only 22 puzzles long it leaves enough meat on the bone for someone else to come along and do more with. More credit of course to Mr. Draknek for coming up with all that in the first place.
2 Likes
Finally watched the Blow trailer. That’s too much Sokoban for me. I dread to think what the macro-level metapuzzle is like.
‘Over 1400 puzzles’
I want to take a nap
2 Likes
Blow/his company can do whatever they want to do, but it is odd/funny/sad that their big next game, 10 years in the making, is a sokobon. I don’t like Blow, but the witness was an interesting and good puzzle game for its time. Puzzle gaming has changed tremendously (for the better) in the past 10 years since the witness came out. The witness (and before that, braid) played a role in this evolution. Games like Stephen’s sausage roll, obra dinn, baba is you, outer wilds, void stranger, and animal well really pushed puzzle games in fascinating ways, even the ones that are sokobons have a lot more going on on a gameplay and presentation level than the average sokobon.
To see Blow, the self proclaimed genius puzzle designer who frequently loves to overly critique other games, reveal that his big new game is apparently just an overly elaborate sokobon that aesthetically looks like a mobile game, is pretty funny. I’m sure there’s some hidden layers as usual (a puzzle mechanic that is now totally played out), but in the year 2025 you need more than just complicated block pushing to grab people’s interest.
6 Likes
i think this describes how some of the “puzzle mans” 1.0 cohort have never really moved beyond a certain mindset/approach, even as people who don’t have the same ideological persuasions have iterated on those ideas subsequently. for me as much as i enjoyed the puzzles of the Witness i was kinda shocked at how like… simpleminded the worldview it seems to have is even compared to a game like Corrypt. even Myst, the game he’s clearly riffing on, the game someone like him probably sees as mostly like a random assemblage of scenes… has more interesting ideas about itself. it’s like the element of critique just passed him by - to him the only interesting ideas to be had in games were all structural. he kept pushing Gravity’s Rainbow and Mulholland Drive as influences but only seemed to engage with them structurally, not for any of what the actual content was about. at the end of the day i think it’s honestly fair to characterize him as a Silicon Valley programmer cosplaying as an artist for that reason.
like i really somehow doubt Jon Blow has played a game like Void Stranger for that reason and might see the mixed ways some of these games approach their puzzles or the larger metanarrative things as beneath him. Blow is at the point now i think of consistently overestimating the amount of good will he has as a designer and a person. that’s what happens when you’re so attached to a particular moment and can never reconcile yourself or what you’re doing outside of that moment. and i like Braid and the Witness and used to watch his lectures and stuff, he has had some valuable critiques about the industry he did not at all seem to follow. and that’s one of many reasons why the cracks in a lot of this stuff… and especially the dripping insecurity coming off of it… are so obvious and apparent right now.
but yeah i’m happy that this sort of puzzle approach doesn’t have the aura of The Male Genius around it as much anymore and has been somewhat reclaimed.
9 Likes
still think it’s very fascinating that the Beachums haven’t resurfaced yet, I really wonder if Cyan tried to get them
I have like 60% of a connection I could lean on to learn what they’re up to but it would be pushing it
Star Wars: Galactic Racer™ is a runs-based, high-stakes reinvention of racing born in the Outer Rim. With the Empire gone and the galaxy rebuilding, The Galactic League is created: an underground, unsanctioned circuit where syndicates bankroll chaos and champions are forged
runs-based
2 Likes
like diarrhea?
10 Likes
I feel like I recently had a runs-based, high-stakes reinvention of the fried chicken I ate last night
7 Likes