Heh, oddly enough I finally got around to playing Hiding Spot last week, which is the dev’s prior puzzle game. It may be the most “depression: the game” puzzle game I’ve ever seen, but after having been stuck with some rather long puzzle games recently it was very nice to play one that only asks a couple hours of your time.
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Played through Stoneman’s Adventure, an odd twist on the block pushing genre. What makes it different is two things: that stones stick together when they come in contact with other ones, and in many puzzles when you walk between two special tiles on the ground you produce a stone every step between them.
This often ends up with you having to figure out how to manage a big set of stones, having bits fall into water to create a bridge or break them up into smaller sets of stones, that sort of thing. It gives it a bit of a looser feel as since you are the one “drawing” the line of stones the puzzles sometimes can be solved in different ways rather than one true solution.
At a certain point it brings in the third z-axis a la Stephen’s Sausage roll (blocks do not “stick” vertically, only horizontally), you need to figure out how to cross some bigger bodies of water, at the end the puzzle design can feel a good bit different than what was offered earlier on but it feels like a reasonable enough exploration of the mechanics that are in play.
I also have to commend it for coming it at a lean 74 (+1) puzzles, a lot of the more notable puzzle games now are clocking in at closer to 300 of them and are designed to last more than 50 hours, in comparison to that this is a breezy 5 hours.
So the thinky folks put up their best puzzle & assorted games for 2025 awards up today, if one can get past their cutesy name and minion-esque mascot it is a rather good summary of the notable games from last year in these genres for anyone who cares. Personally I wish that Öoo had pulled off the upset for game of the year but was glad to see some lesser known creative works get some shine. It also makes me want to try and finally figure out how to even start with 0Player again as a full “playable” game that exists solely as a static image is a ballsy as hell idea (itch page for it is under permanent warning status because itch are dumb, it is 100% safe).
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Loophole is a clever little thing that dares to ask the question “Can one make one of those timeloop ‘have several versions of yourself work together to solve a puzzle’ games that doesn’t get overly fiddly and time consuming?” and the answer is… mostly yes!
Playing as a little fella seemingly inspired by the creatures from Outer Wilds, you enter an unknown building, press a button and accidentally cause it to start exploding. As you run away you have to pass through several chambers that reset said explosion and you shortly realize that you can see your former selves running from one chamber to the next, and hey if you had stepped on the button that opens this next door that previous time you could get to the next chamber. After a somewhat interconnected opening stretch to set the mood/concept it becomes much more stage based, make best use of the time between chambers to set your paths to reach the exit one, etc.
This is all standard enough, but the one choice that really makes this take standout is that you cannot cause a time paradox or else progress is immediately halted (until you undo or reset). A time paradox in this setting means that you cannot change anything that your prior selves see, at least not as far as they can tell. They cannot be allowed to see a future you (they will know if you are in the same room as them) but more so if say there is a doodad in there when they walk by that later you grabs to weigh down a button elsewhere they will notice it is gone and boom, paradox.
This often results in puzzles feeling almost like comedy routines. To use a specific example there is one puzzle where the explosion is right on your tail on your first pass as you run through a series of three rooms that each have one of those doodads behind a window, doodads future you can access from the other side and need to take to three buttons elsewhere in order to open the way out. The problem is time is limited and while there is a bit of a run-up before initial you gets to them there won’t be enough time to grab them if you wait until after he passes by. The solution? You grab two of them first, then after prior you runs through the first room you grab the doodad from there and drop it in each of the next two rooms right before other you runs through them so that it appears they never moved. Almost as much of your time and energy will be spent keeping earlier you unaware as it will be spent actually getting out, giving the proceedings a bit more personality.
That said the game does have some… quirks. When you first start a puzzle you have no idea the layouts of any other rooms in it beyond the one you start in, so you often find yourself just running around to reveal all of them, then resetting back to the start where they stay revealed. Makes sense from a character perspective (until you see them why would you know what they looked like?), in practice is a minor bother. Similarly the time until the explosion reaches your location, from which direction it comes and how quickly it spreads once it gets there varies from puzzle to puzzle and won’t be known until it occurs so you sometimes will do a similar “see how long it takes, then reset back to the start” song and dance. Fortunately the explosion usually isn’t the main obstacle in a puzzle, and when it is it generally pops up earlier.
As I mentioned when I started these type of games often end up being a good bit fiddly and time consuming with regards to having to set up all the versions of you’s paths and such, but this game does a good job pushing that off for as long as possible. Later versions of you always have the prior version(s) running around so you can see in real time how things will have to interact, you will have to either undo back to tweak things or simply reset a decent amount but it usually is brief enough to sort out; much of the mental effort still ends up spent on solving the puzzle and not being devoured by the implementation of solutions. It is only at the final quarter of the game where the added mechanics finally start to tip things into occasional bouts of fiddliness, where in a bunch of puzzles it feels like you are having to count individual tiles and basically program your original self in very particular, almost unnatural ways. It isn’t suddenly bad, but the quality does dip a bit. If it helps the final run is clever as heck and put a big ol’ smile on my face 
I’ve lamented before the maximalist trend in modern puzzle games, containing hundreds of puzzles or lasting dozens of hours. Loophole in contrast sets its stage, runs through a bunch of very well thought out twists and turns the concept allows and is done in about six hours. How very pleasant! It ain’t perfect but it is rather good, you keep putting puzzle games of this scope and quality in front of me and I’ll be more than satisfied.
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