i finally understood the main trick to this game and i’m excited to go back and see how extensive it is.
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If I want to be overly critical:
The mid game (at least I assume I’m at the mid game) is kind of tedious.
The over sexualized character design seems really out of place
Some of the secrets are undiscoverable without the game spelling it out. I’ve stumbled on a few of secrets without understanding why, which was great, but I wish there were more opportunities for out of the box thinking.
At the end of the day, despite “the secrets”, this is a sokoban. Discovering secrets grants you more sokoban puzzles. Which is fine. It’s innovation on the genre (recontextualizing puzzles repeatedly) is pretty good but it’s yet to hit the big moments of other contemporary sokobans like stephens sausage roll or baba is you (though I don’t think the game makers were very influenced by those games, they seem to be more influenced by traditional sokobans and…undertale).
I am liking the game despite this. I’m spending every evening playing it since it came out, which is probably the strongest endorsement.
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actually one thing i like about this game so far is how inelegant the puzzles often are. i’m a noted sokoban disliker (stephen’s sausage roll makes me want to die) and part of that is this feeling that there’s Exactly One Perfect Solution to every puzzle. which is like, what other people like about the genre!
but i like that this game seems to have many puzzles where the solution is neither perfect nor singular, to the point of sometimes being very messy. my favorite being one where there are enemies that it seems like you’ll need to do some tricky sequence to get around, but then it turns out you just gotta steal enough tiles to build a path around them.
i might change my tune once i get to whatever the like, meta-loop is. i still haven’t gotten there yet. but it’s an interesting design decision the first time through at least
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So I accidentally sent myself back 20-ish levels messing with the UI on a tree screen, lol. This was good though because I accidentally walked right past the secret, so I was able to go get it the second time.
Great point and the game doubles down on this on what I’d call “phase 2”
However, I will say I reached a point last night where the difficulty spiked considerably and it is more stringent like a traditional puzzle game.
i made more NPCs angry at me whoops
just got through the chase sequence and i’m terrified of having to do all these puzzles again which seems inevitable. surely the dungeon can’t go much deeper than this… right?
re: the hungry ghost, i gave him like five or six locusts before giving up and shoving him to his death. not sure if these locusts even matter since i’m dead. the fact that i had to go through the whole dialogue every time i gave him one made me think you’re not actually supposed to do that
it seems like it’s important to let the NPCs live given how many hoops you have to jump through for it… but no idea what the payoff is
i guess there was a release trailer i never noticed but it seems very spoilery so i didn’t finish watching it lol
my theory is that these are a way to minutely control the number of locusts one has, for reasons i have not yet determined
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have you played Humanity yet? please do
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no i haven’t!! i’ve been spoiled for games lately but it’s on my mental playlist!!!
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Had a hilarious time discovering that there is an in-game punishment for savescumming (or I guess “quitscumming”).
What was even funnier was discovering (very late game) the wacky savescumming judges are also the final antagonists in the actual story.
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OK, I just finished the game and got what seems to be all the endings (depending on whether you count an ending as “has the end credits” or not) so if anyone wants any hints for specific rooms (and let me tell you, some of these endings don’t mess around in the puzzle department) go ahead and ask.
once i got to the gimmicks i started to really dislike this game!!
like i see why someone would like it, but it’s absolutely not for me and i’m glad i didn’t spend more time on it because it seemingly just goes even deeper and deeper into inanity past that point.
i think it’s clever and cute and an absolute fucking chore to play. i also think it’s too anime.
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Fortunately the “Hard” mode ending does not require you to be unvoided because whewf some of them were difficult without any of the Burdens. I think I’m only missing DIS in terms of endings but I know what I need to do to reach it.
For the most part it managed to make me commit to playing it mostly unspoiled and writing down notes.
Was thinking about this game and feeling legitimately sad that it will absolutely never be “popular” despite how much care and effort was put into it. There are a few puzzles in here that I consider genuinely brilliant not just in terms of the act of solving them, but in how their very existence informs the worldbuilding and affects the player’s perception of the plot. That and there’s a lot of very interesting and specific Easter eggs that show a lot of attention to detail and in rewarding the player for scrutinising small, obvious details about the game world and how the plot is structured.
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here's my discoveries so far. i'd like someone who's finished the game to point me gently in the right direction.
i’ve looped once. i was dead at the time.
NPCs don’t respawn after looping via the statue, trees stay wilted, and you can’t change your sigil either. judging from reaching the naga again the living NPCs won’t have much new to say to me
i can replicate the sigil of the envious one here to get this cool background but i don’t know what to do with that. you can’t have the sigil formed and still have the stairs placed. my idea was that if you could keep the sigil (somehow) and loop back to B0 with HUD manipulation the door with this sigil would be open
this owns, but as far as i know it’s just an easter egg/story thing i don’t understand yet. the only reason to go here that im aware of is to grab the memory tile from B1
funny creature
i can swap my locust count with the last two digits of my floor number and that’s the only use for messing with the hud i’ve found that’s not self-contained for solving puzzles
in the pit you’re meant to throw yourself down that has the giant moe blob head, i think my locust count determined how many floors i fell, but i didn’t take good enough notes to say for sure. if i’m right then there are floors i never got to see my first time through
i’ve never opened any sigil door. the one time i tried setting my sigil as one i saw in the dungeon (by using someone else’s account) the game rejected it
presumably i could wipe everything again and get a truly clean slate by dying and refusing the pomegranate, but i haven’t been willing to try it yet.
i’ve found exactly one SECRET tile by accident and if there’s a way to root these out without picking up every floor tile in the game i don’t know it. maybe the diamond on the bottom left corner of the pause screen is related?
im gathering memory tiles and trying to live all the way to the end but the specific combination of unclear goals (cool, love mysteries) and severe punishment for failure (successfully creates tension) and long, long dungeon are kind of enervating taken together
you are very early in terms of discoveries, and fortunately the things you seem worried about (lives, retreading ground) are soon trivialized.
fall down
there is an ending down here ! your progress here will be obvious, eventually
find sigils and places to complete those sigils, you already (almost) got one !!
don’t loop at the statue, find a way past it
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glad i asked for a hint there, that would’ve been an obnoxious way to get stuck after putting most of it together.
just got the sword. i think i’ve hit all the sigil rooms so far except the naga’s, where the tail clue was too esoteric for me to fill it in (very worried about that lol). wow this game must feel completely different if you put the sigil mechanic together early. i recall that the last sigil is gonna be my own and i doubt i can form that or am expected to. maybe on a future playthrough, huh…
it’s nice to have a key to what i guess are merchant locations, though since i can essentially grind for locusts with hud shenanigans it mostly seems like busywork? we’ll see i guess. i might be making some wrong assumptions. not sure yet if the sigil that comes with the list is just there as a joke.
i also have in my notes what i think is a key to the memory locations (given the gem in the corner and the weird numbered grid, and how it would justify SECRET tiles existing), but i haven’t tried to decipher it yet. hoping that if ONLY A MEMORY REMAINS i’ll get to keep my memory collectibles if i end up looping again but these things are just as likely to be just a treat for 100% completion i guess. dunno.
i bet with the wings id have survived getting pushed by that child… my videogame literacy is screaming “save everyone next playthrough for a different ending”
i keep thinking about how this game opens with VOID STRANGER: GRAY as if im going to end up playing as someone else eventually. surely not, right? surely…
oh and uh. i stumbled on the sexy devil on B117. i appreciate a videogame where sometimes stuff just… happens. maybe she’s there to manipulate my hud variables or maybe she’s just there to give me a kiss. it’s funny that my idea of what “progress” is keeps changing
I keep thinking of that VOID run ending from time to time… A perfect little moment, contrasting the absurdly convoluted lore and breaking the game’s internal logic to deliver a pure expression of core emotions and themes of the experience, reminds me of why Utada songs are so crucial in making Kingdom Hearts work in that bittersweet way
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