#now that ive played through it multiple times i gotta say... it was underwhelming

[celticwoman]

whew im done with all my wayhaven playthroughs. hi

[tesspieceface]

sorry the only screenshots i have on hand of the actual puzzles are the solutions. have some scenery

ok so ive spent enough goddamn time on this blog talking about the witness, which for me would be a solid 9/10 game if someone other than jonathan blow had made it. as it is it's probably still a 9/10 but it also makes me angry. anyway i was browsing steam and found this game taiji, a game which is idk if i should say obviously inspired by the witness since. it seems like maybe they were being developed in parallel for a while. regardless the similarities are apparent and the comparisons inevitable. if you're like me, who saw this witness-like and was already hitting checkout before i knew what was happening, the link is up there, but either way i might as well talk about this one too so i'll break it down in a bit more detail:

if you're not familiar with either game, these are puzzle/exploration games where the puzzles are on these grids that you'll find around the world. the games give you no verbal explanation of how the puzzle mechanics work, with the idea being that you learn by example, starting with simple puzzles to introduce a certain mechanic and building up to more difficult challenges, including puzzles that incorporate multiple of these mechanics at a time. the mechanics will utilise icons on the puzzle grid and/or elements in the environment, which i won't go into too much detail about because the process of figuring out how they work is half the point. there are sections of the map dedicated to each puzzle mechanic and you have to complete a certain number of them in order to reach the end.

now i've said that the witness would be a much better game if jon blow didn't make it, but what i specifically mean by that is it would be better if the game did not speak a single word to me. i fucking hate the pseudo-philosophical bullshit it tries to offer me, mostly because it is incoherent and doesn't actually make a point. the game doesn't even have music outside of a couple specific places so if you just turn off game audio and put on a podcast or something i guarantee you'll have a much less annoying time.

taiji has zero words spoken throughout the entire game. this first struck me as an immediate improvement, though really the problem was not the dialogue itself so much as what that dialogue was trying to serve. taiji also has a pleasant soundtrack for you to listen to, instead of silence broken up by quotes from dead scientists. the lack of dialogue unfortunately does have the side effect of making the small hints of a plot the game does have feel a little underwhelming (and a bit more worldbuilding would probably would have helped make the japanese-influenced design elements feel a bit less superficial), but i'd probably still call it a net positive overall. you're probably not playing this game for the plot, after all, so i'd take minimal plot over bad plot, personally.

the main bone i have to pick with taiji is something i do not hesitate to praise the witness for: communicating its game mechanics. the game doesn't always spend enough effort to ramp up puzzle difficulty in a way that actually builds understanding of the game mechanics and thus sometimes doesn't feel as fair. a big offender is the black and white block mechanic you see at the very start of the game, where figuring out how to fill in the "empty" spaces for the later iterations of it is not really a skill that's been built up yet and doesn't feel intuitive. the layout of the world also feels kind of unintuitive in places - generally in the witness i remember the individual areas being at least linear enough that it was easy enough to find where the start of the zone was, but this was sometimes kind of a pain in taiji. seriously why are the mill's intro puzzles way down in the bottom corner. you gotta walk through like half of the zone to find it. pain in the ass. i think putting the gallery (the "endgame" area similar to the town area in the witness) so close to the starting zone was kind of a miss, it's just kind of confusing to be able to run into it so early, especially when the puzzle presentation in that area is not super straightforward.

the teleport mechanic is also kind of awkward and i didn't even realise it existed until my second day of playing. the game does not make this clear to you at all - the teleporter in each zone has its own small grid puzzle with a unique solution which will bring up the map, but the icons don't even appear on the map until you go somewhere else and then input the solution to teleport back to where you came from. it's just so weird and unnecessary. at least it does have an actual method of fast travel though, which the witness does not have despite having a much bigger map.

not a dealbreaker by any means but i did find navigating taiji a bit awkward in general, at least at first. the game is 2d as opposed to the witness' 3d world which i think would be fine if it was in one flat plane, but the paths twist all around their damn selves and it was a bit of a struggle getting where i needed to go sometimes.

this is particularly subjective but i also just think the witness' environment looks nicer, like taiji is not a bad-looking game by any means and it's clear that both games put a lot of effort into fleshing out the environment, but overall i find the witness is a bit prettier and has more fun shit to find. i also can't help but be a little put off by the

slight spoilers perhaps but if you're aware of a certain mechanic that's introduced partway through the witness that changes the way you look at the environment in a way i found very interesting, taiji doesn't really have that but it's also not completely devoid of it if that makes sense. you'll need it if you want to get the secret ending actually. so keep your eyes peeled.

like i said i want to avoid talking about individual puzzle mechanics in too much detail but it's worth comparing the general puzzle setup in both games because i find it kind of interesting. both game's puzzles are on a grid, but while the witness has you drawing a line along the grid from one point to the other, taiji has you toggling the squares on the grid on or off. i feel even this difference is enough to make the puzzles feel fairly fresh even to people who did play the witness (which does have some very similar puzzle elements) because the input method changes the way you need to think about the puzzles. in taiji you are (usually) not restricted by one unbroken line from one point to another, so your solution shouldn't be either, and this can make even similar puzzle setups play out kinda differently. it's also just nice that you can step away from an unfinished puzzle in taiji and not lose your progress on it, it's just physically easier to input solutions lol. definitely a cool change.

i need to go to bed but i don't think i had much else to say. if i forgot anything i'll add it tomorrow maybe. generally though if you're itching for more games like the witness i'd probably recommend taiji. if you pick it up (i got it on sale fwiw, i probably woulda put a little more thought into it if it were full price) let me know if you manage to finish everything (there's 445 puzzles total) without looking up guides because i only mostly succeeded at that. cleared everything in the [redacted] room without a guide though so i'll still call it a victory. anyway goodnight