Then things start getting weird. Turning around to go back the way you came very rarely takes you back to the way you came. Turning four right angles is very unlikely to bring you back to the point you where you started. A passage that can’t be accessed walking forward might be perfectly passable if you’re walking backward. If you don’t look at something, it’s not necessarily there. And most of all, none of those illogical violations of reality are consistent with one another. Just because something just worked doesn’t mean it will work again, and applying one understanding of the game’s behaviour to another is unlikely to produce results. It’s not so much lateral thinking as upside-down and back-to-front thinking.
This is emulated by the objects the game presents you with, too. While the minimalist frames form the canvas for the game throughout what I’ve seen of the first quarter or so of the game, it’s built upon by some really smart use of colour, brain-bending geometry, and some utterly remarkable features to gawp at. One room acted like an art gallery, filled with central cubes. Look through a side of the hollow cube and it contains some abstract piece, perhaps a flickering Escher-like shape, or maybe a more traditional sculptures. Then look through another side of the cube and the hollow space contains something completely different. Stand so you can see through two sides at once and you’ll see the space containing two different things simultaneously. A corridor with a dead end may reveal a passage way if viewed through a glass window. A passage way that remains in place until you look through the window again. Space becomes meaningless, in a way that makes you wonder why the game’s engine doesn’t just refuse to work at the sheer pertinence of its unreality.
Well, that falls in line with what you quoted earlier doesn’t it? It was there even though you didn’t know you made it. Or perhaps it wasnt, until it was. Sort of. When you turned around and looked again…
Anyway…
I’m quite curious how to play a game without any apparent logic, and without consistency. Just trail and error? Would that give any sence of accomplishment then?
From what I understand, each level has its own internal consistent logic. Actions always have the same result within that level. The game is largely about determining those rules and figuring out how to apply them. I think it sounds great and am looking forward to it. I have $19.55 in TF2 hat money ready to spend.
Wow, this game is wild. It really enjoys fucking with the player. It’s basically a giant maze you have one and a half hours to complete (or at least, there’s a big timer in the antechamber. Not sure what happens when it hits zero). Great use of ambient noise.
Yeah I’d stop watching the video after about 10 minutes to preserve the experience, though I don’t think he gets very far afterward, you get the idea as to what the designer intends and how he thinks.
This walks a fine line between being insanely frustrating and making you feel clever. After about 30 minutes it starts to gel a bit, but things keep changing.
It is a bit like Fez in that all those decorations and incidental details actually mean something.
