Well. I agree with your entire post up until this last sentence. The history of half-assed postgames is long and illustrious. When you beat SMB1, it sends you back to 1-1 for a “second quest”, where all the levels are block-for-block identical, but the enemies are swapped out for more annoying variations.
To be sure, SMB1 makes it clear enough within minutes that its second quest will probably never get interesting. What about Zelda 1 then? There are no new assets or mechanics in its second quest, but the map is completely reshuffled. I have heard some people claim it is the best part of the game.
I agree about “quit when you’re ahead”, I just think that’s mostly the player’s job, not the designer’s. I see games which include a postgame as similar to games that let the player select the difficulty level. It’s an important meta decision point where the game asks you to take stock and decide what kind of player you are and what sort of experience you’re truly looking for.
my bloody-mindedness means I’ve been plugging away at this. drafted the Gallery and then Room 8. the Gallery puzzles were fine, Room 8 was lacklustre since the game had spoiled a part of it with the trophy checklist in the foyer, and the non-spoiled part was just following the directions
I thought I had some new insight about the game and its frequent dead ends, but all I can remember now is “you enjoyed The Blue Prince? here are some fine other works that you might like. but this is non-commutative”. existing Fans of This Sort of Thing should strictly avoid
oh! it was something about how the game trains to you ignore details, then points at them “actually, I think you’ll find these ones to be quite important”, and then goes back to ignoring them. the dead ends and stilted pacing fill the gaps where in other puzzle games the player would be stumped; that is, stuck on “I don’t know how to solve this but know it’s possible”. and that the pacing in The Blue Prince might be to give the rhythm of stumped-what_if-stumped-aha without the puzzles providing the friction. which make me think they didn’t have much confidence in their puzzles
There is actually one new mechanic in that quest: the addition of flying red skulls that, on hit, disable use of the sword permanently instead of just for 5 seconds, and blue skulls (in much more remote dungeon rooms) that remove the effect. (Shades of the eggplant curse in Kid Icarus?)
still playing this, still doing only one day every day (more or less) and still basically enjoying it so i feel like this has got to be the correct way to deal with this game. honestly sometimes a single day can take like 2-3 hours at this point so i’m not sure it would be possible to do anything else
i do feel ultimately that loving or hating this game depends more on your tolerance for the setting / aesthetic / lore / writing. i’m finding it pretty enjoyable and i’m kind of surprised, i guess, by how viscerally others here are reacting to it. to each their own i guess! it’s fine to me. it kind of makes me feel like the person who made this game was really enchanted by the board game Clue as a kid, but then when they realized that the game itself is pretty shallow and has nothing to do with the charming setting or weirdly evocative names got … well, disenchanted, i guess, and then devoted their entire life to making a game inspired by Clue but which actually expected you to care more about all these random people. i find it kind of enjoyable, and also enjoy the weird ‘pace’ at which lore reveals occur, i think more than i am enjoying the actual story itself that is hidden behind all those details.
anyway what surprises me about rereading this thread now is how much of this shit i still have absolutely no clue what you’re all talking about. we have reached a point where we have found i think five sanctum keys and solved four of the sigil puzzles, and have a fairly good understanding of how 2 of the 3 remaining ones are to be obtained, with the last one still kind of mysterious. it’s another phase where we don’t have a clear goal in mind, so the next few days will probably be spent just sort of wandering around looking for stuff we may have overlooked. i have absolutely no idea where to even begin looking for the other two microchips, and there are a few more ‘known unknowns’ that i assume we’ll stumble across clues about at a certain point.
despite being basically on board with this game, i got incredibly mad at the game a few days ago because i was convinced that bringing the power hammer to the secret garden would allow me to access the side yard on the east wing in the same way the garage lets you get to the west wing, something i am still convinced is possible but now have no idea how to accomplish. finding out that all it did was reveal another stupid wheel to spin the weathervanes and open up a different room in the antechamber was… so disappointing. so, question for those who have finished more of this than me–without spoiling anything too major–is there actually a way to get outside from the east wing? and, is there any other reason to continue drafting the secret garden other than getting a way to open the antechamber?
pretty close, it was actually a book called Maze: Solve the World’s Most Challenging Puzzle, which left such an impression that they ended up contracting the original author to design some of the puzzles
if you can’t see a way to proceed on anything, try buying all the books in the bookshop and reading them all
GOOD TO KNOW thank you. and yea we have but one more book to buy and rereading this thread already semi-clued me in to the fact that it is probably more significant than i assumed.
oh yeah that was the other super disappointing part haha. finding out that there was a sigil there but one we had already seen somewhere else
this is also one of the things ive been enjoying about the uh meta game i guess. like there are things in this game that i can’t imagine anyone actually solving on their own (that is, until you find a clue that almost completely gives it away several days after you stumbled your way through the puzzle without that crucial bit of info…) to the extent where it seems like some kind of information-sharing is presumed though not actually built into the game. it feels ‘old school’ in that way. and i have appreciate that, for the most part, others in the “community” have done a good job at seeding the internet with clues rather than solutions (which i’m sure are also out there, but have been easy enough to avoid). i think the people creating those kinds of things also get a kick out of helping redirect your attention to what matters (or, in the case of the fuckin’ diabolical safe combinations providing you enough info to keep you from giving up on a logical line of thinking before you’ve exhausted all the possibilities of how the in-game ‘clue’ and the ‘solution’ are actually related)
I’m also still playing at a very sporadic pace—play through one or two days at a time, once or twice a week. Day 78 was extremely productive, as I obtained the schoolroom trophy, and the parlor trophy, AND solved the “last door of 8” sigil key puzzle, which was the last of my needed sigil keys. And then on day 79, I finally drafted the last room I was missing, completing the directory, so I could finally buy the Blue Tents. I can’t believe how many “redundant clues for puzzles you have already solved” I now have! But there are still a few in here that indicate I have more stuff to solve. Speaking of which, what am I working on?
Trying to collect the objects shown in Alzara’s final prophecy, as I have obtained two of them, and I’m pretty sure I know where the third one is;
I’ve pretty well solved the CASTLE cipher, but I still need execute the castle maneuver that these notes keep suggesting;
There seems to be a hint in the security footage about the library or the entrance hall, but I haven’t figured out what they want from me yet. It might have something to do with—
The Blessing of the Monk! I have so many more experiments to try. My biggest problem here is that every time circumstances line up right, I spend the entire time chain-drafting the Conservatory in the outer chamber to tweak drafting probabilities, so I haven’t been exploring as many possibilities as I could be.
I also need to get so many more stars, both to figure out what’s going on with the Spiral of Stars, but also because I want to use the inkwell constellation to finally win the drafting sweepstakes.
Oh, and I can’t forget my efforts in the downstairs tunnel. I guess I’m not done with the powered hammer yet, after all.
Yeah, that’s the part I figured out, but it’s not clear what I’m meant to learn from the old footage. Unless it’s just being able to see Maria involved during the planning phase of the heist, or possibly the entrance hall… in the outer room, perhaps? It’s not clear.
I can’t believe we’re still playing this and there’s still more stuff to do… Just curious who else has not tapped out until after opening the family core solving the cipher and using the still water to tint the blank books. This is where we are now… Kind of crazy not knowing how much will be left after this or where it will end… My only lead at this point is trying to sleep in the bunk room to make flowers appear in the tomb? but I have no idea if that is even related to this phase. Strange game! I get why people are bouncing off it in general but would be kind of curious to hear exactly when others have thrown in the towel. I’ve also completely lost track of whether or not this section is basically linear, it’s hard to remember what permanent changes have been prerequisites for other things. I guess I’m just glad I didn’t really have any other big gaming plans this summer