#I have lots of opinions on puzzles in video games — particularly how they intersect w plot — and this is interestinggg

[radiation]

ok marco this is my moment. my partner and i played UNIVERSALLY CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED puzzle game THE RETURN OF THE OBRA DINN and by the end it pissed us the fuck off so bad not even cheating to the end of the “story” could save it. gameplay relies on increasingly obtuse visual clues that due to the low-res monochrome art style become an actual legitimate accessibility issue by the end. there are puzzles that are genuinely unsolvable using the deduction the game claims to emphasize and it forces the player to make brute-force guesses until they stumble upon the right answer which TO ME AND NO ONE ELSE, I GUESS, seems antithetical to what puzzle games are supposed to accomplish. and the story isn’t even good it’s a massive nothingburger of a resolution and the few actually interesting parts of the plot do not get elaborated on at all. case of the golden idol is infinitely better just play that love and light

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