jonathan blows the witness

King of Posters
#145

Finished after 20 hours, with 413 plus 82 puzzles solved, so I think that leaves around 150-200 puzzles maybe?. I had nine yellow boxes opened when I decided to do it.

The endgame puzzles are pretty crazy! Some were mightily pissing me off until I solved them but they’re really good.
People are gonna hate the ending. I kinda like it, and no matter what the end game is great, but people are gonna hate it. It’s probably unreasonable to think everything will become clear when I finish all puzzles. We’re gonna have to sit and argue plenty on this one. Maybe it’ll turn out to have been Frog Fractions 2 all along. Probably not.

But eh, the real meat here is it’s the most thorough exploration of “draw a line from A to B” you’ve ever seen and that’s a title more worthy of respect than it seems.

The bug I mentioned earlier wasn’t a bug but me misunderstanding (well, forgetting) a puzzle rule. All is well.

It’s 2am so I’ll leave it at “it’s a really darn good game!”

2 Likes
#146

Nice! When I checked this afternoon, I was at 120 panels solved. Finished the greenhouse after all, but I think I ruined a bridge in the swamp? Need to work in that area some more to be certain.

#147

7 hours in, 195 puzzles, 3 yellow boxes open. I liked the polyomino tutorial and the mechanic in the mangrove tree areas.

I’ve also found two sets of things around each location on the island: obelisks and disconnected panels. I don’t know what they do yet.

Excited to go put my polyomino knowledge to work.

#148

The last negative space tetromino in a set of four… How…

#149

I think I’ve finished enough areas that I can go to the end game now, but I haven’t taken the dive yet. I did solve the puzzle to get into what I think is the endgame, and that was a rather neat one!

I’m looking at 13 hours and around 350 puzzles solved +around 20 other thingies.

Also, there are still some mysteries I haven’t solved yet, like how after you beat the desert area why does the laser point into the middle of nowhere? I assume there’s some way to redirect it but I haven’t found it yet.

I like the village area a lot; it seems to be a test of everything you’ve learned (and it combines some mechanics that you haven’t seen combined before up to that point). Haven’t beat it yet, either.

Ooh, you’re 7 hours in and don’t know what the obelisks do yet? That might blow your mind! Or maybe you’ve done things related to the obelisk and just haven’t noticed yet.

I also still don’t know what the panels do, and I’ve found a lot of them.

#150

I was really stuck on some of those tonight; I spent at least an hour staring at them (if not more). I finally beat them, but I’m still not sure I 100% understand the rules for them, but I have a guess that I think covers all the examples I’ve seen so far? They’re a lot weirder than I thought at the beginning of the night.

One of them specifically I felt like there was no example that prepared me for it at all. The only reason I figured it out was because it was impossible every other way I could think of.

#151

finished the swamp, so that’s three beacons for me. and I have another one (the error allotment area) half lit. this game is really well paced on top of everything else. think I’m just about cracking 200 puzzles.

#152

my wife insisted on starting her own game after watching me with the tetrominos (she’d probably have been playing with me from the start but she had plans on tuesday night and she went to bed early last night because she didn’t feel well). she’s already done the first beacon and is swearing she’ll catch up through she’s terrible at dual analog and is walking around the island half-cocked.

#153

I really should not be figuring out the safe colour combinations by trial and error

#154

If you’re lost in guesswork, it’s worth stepping back to the first puzzle of the area and retracing your progression, then as soon as you feel you’d have to guess, examine your surroundings for clues. The game is very consistent about that.

#155

Hokay, 150-ish panels done. I cleared the desert and the autumn forest area, and did enough of the swamp area to grok the tetrominoes. That’s definitely the one you don’t want spoiled for yourself – it’s extremely satisfying once you grok it. And might actually be kind of difficult to explain in words.

Is the “greenhouse” near the start somewhere? People talk about it but I’m not sure what it refers to.

I also haven’t seen anything happen with the obelisks yet? If someone wants to give some subtle non-spoilery hint, I might not mind. This sounds like the kind of thing I usually totally miss in games.

#156

Just like everything else, the game will give you clues to the obelisks as you progress. If you can’t figure them out yet just keep solving other stuff and your mental toolbox will be expanded.

The greenhouse is on the side of the big mountain. From the town’s harbor, facing the sea, go left along the coast.

The area giving me the most trouble is the forest around there, I keep getting lost in it and not finding the one path I’d like to find, though now I think I get what I may have been doing wrong.

#157

Makes sense, thanks! I don’t usually care about spoilers, but it’s probably a good idea to avoid them here.

#158

Puzzles at minimum always teach you something. You’ll need to use that knowledge later in the game on puzzles that DO actually do something!

#159

An interesting anecdote about the game is that Chris Hecker (Spy Party dev, a close friend of Blow) once punched someone in the shoulder who was about to give away what I now realize must’ve been obelisk-related. In retrospect I think the guy deserved the pain.

EDIT: Holy moly, two minutes into resuming playing and what I thought was me being clever has taken a turn for the stranger. Is this Frog Fractions 2? The ride continues.

#160

Yeah, if this game gets deep, I want to go as deep as it goes!

#161

The last negative space tetromino panels: If the positive and negative numbers add up to zero, the number of squares in the entire thing doesn’t matter. So you can draw an arbitrary line around a number adding up to zero and then treat the remainder separately.

More generally, in the swamp I found it useful to do the basic examples of each variant several times. They first panels teaching each new rule all seemed to have more than one solution.

On to the g̶r̶o̶w̶o̶p̶ greenhouse now.

#162

I don’t like “greenhouse.” I like nursery. I dunno if people get area names from the achievements or what, but f that. I like having my own names for stuff.

#163

You’re going to enjoy the complete-space-filling negative tetromino puzzle on the desert cliff. I spent half an hour on that one yesterday.

1 Like
#164

The achievements don’t give away names of places. I think nothing in-game does it explicitly.

While reexamining some past puzzles, i found a masterful instance of trolling in said greenhouse (spoiler if you haven’t finished the greenhouse puzzles): the answer to the last clear color tutorial in there is in fact the code that gets you to the roof. Of course you’ll only realize that after you’ve gone through the process of calculating it yourself.