Marmite Prince

63 thoughts on “Marmite Prince”

1. There is a strong chance I will murder the first person to announce “I am awakened by the sound of a dropping Electron Dance post.”

   ** SPOILER WARNING **
   ** SPOILERS WILL BE ALLOWED IN THE COMMENTS **

2. And I answered.

3. Inexhaustible mysteries? Luck-gated progression? The lingering sense that you’ll never be finished and/or smart enough to comprehend this clue you just got, never mind the Grand Message? Hundreds of hours??

   Yeah, this is the anti-CA game. I felt myself breaking out in a rash just reading this post. But I’m more than happy to have a vicarious let’s play of it. Thank god for Electron Dance.

4. Whereas this seems is my sort of thing in various ways (or perhaps something calculated to drive me up the wall) but not available on Mac, so I will mention that I understand Tantusar’s post and drop out until perhaps such time as I get a chance to try it. Come say hi to me in the Leap Year comments!

5. And we answered.

6. i am mostly the sort of player that blue prince was made for. i loved the room placement game: figuring out how to budget room to put dead ends to get them out of the way; using up corner rooms when possible even if a nicer (but not actually needed) room came up in a draw; arranging rooms to give myself the best possible chances of doing… whatever it was i was trying to do.

   i played _the demo_ for dozens of hours, deleting the save data every time i ran out of profile slots so i could start again. i milked every secret i could find out it—noting down pictures on the wall, cracking every safe i could find, discovering several hidden floorplans… i was actually afraid when the full game came out that i had delved so deeply through the demo that the full game would have disappointingly few secrets left to uncover.

   well, i was wrong. steam says i have spent 238 hours in the full game…

   and yet—i am still not entirely the sort of player that blue prince was made for. but to get into why that is would be to discuss post-credits stuff; so underneath this post is not the place.

7. Welcome everyone, welcome. I see people are reading between the lines. There are five parts to this series. Second part probably in a few days’ time.

   Matt, I’ve been meaning to Leap over to those comments but I put Blue Prince first. I’m sorry you will not enjoy the rest of this Blue Prince journey even if you understand our first stop. At least for now.

   CA – I am definitely trying to share with you the wonders and terrors of Blue Prince which are both in abundance.

8. Ah, vfig, you dropped a comment while I was typing my own (which was written at a rate of one word every ten minutes I think). Blue Prince is an absolutely fascinating game but I also wonder, sometimes, whether it abused my time. Not in the beginning, of course, but later. Even though Joe Mansfield still has videos to drop, he is taking a break from Blue Prince because he’s getting a little exhausted with it (and he hasn’t yet discovered all that we know there is discover).

9. You, a real gamer – I will put a secret code in my article that will entice
   Me, a degenerate – Ehdottomasti ei, I do not have time for this bullshit. Similar to how when I saw room 46, I was absolutely done with it. In a good way.

   As mentioned before – I do not care for late game wankery.

10. I immediately thought that was Erajan which is as good an example as any of how much Blue Prince cooked my brain.

    I think most of this series is about Late Game Wankery. It’s Late Game Wankery: The Series. We should sell the T shirt with the phrase “I made a game and didn’t add any late game wankery”. But the only way to purchase is to break a Fibonacci code cipher.

11. I’m happy to see you’ll be focusing on Blue Prince for the next bunch of essays, this game has gripped me and my partner and I’ll be happy to talk about it in the comments.

    Joel, I also agree that the game sometimes abuses my time: I’m now at the END-end-game I think, and I do feel like I’m circling the drain a bit. But those moments of sudden revelation are worth it for me. My desktop background is a screenshot I took of one of those moments, and I NEVER change my desktop background.

    I imagine that the problem the designer faced was that puzzle games are quite hard to test, and they become harder the further into the game testers get. You can test the first hour quite reliably, but how to do you test the 50th hour? So he built a bunch of failsafes in that almost sort of give you the answer (the mail room letters, the Treasure Trove memos, the Blue Tents hints). But these all feel like failsafes rather than hints, like an emergency solution to make sure you don’t get completely stuck. It’s also noteworthy that 9 times out of 10 these are hints for puzzles I’ve already solved, so they feel quite useless.

    I think that Blue Prince is amazing on its own, but I feel like this game will give future roguelike-puzzle-designers a lot of important information about how to design this kind of game, and what parts of the endgame work and what don’t.

12. AH JAMES BUT IS IT THE END END GAME NOBODY KNOWS

    I think the failsafes are great but they increasingly dry up as you get further in. I suspect, like you’re saying, that the failsafes were added as a result of testing but it’s harder to know what failsafes are needed deep into the game. Some of the failsafes are confusing – I thought they were different puzzles! For example, va gur Ebbg Pryyne, gurer’f n abgr gung unf snvag yrggref ba vg, ohg guvf vf whfg n onpxhc sbe gur fvtaf chmmyr va N Arj Pyhr.

13. Oh, I actually missed that thing! But it sounds like it doesn’t matter anyway.

    Yes, I think what Blue Prince has shown is that there is a limit to how smoothly a puzzle game can run when you add this level of interchangeableness. A traditional puzzle game (eg. Braid) can curate the experience somewhat, so that hints or nudges can be designed to directly address particular stumbling blocks. Blue Prince is operating at the very edge of this territory: the contents of its hints are directly curated by the designer, but their deployment is unspecific and crude. They’re sort of flung out into the game in the hope they will meet the player who needs that hint at that time, like messages in a bottle.

    What would make the game run more smoothly is some kind of system that is encoded with knowledge of the puzzles in the game, and can determine which hints should be deployed to move you forward. For example, it might keep track of every puzzle, whether or not you’ve solved it, as well as which puzzles you might reasonably be expected to be working on, and it would have a list of hints that can be deployed to nudge you forward on those puzzles. BP doesn’t have this, because the game itself doesn’t understand the logical connection between puzzles: as far as the game is aware, there are just objects in space which happen to have certain textures on them, but it doesn’t understand the puzzles. BP shows us that future games in this style would seriously benefit from building in that kind of logic, so a puzzle-master AI could know when to drop each memo.

    This would be complicated, because many hints are not as easy to isolate as “text on a memo”: they exist in a spatial context (eg. signs, symbols, graffiti). But I think an attempt at this kind of system would be beneficial, even if it could never be perfect. (After all, it’s a puzzle game. A bit of friction is fine, as long as it doesn’t grind things to a halt.)

14. James, you know I never thought I’d see a big puzzle game like The Witness ever again, but along came Blue Prince. (Outer Wilds, maybe? Less a fit for me as it has few ‘optional’ activities and it’s nowhere near as long.) Regardless of any reservations I might have about its implementation, I love that we have it at all.

    And it’s a strange madness that it’s so big that it just hopes players will manage to assemble pieces from entirely unrelated corners of the game. It tries to nudge and guide but, in the end, a lot of the side stuff is down to the player. And probably, also, how to manage drafting – which may be where some stumble. If you’re not as interested in the drafting aspect, then you are going to have a horrible time.

    I guess it would have been better to have a stronger relationship between the failsafes and the puzzles somehow because one of the frustrating parts of the game is working your butt off to solve a puzzle and inside you find: a hint to a puzzle you have already solved. It’s highly unusual for a puzzle game to feel backwards like this.

15. You’re right Joel, it’s a marvel that this thing exists at all. The more I play it the more I think of the developer (whose name escapes me) chipping away at it for 8 years with his financial security intact due to some side-hustle that he apparently had. It feels like a game that could only have been created very much outside the bounds of the standard publishing model, because it is so finely crafted, so niche and would have been such a risky business proposition.

    Yes, I guess most puzzle games (and I include point and click adventures here because they have the same basic form?) are explicitly designed to avoid this sort of backward-hint accident. But that’s what makes BP exciting to me: it’s not a linear puzzle game, it’s a dizzying puzzle box filled with other puzzle boxes extending in every direction. Not expansive in space, like an open world game, but expansive in informational depth, which I guess is only possible in a space like Holly Manor which is only pseudo-physical.

16. Also I have to tell someone: (no spoilers in this comment though!) my partner and I thought we were just going to do one or two runs of BP yesterday, for maybe an hour, you know, tidy up some loose ends.

    We kept to our plan and did 2 runs. But it took us FOUR HOURS. We got an item that was extremely unlikely from a RNG perspective but which I knew we needed to solve a puzzle, so we could FINALLY unlock something, which got us access to a letter, which made me gasp when I read a perfectly normal phrase that included A VERY SPECIFIC WORD THAT I HAD BEEN LOOKING OUT FOR, and the letter had a numeric cipher attached, which we cracked for an hour in a shared google doc (I wrote a program for 25 minutes to crunch some numbers to assist, then my wife had a BRILLIANT last-minute idea that blew the whole thing wide open), then we were left with this PHRASE which was VERY ENIGMATIC but then we tidied up a loose end we’d had flapping about for WEEKS and it led to ANOTHER BOOK from a character that we were already sus about and THAT led to us finding a SECRET ROOM which explained where those characters were getting THAT stuff from, and it also SOLVED THE FIRST PART OF THE ENIGMATIC PHRASE because of COURSE that’s what that is and NOW I HAVE AN ITEM WAITING FOR ME THAT MIGHT REVEAL SOMETHING IMPORTANT BUT I DON’T QUITE KNOW WHAT TO USE IT ON. (But I have an idea!)

    This GAAAAME

17. Okay, James, you have got to rot13 me this stuff. I can guess what some of your references might be but not all! Especially as you might not be able to follow this series as we get into all the spoils…

    Also – day 1000? Is this true?

18. Oh, no, that was a joke inspired by a Groundhog Day short story I read once. “What strange creature would you turn into if you went through a time loop for a million years?” or something.

    Let me rot13 those details:
    Fb jr’q nyernql tbg Xrl 8 naq hfrq vg gb haybpx Ebbz 8, fb jr gubhtug jr jrer qbar jvgu gur tnyyrel naq znqr vg nf ener nf cbffvoyr. Ohg vg gheaf bhg gung gb fbyir gur Snzvyl Pber chmmyr lbh arrq gur xrl, naq lbh arrq gb oevat vg gb gur inhyg, fb V jnf cyrnfnagyl fhecevfrq gb unir gur Tnyyrel ghea hc fb V pbhyq teno vgf xrl.

    Va gur inhyg guvf haybpxrq n fnsrgl qrcbfvg obk juvpu pbagnvarq n yrggre sebz Ureoreg qrgnvyvat n chmmyr gung unq orra ordhrngurq gb uvf oebgure. Gur yrggre zragvbaf ubj Ureoreg npprcgf gung guvf chmmyr zvtug abg or fbyinoyr, naq ubj ur vf pbagrag “gb yrnir guvf fgbar haghearq”, juvpu cevpxrq hc zl rnef orpnhfr “Gur Fgbar” vf ersreerq gb va na vzcbegnag cbrz. (V jbaqre vs V jvyy erprvir, ng gur raq bs guvf ybat chmmyr, n uvag gb fbyivat gur Fgbar chmmyr, juvpu V unir vebavpnyyl nyernql fbyirq.)

    Gur ahzrevp pvcure jnf terng sha! V jba’g fcbvy vg gbb zhpu ohg zl jvsr unq gur terng vqrn ng gur raq gb pbaireg gur ahzoref jr unq onpx vagb yrggref, naq jura V fcryyrq bhg gur erfhygvat zrffntr (rkcrpgvat tbooyrqrtbbx) naq vg sbezrq NPGHNY JBEQF V jnf guevyyrq.

    Gur cuenfr vf “Fgvyy jngre gvagf oynax obbxf”. V unq ab vqrn jung gung zrnag.

    Ohg gura jr chefhrq nabgure yvar bs radhvel (xabpxvat qbja gur Terraubhfr jnyy, juvpu V’q zrnag gb trg nebhaq gb sbe ntrf) naq gung erirnyrq n frperg obbx jevggra ol gur tneqrare (naq erirnyrq gung ur vf gur bar jub oynpxznvyrq Ureoreg jvgu gur erq yrggref). Abgnoyl, vg nyfb cbvagrq gbjneqf gur rkvfgrapr bs n uvqqra pnivgl va na bhgfvqr ebbz. Zl jvsr nyfb fcbvyrq urefrys nppvqragnyyl naq yrnearq gung lbh pna oybj hc gur qlanzvgr va gur genqvat cbfg, fb jr znqr n oheavat yraf naq oyrj hc gur qlanzvgr naq yb naq orubyq vg jnf gur frperg ebbz! Juvpu jnf hfrq sbe znxvat nypbuby. Va bgure jbeqf, n FGVYY, naq gurer jnf fbzr JNGRE va vg. Fb V chg fbzr va gur jngrevat pna naq fgnfurq gung va gur pbng purpx sbe yngre.

    V unir fvapr qvfpbirerq gung gur fgvyy jngre qbrf abg erirny nalguvat va gur erthyne obbxf bs gur yvoenel (Gur fgbel bs oynpx oevqtr, be N Arj Pyhr, sbe rknzcyr), ohg vf zrnag gb or hfrq ba fbzrguvat uvqvat va cynva fvtug: gur oynax obbxf qvfcynlrq ba gur yrpgreaf.

    Juvpu erirnyrq NABGURE CHMMYR JVGU RAVTZNGVP JBEQVAT GUNG V QBA’G HAQREFGNAQ.

19. Not day 1000, but I’m past day 100. I just wanted to make a joke based on a Groundhog Day story I read once: “If a man is stuck in a time loop for a million years, what will he become?”

    I’ll rot13 the details, but my last comment didn’t go through, so I think I went over the character limit. Let me break it up.

20. James I was able to dig the rot13 versions from spam so I’ve exchanged it with the English version

21. Aha, yes, that’s what I thought you were getting into. I found the cipher but didn’t get any further – it was walkthrough time for me. But congratulations on cracking the code, which must feel amazeballs.

22. Ah thanks for that! Yes, cracking it was great fun. I ended up writing a little Unity program to calculate ahzrevp pberf while my wife tried to do it by hand; I caught a few that she hadn’t got quite right. Very much tickled a particular region of my brain.

23. james: aha, you are on the verge of another fun discovery!

    i wrote a python program to do the thing, myself. didnt fancy doing the work by hand either 😀

24. So I finally bought the game and played it for a while but after getting into 25-ish day I made the decision to stop playing it. I won’t bore you with the details of where I stopped and all the deep context but ultimately the issue is… I don’t enjoy the main game loop. Placing the rooms and managing the resources feels like a chore and from talking to other people who went further it’s not something that ever changes.

    Instead I’ll watch an LP or something of the game because I am more than happy to experience the puzzle aspects of the game. I just can’t really be bothered by the gameplay that stands in its way for me :D.

25. Not having read most of the comments or anything but Maurycy’s: I’m in on this one. Well I better be for how long I’ve spent on it (I think I’m at a point where I know exactly what I need to do to any% it and it just takes a day of good drafting). I do find the room/resource loop satisfying, that there’s a push-your-luck aspect to it that works like many a good deckbuilder or Starseed Pilgrim (is Starseed Pilgrim a tile-placing game? discuss). And it presents a mix of goals, some more nebulous than others, that you can decide to work/try to work toward on a given day; which is very important because some of the goals at any given time require what look like unlikely combinations. And most days yield some metaprogress.

    I have occasionally been using hints with varying amounts of regret, sometimes zero or negative. The puzzles seems like some combination of “oh wow that’s cool”/’haha I solved it with my own brainz before finding the clue that explained the mechanic”/”oh dang I shouldn’t have needed that clue”/”can’t be done at all without finding the clue”/’even with the clue this is bullshit (or maybe I needed another clue)” and the critical path ones aren’t always at the front end of the spectrum. Specifics in rot13. And sometimes it seems like there’s something you have to do before calling it a day, or you’ll wind up redoing a lot of work or worse yet waiting for the right draw, which can get stressful.

    Some criticisms:
    The inability to save without calling it a day is real bad. The game is long, an individual session can get pretty long, and the length can be unpredictable because you might stumble into one of those Myst-like puzzle rooms. Imagine if you could only save every three rooms in Cragne Manor, and the third room you walked into was the Workroom! ok that’s not helpful.
    Nifflas’s Saira includes a camera that you can use to make and review screenshots without leaving the game HINT HINT. (You can, I can’t, it didn’t work under Wine. But I appreciated the thought!)
    Mechanically, I think it might be nice if some of the crucial plot token items persisted, or at least persisted for a few days. If you work hard and your reward is something that goes away by the end of the day, it makes further experimentation very costly. And it isn’t always apparent when you’ve just sequence broken. (More detail in rot13.)

    Gur pevgvpny-cngu fghss V’z zbfg tynq V fcbvyrq zlfrys ba jnf gur onfrzrag ragenapr. Trggvat gur onfrzrag xrl jnf uneq, naq zl svefg gubhtug jnf gung vg jrag fbzrjurer va gur bhgqbbe nern, ohg grfgvat gung jbhyq yvxryl unir rkunhfgrq zr, fb V whfg cbccrq vg vagb gur pbng purpx juvpu V unccrarq gb unir gung qnl. Naq V unqa’g cynprq gur sbhaqngvba lrg (juvpu frrzrq yvxr na veeribpnoyr zbir gb or qbar yngr!) Fb… V srry yvxr znlor gurer fubhyq’ir orra zber bs n uvag gung gur sbhaqngvba jnf vzcbegnag urer? Gura jura vg pnzr gvzr gb hfr vg ba gur sbhaqngvba, gur chmmyr sbe npprffvat gur ryringbe jnf cerggl bofpher VZB; guvf ghearq bhg gb or tvira njnl ol n uvag va gur Fghql ohg V bayl jbhaq hc qensgvat gur Fghql n pbhcyr jrrxf yngre (juvpu nyfb tnir zr gur qnat V fubhyq unir svtherq gung bhg uvag sbe gur cnvagvatf). Naq vs V unq gevrq gb jbex gung bhg ubarfgyl, naq fbzr qnl snvyrq gb trg gur xrl onpx gb gur pbng purpx, V’q unir unq gb erqb gur jubyr ernpuvat gur nagrpunzore naq fgbevat gur xrl frdhrapr, juvpu V’z tynq V qvqa’g.

    Gur “gung jnf ohyyfuvg” ernpgvba V unq jnf gur bssvpr fnsr. V svtherq bhg jung gur pyhr jnf, ohg gheavat gung vagb n ahzore jnf abg fbzrguvat V jbhyq unir tbggra. (Gur bar V qvq jvgu zl bja oenvam jnf gur pbyberq yvtugf ba gur oernxre obk, juvpu V svtherq bhg orsber trggvat gur zrffntrf gung rkcynva rknpgyl ubj gurl jbex.)

    Jvgu gur cybg vgrzf, va bar qnl V znantrq gb pbafgehpg gur pnaqyr vtavgre juvpu unf n uhtr oyvaxvat CYBG CEBTERFFVBA URER fvta naq nyfb abg zhpu fvta bs jurer vg’f hfnoyr–gurer ner n ybg bs pnaqyrf fpnggrerq nebhaq–naq nyfb fghzoyr npebff n zvpebpuvc jvgubhg univat tbg jung nccneragyl jnf gur pyhr sbe ubj gb qb vg, naq gura jvgu zl ynfg sbbgfgrc qensg gur znpuavnevhz sbe gur svefg gvzr naq qvfpbire na hctenqr qvfx, juvpu jnf hygen-sehfgengvat gung V pbhyqa’g hfr be cerfreir, naq n fnapghz xrl, juvpu unq n uhtr oyvaxvat GUVF JVYY OR VZCBEGNAG YNGRE fvta. (Nyfb gung qnl V tbg n inhyg xrl naq fperjrq hc ol qenjvat gur inhyg jvgu gbb srj trzf.) Vs V unq orra guvaxvat, V’q unir ernyvmrq gung gur zvpebpuvc jbhyq erfcnja rirel qnl va yvgrenyyl gur rnfvrfg cynpr gb trg vg, ohg sbe gur bguref vg jnf yvxr “Zna V unir gb qb guvf ntnva?”

    Gura gur arkg qnl, naq V nz orvat irel erfgenvarq va abg hcybnqvat zl znc, V jnf noyr gb trg gur onfrzrag xrl ntnva, trg onpx naq qb jung arrqrq gb or qbar haqre gur sbhagnva, ubyq bss ba ohlvat gur svir fgrcf cre erq ebbz vgrz va gur xvgpura hagvy V unq svyyrq gur ynfg enaxf jvgu erq ebbzf, naq svanyyl ernyvmrq gung V unq bar qbbe yrsg orpnhfr V unq bcrarq nyy gur nagrpunzore qbbef naq pbhyq jnyx guebhtu gb gur bgure fvqr, jurer V tbg gur Ynobengbel naq jnf noyr gb eha na rkcrevzrag jvgu vzzrqvngr rssrpg. Tb zr! Nyfb jura V svanyyl qvq qensg gur fghql V jbhaq hc fcnzzvat wrjry erqensgf gb sbepr gur jbexfubc fb V jnf noyr gb trg gur vtavgre onpx naq qb fghss.

26. I’m stepping away from game design for a moment to respond to a couple of comments…

    Maurycy

    Well, that’s fair. I did enjoy this loop of which you speak, but for sure gets tedious later when trying to Achieve Things (TM) and you begin to run out of things you want to try.

    Matt

    I find everyone seems to struggle with something and that something is not necessarily the same thing. The candles were straightforward for me because there’s a note about them which I happened to catch but there are other things which require you to parse something in a different way to which it appears – and if word play is your thing, I guess Blue Prince is your game. I was pretty crap at that side although maybe I was the lucky one: I’ve seen LPs go down rabbit holes trying to over-interpret the simplest of phrases. There’s a sort of word play madness spiral here.

27. Just in case you’re working on Citadel 2, I’ve started brainstorming some potential titles…

    Ciitadel
    Citadel 2: Ctrl-Alt-Citadel
    Citadel 2: Welcome to Citahell
    Citadel 2: Dagenham & Redbridge 1
    Citadel 3: Orange you Surprised I Didn’t Say Citadel 2
    Citadel 2: A Deckbuilding Game with a Roguelike Twist, No, Wait, Where are you Going

28. CA! Stop it! Don’t give me ideas! You’ll have me insert a blockpushing level into my narrative mystery.

29. Citadel
    Citadel 2
    Citadel 3
    Citadel 3: the bone temple

30. Joel

    Well I do love a cryptic crossword, but i also get stressed out when I don’t know whether something is a clue, or what it applies to, or where to find the thing that I’m working on. And I find Blue Prince sometimes drives me to the wiki and I haven’t mostly felt bad about that. Particularly when I find something that looks obviously and completely significant and… turns out not to be? Brief rot13:

    Va gjb abgrf (va gur cnagel naq V guvax bssvpr) gur jbeqf “oevqtr” naq “jrfg” ner jevggra va qvssrerag unaqjevgvat, va gur xvgpura vg’f oevqtrGGR juvpu znxrf vg cnegvphyneyl rtertvbhf. Naq guvf pbhyq boivbhfyl or cneg bs n zrffntr. Ohg nf sne nf V pna gryy sebz ybbxvat nebhaq, guvf zrnaf abguvat? Nyfb gurer ner gur zlfgrevbhfyl vgnyvpvmrq jbeqf va Gur Phefr bs Oynpx Oevqtr juvpu fgvpx bhg yvxr n fber guhzo naq qba’g frrz gb nqq hc gb nalguvat, gubhtu V’ir tbg n ybg zber oynpxoevqtr-eryngrq fghss gb qb.

    And some of the cryptic things I find are probably not on the critical path. But in the postgame it’s hard to tell what might be on the critical path or what even counts as it. You don’t get the credits provide closure sense that once you’ve seen the credits everything else is optional, because not only is there obvious unfinished business, the game itself tells you that you need to do more! So you wind up hacking away at everything.

    Partly I also find that the wiki sometimes serves as a repository for screenshots I would like to have taken but didn’t, or can’t find; if I were a purist, the thought “maybe there was a hint about that back there, I should go find that thing again!” followed by trying to find that thing would be inspiring, but it’s… not really. There will be a couple complaints about that in the rot13. There will also be some sad stories about how messing up puzzles caused me to have to redo a lot of stuff, and though these were pretty much my fault, it makes me very paranoid when I do get to something after a long time.

    Also after my last post I literally, as I was going to bed, thought “Oh one of the solutions is OBVIOUSLY this” and had some trouble going to sleep. And then one of the clues I found by finally drawing the right room confirmed this, and also seemed to suggest how to solve some of the puzzles I looked up or was about to… and those were bogus. Though maybe also highly optional! Details on rot13 and then some sad stories:

    Fb gur guvat V fbyirq tbvat gb orq jnf gur obhqbve fnsr, jurer V jnf gelvat gb snyy nfyrrc naq V fnvq “Puevfgznf! Gjryir gjragl svir! Qhu!” (V qba’g xabj vs guvf gheaf bhg irel naablvat sbe Oevgvfu crbcyr jub ragre gjragl svir gjryir.) Naq gura gur cnvagvat pyhrf, juvpu V unq arire gjvttrq jrer tvivat zr gur fnzr yrggref ng rirel tevq fcnpr gvyy V tbg gb gur fghql, gbyq zr gur sbezng sbe gurfr. Naq gura… V fgvyy guvax gur bssvpr naq fghql fnsrf ner obthf? Znepu bs gur pbhag whfg qbrfa’g gryy zr jung gb qb, naq q8 sbe qrprzore rvtug vf cerggl naablvat, rfcrpvnyyl jura gurer’f n abgr va gurer ersreevat gb n gbgnyyl qvssrerag qngr. Fcrnxvat bs gubfr gjb ebbzf, V nyfb jbhaq hc pbafhygvat gur jvxv sbe juvpu ebbz unq gur xvat va vg naq abg srryvat onq, orpnhfr V unqa’g qensgrq gur bssvpr va n juvyr naq nyfb gur xvat, hayvxr rirel bgure cvrpr, qbrfa’g ybbx yvxr gur pynffvp Fgrvavgm frg.

    Fnq fgbel: Bar vf gung nsgre qenvavat gur erfreibve (juvpu gbbx n ohapu bs gebhoyr punetvat hc gur erfreir gnax va gur chzc ebbz), V qvq gur fghss va gur obggbz, naq gura ernyvmrq V fubhyq frg gur jngre gb n qvssrerag yriry gb trg vagb gung ghaary, fb zreevyl qvq gung… naq gur obng vf ba gur jebat fvqr. Juvpu vf gbgnyyl zl snhyg, gur haqretebhaq znc znqr gung pyrne ohg V fbzrubj arire cnefrq bar fgehpgher nf n qbpx, naq nyfb V guvax unqa’g jnyxrq vagb gur erfreibve sebz gur gbzof gb nibvq jnfgvat n fgrc. Juvpu vf zl snhyg ohg vg nyfb zrnaf gung, univat gevrq guvf ubarfgyl, V arrq n srj zber chzc ebbz frffvbaf.

    Gur ernyyl onq bar–BX, gur bppnfvbany gvzr frafvgvir ovg vf obthf. Guvf vf zbfgyl n ghea-onfrq tnzr! Qba’g zvk ryrzragf, fnlf V! Fb V ernyvmrq V unq gb ragre gur pybpx gbjre ng n cnegvphyne pybpx gvzr (gur jbeq “fnperq” znlor vf fhccbfrq gb uvag ng guvf ohg qbrfa’g, be znlor vg zrnaf fbzrguvat ryfr?) naq nsgre vs V znl fnl fb zlfrys n irel pyrire fgengrtl jurer V qensgrq gur fubjebbz cnfg ybfg naq sbhaq naq hfrq ybfg naq sbhaq gb qhzc zl jubyr vairagbel orsber ohlvat gur zbba craqnag naq puebabzrgre naq pnyyvat vg n qnl, V tbg gur pybpx gbjre irel rneyl, naq gura jnf syvccvat nebhaq naq qensgvat fghss arneol, juvyr areibhfyl purpxvat gur va tnzr pybpx, naq riraghnyyl pnzr onpx gb jnvg vg bhg–naq gura gur pybpx chmmyr qvqa’g cnefr. Fbzrguvat frrzrq svful naq V purpxrq gur jvxv naq qvfpbirerq gung V jnf fhccbfrq gb unir tbg n pevgvpny pyhr ol hfvat gur zntavslvat tynff ba n abgr rkcynvavat zrzbf, naq V jnf yvxr; ernyyl? Bar bs gur svefg guvatf lbh ernq naq lbh trg fperjrq va gur yngr tnzr vs lbh unira’g tbar onpx gb vg? Nz V fhccbfrq gb tb onpx bire rirelguvat? Gung’f jung V zrna ol cnenabvn.

    Ohg gur onq guvat jnf V unq fcrag fb zhpu gvzr syvggvat nebhaq jnvgvat sbe gur fnperq ubhe gung V zvfpbhagrq zl fgrcf naq, nsgre trggvat gur xrl, rkunhfgrq zlfrys whfg nf V ernpurq gur fnapghz. V JNF FB ZNQ.

    Postscript to the last bit:

    Gur arkg qnl (frffvba) V tbg gur Pybpx Ebbz ntnva naq jbhaq hc jnvgvat nebhaq sbe gur ubhe sbe n yvggyr juvyr–ubarfgyl gung ernyyl frrzf yvxr fbzrguvat gung fubhyq fgnl bcra bapr lbh trg vg–naq gura unq n zbzrag bs cnavp jura V gubhtug V unq oybpxrq bss gur sbhaqngvba fb V pbhyqa’g trg gb gur fnapghz naljnl. Hagvy V ernyvmrq gung V unq qensgrq gur Gbzo gung qnl fb V pbhyq trg va gung jnl.

31. @matt w: oh, i had not paid that much attention to that very long book before. it was so many pages that i kinda zoned out reading it the first time, and never revisited it except to double check one or two details of the story. going back now i see a few additional details i had not noticed before, but i dont yet know if they are clues or just incidental detail.

    but definitely this game suffers greatly (especially post-credits) with what is incidental detail and what is genuine clue. most of the time actual clues seem to be backed up by other details to be found elsewhere—but there are still a lot of things i could point to as clue-shaped that appear to have no solution nor point to any actual puzzle that is in the game itself. thats… frustratingly messy.

    regarding your second rot13 text: the first thing you mention works both ways, which is a nice accommodation on the part of the game (and yet makes the lack of any kind of colourblindness accommodation—especially now approaching a year after release—even more baffling). i can give a full explanation of how each safe clue works (unsurprisingly some wordplay is involved) but i dont know how many you have found and/or solved, so i might be spoiling things even if rot13’d. even then, several of them are much easier to solve by shortcutting and maybe some minor trial and error, instead of following the (presumed) intended solve path, which is a slight shame, but i suppose with obscurantic puzzles of this sort that is bound to happen.

    the thing you hadnt read is unfortunate. its postscript is (depending on your monitor) either readable or nearly so without magnification, but its plain bad luck that you happened not to notice it when you first examined it, and so didnt think it necessary to look at again anytime after. its one of the few critical clues that doesnt have a secondary backup except, perhaps, that you will probably have encountered examples that seem to contradict the rule that is supposed to be in play. but since all these examples are small things that you find in disparate places over the course of a great many hours in the game, unless you are keeping detailed notes and screenshots of them all, they are very hard to correlate.

    although the game had a fair number of playtesters throughout the years of its development, it still has a lot of puzzles that seem overly obtuse. as if tonda ros only begrudgingly lets you solve them. i used the term obscurantist above, and this is really what i meant by it. its not like most puzzle games at all, which want to be solved; in many ways it hews much more closely to the design ethos of books like kit williams’ “masquerade”, or indeed christopher manson’s “maze” (which is a major creative inspiration for blue prince), which are designed to resist solving against all but perhaps a very small number of readers (and even then not to be definitely known to be solved without external verification). as a puzzle game sold on steam, that is extremely unusual. and as a puzzle design ethos in the era of online wikis, rather self-defeating in terms of both keeping players in the dark and insisting that players earn their dopamine hits for unravelling clues on their own.

32. @matt w, first rot13: Gurer ner n pbhcyr zber abgrf fpnggrerq nobhg gur cynpr gung ner yvxr gung naq gbtrgure sbez n chmmyr eryngvat gb [and I’m switching to rot15 here just to be safe] p bxrgdrwxe udg iwt vgdiid, hd xu ndj’kt vdi paa du iwtb iwtc ndj rpc xvcdgt xi.

33. @Tantusar: rot15 isnt meaningfully safer than rot13. if you want true cryptographic safety youve got to double the operations and do rot26

34. Tantusar: thanks! didn’t reveal the rot15, but what would really help me out here is a hint of where the notes are (like, are they in ordinary rooms like the ones I found or do I need to be looking more closely at things?)

    vfig: Yeah, with the long book I was paying far more attention to the incidental details like the one I noticed rather than the text.

    …oh, I was thinking that pretty much everything in N Arj Pyhr and relating to Oynpxoevqtr Tebggb was super-optional but I checked a bit and one thing is definitely not. And part of my issue is certainly failing to magnify something that is going to take at least two drafts to find again. Phooey.

    [update on this, I carefully drafted the the thing, went over to use the magnifying glass that I had had all day, and then realized that three rooms before I had built the magnifying glass into another contraption. oh well]

    re: postscript. definitely not readable by me without the glass! my monitor tends to be smudgy and also I am just farsighted enough that it’s annoying to have my glasses on unless I’m reading for a while or trying to decipher some small text which I know is there. so that bit definitely looked like a smudge, just like the other bit on that thing, which was a smudge. As you said, it’s possible to backform this a bit, because you hit a puzzle that absolutely doesn’t work with the rules as you understand them, but then the choice is, do I crumple up the complicated strategy I pulled off and throw it away until next time, or do I look something up? The same issue also leads to a lot of paranoia about whether I have to go over all my old documents to see what I have misunderstood (I already caught one thing).

    I guess I can rationalize what seemed like just a piece of bad design; gur pybpx gbjre qbrfa’g fgnl bcra orpnhfr cneg bs gur punyyratr vf znantvat gb qensg vg orsber gur fnperq ubhe. V qba’g guvax vg’f jbegu vg gubhtu. Cnegyl orpnhfr gur erny-gvzr ryrzragf pna xvpx ebpxf, naq ynfg gvzr V jnf va gur pybpx gbjre V sbhaq gur fgbcjngpu, juvpu pna ernyyl xvpx ebpxf. rfcrpvnyyl vs lbh unir gb fgneg ol ehaavat vg qbja gur fghcvq pybpx gbjre fgnvef.

    In general, although the obtuseness of the puzzles is a strange choice, I think it works because of the internet. At some point you can make the choice to look something up, or get hints as to whether you ought to be looking something up, and in any case there isn’t as much need to worry about “should I have written something down way back when?” if the screenshots are all somewhere. (I have a lot of screenshots myself but they’re kind of hell to look through.) There’s also a pleasure in finding a clue to a puzzle you already solved, or spoiled yourself on. (Will look out for the ones you mentioned because I sure haven’t figured out those clues.)

    But there’s also the paranoia of “Should I be trying to solve this now or do I need some clue that’s in a room I haven’t drafted yet, or a document I’ve overlooked, or something?” I’ve occasionally mentioned that when we were making Cragne Manor I complained about a similar feeling until Jenni Polodna implemented a hint device that tells you whether the current location’s puzzle is ready to solve or needs something from elsewhere, which was just an immense help.

    One thing I loved about Knytt Underground is that a lot of the little bonuses are self-contained. Like on one screen there’s a little figure that very subtly pops up from the ground and shoots a spitball at you and… that’s it. It doesn’t hint at anything, your reward is that you noticed it. And while there are plenty of other secrets that do unlock things or areas, the game goes to great lengths to communicate that they’re optional… and that the whole game is optional, really, but these especially don’t leave you unfulfilled unless you’re trying to be a completionist. But Knytt Underground isn’t mostly a puzzle game.

    Speaking of noticing things that make me paranoid: gur jbexfubc sheavgher fcryyf fbzrguvat, evtug?

35. well, if you just want to roll credits, then yes, everything in n arj pyhr and relating to oynpxoevqtr tebggb is optional. as for your question to tantusar, well, vs lbh sbhaq n arj pyhr, lbh’q xabj jung gb qb—creuncf lbh whfg arrq n pybfre ybbx ng cntrf lbh nffhzrq zvtug abg arrq n pybfre ybbx?

    the fgbcjngpu va gur pybpxgbjre is, i believe, placed there as a joke. it’s a bit of a joke item in the first place, as its benefits are (imo) not usually worth trading away thinking time for.

    a built-in hint system in a game like this would be almost impossible to implement, since many of the puzzles are designed to fly beneath your notice for a long time.

    but certainly it would have been beneficial if the game had a built in screenshotting + notetaking system, especially when it comes to the various documents around. solving the “late game” puzzles without keeping references and notes is almost impossible (without looking up answers).

    regarding your last question about paranoia: yes, it does, sort of, if you study it; but i feel confident in saying it would not be telling you anything you didn’t already know.

36. Haha the puzzle I needed the magnifying glass for jnf rknpgyl gur chmmyr gung jnf pyhrq ol gur erfg bs gur jrveq jbeqf gung V unq abgvprq gjb bs, naq pbhyq cerfhznoyl unir jbexrq bhg ba fbzrguvat yvxr qnl svir vs V unq ybbxrq pybfryl rabhtu ng gur bgure qbphzragf pbagnvavat gurz jura V fnj gurz gur svefg gvzr. Cnegvphyneyl jrag bire zl urnq orpnhfr zl ernpgvba gb gur abbx abgr jnf “V nva’g gnxvat culfvpny abgrf ba ab ivqrbtnzr” naq zl ernpgvba gb gur cngvb abgr jnf “qhu” naq V arire ybbxrq ng gurz ntnva. cyhf gur jrveq jbeq ba gur cngvb abgr vf va n cynpr jurer vg qbrfa’g fgnaq bhg. Nu jryy. Ng yrnfg urer gurer vf n chmmyr gryyvat lbh rknpgyl jung gb ybbx ng vg ntnva vs lbh unq bireybbxrq gurz gur svefg gvzr.

    As for one of the other ones we were talking about:

    V sbhaq fbzr zber pyhrf nobhg gur fnsrf chmmyrf (gur abgrf gung Xvex Qneera vapyhqrf va bar bs Enaqbycu’f yrggref) naq… V fgvyy guvax gur pyhvat sbe gur bssvpr naq fghql abg gb zragvba gur qensgvat fghqvb vf fxrgpul? Sbe gur fghql, q-rvtug vf whfg abg n qngr sbezng gb zr. Gur bgure gjb obgu vaibyir ohfgf sebz gur Sblre naq va jnlf gung qba’g frrz pyrne–V unq orra yvxr “bu pbhag tngrf” sbe n juvyr, ohg nccylvat vg jurer vg trgf nccyvrq jnf yrff guna boivbhf. Naq evtug abj V nz gubebhtuyl fghpx ba gur qenjvat ebbz, V qba’g rira xabj jung zvtug or n pyhr, gur tnvg yratgu znexrq va nyy gur qenjvatf frrzf fvtavsvpnag ohg jung qbrf vg zrna? V nppvqragnyyl qvfpbirerq gur fnsr jura ybbxvat sbe guvatf gb yvtug, naq gura jura V jnf fpbhevat gur ebbz sbe pyhrf V abgvprq gur rnfry unq gur uvag sbe gur guvat V’q whfg qbar.

    At least those seem like ultra-optional puzzles.

37. @matt w: unun, v sbhaq gur qenjvat ebbz fnsr va rknpgyl gur fnzr jnl lbh qvq, gelvat gb yvtug pnaqyrf (qrfcvgr gung pnaqyrfgvpx abg univat nal pnaqyrf va vg, qhu!)

    for the study:

    Q8 vf bs pbhefr ‘qngr’ cubargvpnyylvfu. “rvtug qngrf penpx rvtug fnsrf”, fb guvf ‘qngr’ gryyf lbh gur fnsr pbqr fbzrubj. sebz gurer, jryy, bayl bar zbagu fgnegf jvgu Q…

    for the office:

    vs lbh pbhag gur ‘fznyy [ohfgf bs] Tngrf’, pbzovar gung jvgu ‘znepu bs gur pbhag’: Znepu vf n zbagu, naq gur pbhag jr whfg qvq jnf guerr, gung znxrf n qngr.

    jbeqcynl naq evqqyvat nobhaq, nf lbh zvtug rkcrpg sebz n tnzr jvgu fhpu na rtertvbhf cha sbe n gvgyr…

38. Matt, I didn’t get on with the safe puzzles at all. I got deep into the game and had only unlocked the Boudoir and Shelter ones; I started looking up the others and I was like, gahhhhh okayyyy

    And anything involving wordplay generally killed me

39. I had one great moment with the safe puzzles, broadly speaking:

    V tbg cnfg gur erq qbbe va gur haqrecnff, jnyxrq hc gb gur tngr, fnj vg unq n pbzovangvba ybpx jvgu yrggref naq na 8 ng gur raq, ghearq nebhaq fnlvat “ru V arrq gb svaq nabgure pyhr” naq gura orsber V jrag naljurer fnvq “jnvg! gurer vf bayl bar qngr gung pna svg gung sbezng!”

    For the others, yeah, as I said I like wordplay but what I really like is wordplay where I know what the clue is supposed to be.

    A bit of praise for the design on something related to what I just posted:

    Gur yvtug ba gur erq qbbe zlfgrevbhfyl jrag ba bar gvzr naq V unq ab vqrn ubj vg unccrarq. Gura V ybbxrq vg hc (pbaarpgrq gb n zlfgrevbhf obk va gur obvyre ebbz) naq jnf yvxr “ubj jnf V fhccbfrq gb chg gung gbtrgure!” Ohg V whfg, zhpu yngre, svanyyl nffrzoyrq gur cbjre unzzre naq oyrj bhg gur cnffntr vagb gur onfrzrag, naq gung unf na rkcynangvba, fb vs V unqa’g fghzoyrq npebff gur fbyhgvba ol gura V jbhyq unir xabja jung gb qb.

40. Office safe was the first thing I spoiled, semi-accidentally. I figured out the clue phrase and searched for it, possibly hoping to find something that told me whether I had all the information needed, and no more. I did not have all the information needed, but when I found out what the information needed was, I was like “what the hell?”

41. @matt w: regarding your “one great moment with the safe puzzles”: that was also how i solved it, and how two of my friends solved it. however, that particular one is also probably the sneakiest pun in the game:

    gur cuenfr “zn lnvg” va gur renwna ynathntr zrnaf “fznyy tngr” be “fznyy tngrf”, naq vf, cerfhznoyl, cebabhaprq gur fnzr nf “znl rvtug”. (nqzvggrqyl, renwna jnf pbafgehpgrq cheryl sbe gur chmmyrf va guvf tnzr, fb guvf vf zreryl pyrire, abg gur travhf gung gehr ovyvathny chaf bsgra ner. ohg vgf fgvyy arng, lrg bar zber jbeqcynl sebz gur ybat pyhr: “vs jr pbhag ‘fznyy tngrf’ [nf n qngr vgfrys!], …”

42. JESUS CHRIST vfig, I can’t believe that sneaky pun

43. …wow. that went completely over my head.

    That may or may not redeem my sense that some of these puzzles are just bad…

    V svanyyl jrag sbe fcbvyref ba gur qenjvat ebbz fnsr, naq juvyr V unq gubhtug vg jnf nobhg gur tnvgf V qba’g guvax V unq chg gbtrgure “fznyy tnvgf.” Juvpu znl or erqrrzrq orpnhfr gung znxrf sbhe bs gurfr nobhg pbhagvat tngrf, gur bssvpr, gur qensgvat fghqvb, gur haqrecnff, naq gur qenjvat ebbz. Rkprcg… rira tvira gung vasbezngvba vg vf cerggl zhpu neovgenel gb pbaarpg gurfr gb gur nafjre? “gnxr gur fznyyrfg naq frpbaq fznyyrfg tnvgf naq tebhc gurz ol traqre vafgrnq bs yvxr ubj znal gurer ner ba juvpu jnyy”… guvf vf irel vaqverpg!

    I think these would be better with more redundancy, though I may have overlooked some.

    Gurer vf n qngr gung lbh pna trg ol zntavslvat tynffvat n abgr va gur nggvp. Juvpu rira xvaq bs unf gb qb jvgu qenjvatf. Ohg vg nccrnef gb or n erq ureevat, be ng yrnfg abg hfrq urer.

    In general, I don’t think it’s harmful to have more than one way of getting the solution–even if you have the solution from somewhere else, you can have an aha! moment where you realize the other way it’s clued. In fact it’s much more likely that you will get this. (The old “this crossword puzzle answer has to be this, how the heck is it clued–ooh nice!”)

    I also got brick walled by a metapuzzle and wound up spoiling myself a lot, and don’t feel bad about this, because I think the puzzle was not at all good. I guess spoilers are allowed so I can at least say I’m talking about the sigils. Maybe it was a mistake to gain access to them all at once rather than solving them as I went, but I was kind of like, sigh, I’m going to have to gather clues from all over… but they were way way way underclued I thought? And in one case a clue was misleading?
    Bar fvtvy jnf syng tvira njnl va obgu gur gbepu punzore naq gur frperg tneqra, nabgure ng gur raq bs Ernyz naq Ehar, naq gura sbe n ybg vg jnf yvxr… n pyhr sbe guvf vf va gur craanagf va gur qbezvgbel, be n qensgvat fgengrtl obbx gung lbh svaq va n sbhaq sybbecyna, be yvgrenyyl va gur ebbz qrfpevcgvbaf bs gur qverpgbel, be va gur gjragvrgu zrzb va gur gernfher gebir. Nf sbe gur zvfyrnqvat bar, ernyz naq ehar fnlf gung gur enlf sbe ghegyrf qba’g tb gb gur rqtr, ohg gur fvtvy sentzrag sbe gur ernyz jvgu ghegyrf qrcvpgf enlf tbvat gb gur rqtr. Bu naq gur pyhr sbe ghegyrf vf n ivqrbpnfrggr pbire gung vf va n ebbz V eneryl qensg naq vf nyfb GBB FZNYY SBE ZR GB ERNQ NAQ ABG IVRJNOYR JVGU GUR ZNTAVSLVAT TYNFF.

    A problem is that at this stage I didn’t have a ton to accomplish with drafts and really didn’t feel like shuffling through every room to find whatever details may have tipped me off there. Or through my pile of screenshots. If there had been some redundancy in most of the sigils, I would have been a lot more likely to ambiently pick up on stuff and say “aha!” instead of winding up revealing hints and thinking “I was supposed to see that?”

    It reminds me that poring around for little details in Type Help worked because it was very easy to quickly review everything you’d seen so far. For this, even with quick access to images on the wiki, I got stuck fast because the clues were buried too deep–and it seemed like there were a few you had to brute force.

    Oh and did I mention that the interface for these was terrible? I kept clicking on a ring that wasn’t the one I wanted! Why are the rings at that angle with the knob for one sticking right into the other?

    Anyway I made my way through them–and I should say that at least I got the push-button puzzles as rewards, those are fun (except how do they guarantee that the right way is facing north)–and now I have another puzzle I think I can solve. But I’m also at the “really won’t feel bad about looking at hints” stage, after that. (And this puzzle doesn’t even have the extra content excuse that the safes do, everything is pointing you toward it.)

44. matt w: i guess whatever hints you looked up explained things badly.

    tebhc ol traqre?? ab. v zrna, fher lbh *pna* vagrecerg vg gung jnl, ohg gurerf n zhpu fvzcyre jnl: gurer ner svir qvssrerag cvpgherf. gur tnvgf bs rnpu cvpgher ner rvgure dhvgr ovt be irel fznyy, abguvat va orgjrra. gjb bs gur cvpgherf (gur byq zna naq gur lbhat tvey) unir irel fznyy tnvgf. pbhag ubj znal bppheraprf gurer ner bs rnpu cvpgher: svsgrra bs bar, sbhe bs gur bgure: fb, ncevy svsgrragu. (naq gunaxshyyl lbh pna hfr qqzz be zzqq, gur tnzr npprcgf rvgure).

    as for the sigils? yes, i definitely agree that theyre the worst set of puzzles in the game, taken as a whole. a few of the needed facts are so vaguely hinted at that, even knowing the answer by brute-forcing the last three or four variables, i couldnt identify with certainty if or where they were hinted at.

    ahnapr’f jrngure? jryy, v ernfbarq gung, fvapr gurl hfr qvevtvoyrf n ybg sbe nve geniry, gung vg zhfg unir zbfgyl pnyz jrngure, bgurejvfr gurlq or bayl vagrezvggragyl bs hfr qhr gb uvtu pebffjvaqf be urnqjvaqf znxvat gurz vasrnfvoyr. ohg abcr, gur tnzr fnlf vgf jvaql. jul? naq jurer? v fgvyy qbag xabj.

    ubjrire gur ghegyrf pyhr sbe ireen vf sne rnfvre gb svaq ol ybbxvat ng cbfgntr fgnzcf. va gur znvy ebbz lbh pna (riraghnyyl) svaq n fgnzc ynoryyrq ireen, qrcvpgvat crbcyr evqvat n tvnag ghegyr (be cbffvoyg gbegbvfr); naq vgf rnfl rabhtu gb znxr gung bhe rira jvgubhg n zntavslvat tynff. v nyfv guvox gung ireen fgnzc nyfb nccrnef ryfrjurer ba nabgure yrggre (abg pbhagvat gur cbfgpneqf oruvaq gur fvtvy ybpxf bs pbhefr), ohg v qbag unir zl abgrf ng unaq evtug abj.

    the push-button puzzle boxes are really good. great integration of theme and mechanics, with a solid range of difficulty and variety among them (as for orientation? hinges = north i suppose!). good news: you have plenty more of them ahead of you if you go deep enough.

45. I didn’t really do my hint source justice about that one safe, but I stand by complaint:

    V guvax jungrire uvag V sbhaq svefg fnvq “fznyy tnvgf” naq V jnf yvxr BX! V jvyy pbhag gur bar jvgu gur fznyyrfg tnvg juvpu nccrnef gb or gur byq zna. Gurer ner sbhe ahzoref ba gur sbhe jnyyf (bar bs gurz mreb) naq… gurl qba’g nffrzoyr vagb n qngr, uhu. Gura V ybbxrq ntnva naq fnj fbzr crbcyr fnlvat “ubj jrer jr fhccbfrq gb xabj gung lbh pbhag gur gbgny bs gur gjb xvaqf bs cnvagvatf jvgu fznyy tnvgf frcnengryl” naq V jnf yvxr lrnu! Ubj jrer jr gb xabj gung. Zl gbgny pbzcynvag orvat, rira vs lbh tb va xabjvat fbzrguvat yvxr “lbh trg vg sebz gur cnvagvatf jvgu gur fznyy tnvgf” gur ebhgr sebz gurer gb gur nafjre frrzf cerggl haqrgrezvarq.

    These puzzles are hard to design because it’s really hard to tell what the player might fixate on that turns out to be an irrelevant detail, and the game by its nature has to present a lot of detail, some of which is inevitably irrelevant. Reminding me of the second hedge maze in The Witness where I noticed that the textures on the bottom of the hedge weren’t uniform and tried to do something with that, whereupon (oh FINE I’ll rot13 it) vg ghearq bhg gung gur nafjre jnf va gur sbbgfgrc fbhaqf, gur svefg gvzr fbhaq unq znqr n qvssrerapr, naq V unq orra cynlvat juvyr punggvat jvgu crbcyr jvgu gur fbhaq abg uvtu hc.

    Jason Dyer, talking about the puzzle hunt book craze, said that the problem with Kit Williams’s Masquerade was that he thought the puzzle might be too easy to solve because he knew which parts were red herrings. But if you don’t know which parts are red herrings then you can get badly flummoxed pareidoliaing parts that don’t have any meaning! That’s why I think it’s important to have redundant clueing and self-confirming solutions, which cryptic crosswords have by their nature. (Speaking of the puzzle hunt book craze, Christopher Manson who did the Gallery art made a much better one, MAZE; which did a much better job but even so nobody solved the central puzzle! Clues too much buried in other details.)

    Anyway though I’ve been complaining about that, as I said those puzzles seem well off the critical path, though who knows. Glad to get the feedback that you weren’t keen on the other set I was complaining about; I was a bit worried that everything was going to be like that from now on. Though I do think that the last hint you gave falls under “buried way too deep in a late iteration of something that looks optional” (and specifically has been giving me a bunch of hints to puzzles I’ve already solved). I was honestly expecting to get a lot more of this out of higher grades of the classroom. Also the general thing you’re describing looks kind of like a smudge to me. Perhaps the moral is I should use my (real) glasses more.

    As far as the first one of those you’ve mentioned, the spoilers I looked up suggested that that clue meant the opposite of what you took it to mean! It was after seeing something like that where I was like “OK, if that’s a hint, I’m going to keep looking up spoilers.”

46. “buried way too deep in a late iteration of something that looks optional”

    optional for reaching the credit roll, yes. but with the puzzlehunty nature of the subsequent lines of inquiry, i certainly felt that any source of information the game offered could be holding important clues, and so mined them for everything i could.

    (a notable part of the gameplay for me for these later stages was figuring out ways to make such mining efficient. this included exploiting one particular lab experiment trigger that i overlooked for a long time as “obviously terrible”. but then, taken in combination with one specific room upgrade, turned out to be a superb engine for grinding things out. this combo was a eureka moment for me: “aha! of course youre not supposed to be trammeled by mundane resource limits in the late game! this engine was put here on purpose to be exploited,” i reasoned… and then welp, they patched that experiment trigger to work only like 10 times or something. that hurt deeply.)

    as for pareidolia—well this late game has so many loose ends and red herrings that it can be very frustrating. i cant begin to go into it here without giving away many other late puzzles, but my notes still have many things that feel clue-shaped but that do not seem to point to anything mechanically solvable within the game. i think thats quite bad, for all the reasons you discuss.

47. IMO the credit roll in Blue Prince is an overt red herring–the credit roll usually signifies the end of the critical path (I wrote a whole guest post about the placement of the credits in Closure) but in Blue Prince it’s almost impossible to reach the credit roll without having some clear unfinished business (I guess literally impossible, counting the locked sanctum doors), and as soon as you start another day, the game shouts in your face that you’re not done. The thing about the mail room letters isn’t so much that you got the credit roll without them, as the first umpty are mostly giving hints to puzzles that I’ve mostly solved (most egregiously the laboratory puzzle). And it’s not every day you can activate them, even if I am pretty much every day abusing the Blackbridge Protocol to run an experiment! (Curious what your trigger was though I may just not have picked that upgrade.) (Also the thing I was really thinking of there was the Treasure Trove memos, which really dribble out at a snail’s pace.)

    The pareidolia is kind of inescapable just because the game has to provide a lot of details and some of them are not going to be clues. Which is why clues that reinforce each other are so good.

    Anyway I posted other thoughts under Door Chore (mostly: at some point it’s just rude to ask me to keep drafting things in order to find clues to stuff).

48. matt w:

    CAUTION: DEEPER MECHANICAL SPOILERS THAN USUAL

    The trigger was: “rnpu gvzr lbh ivrj lbhe znc, ybfr 10 fgrcf naq gura…”, juvpu v cnverq jvgu gur “ahefr’f fgngvba” ahefrel hctenqr: “vs lbh unir yrff guna 10 fgrcf jura lbh ragre guvf ebbz, frg lbhe fgrcf gb 20”. gur ynggre hctenqr jnf abg nygrerq, bayl gung fcrpvsvp gevttre tbg aresrq gb or “gur arkg 10 gvzrf lbh ivrj lbhe znc, ybfr 10 fgrcf naq gura…”. v hfrq gung gb tevaq gb 1,000 fgnef (gbbx nobhg 40 zvahgrf), juvpu rssrpgviryl tnir zr vasvavgr erqenj.

    ohg jvgu n yvggyr zbarl ynhaqrevat naq gur evtug fcvevghny fhccbeg, lbh pna dhvgr rnfvyl ohvyq hc gb jungrire ahzore bs qvpr gung lbh jnag, naq trg vasvavgr erqenjf ba nal tvira qnl yvxr gung. gbtrgure jvgu n fcvssl puebabzrgre naq gur qenjvat ebbz gevttre, lbh pna ghea gung vagb nf znal rkcrevzrag gevttref nf lbh jnag. vgf yrff rssvpvrag guna gur znc bar jnf, ohg vg qbrfag gnxr ybat gb frg hc. fb lbh pna fgvyy snez bhg gubhfnaqf bs fgnef naq nyybjnapr cerggl rnfvyl juvyr jngpuvat lbhghor ba lbhe frpbaq fperra be jungrire.

49. Holly shit, vfig, I was clearly playing a novice game when I read these comments

    It does make me wonder if a lot of these cool riffs off the mechanics are intentional or accidental, especially as you said they nerfed one

    Making my own game, it’s so easy creating unintentional synergies which you just cannot see until a fresh pair of player’s eyes come in and lay waste to your carefully plotted Rube Goldberg machine (well, that’s what I’m frightened of anyway)

50. matt w: having finally got around to following your link above to jason dyers blogposts about PRISM—thank you! i had not heard of it before; now i have some reading ahead of me!

51. vfig: Glad you’re enjoying it!

    Reading your rot13, hmm, I have not once seen that experimental trigger. And I already chose a different upgrade for the room in question. My choice probably turns out to be more of a midgame thing that is helpful for resource farming than a late game one. Oh well.

    Jung V hctenqrq gur ahefrel gb jnf gur vaqbbe ahefrel, juvpu cbcf hc wrjryf jura lbh qensg n terra ebbz. Nyfb V jbhyq qvr bs sevtug, cbffvoyl yvgrenyyl, jvgu gung rkcrevzragny gevttre orpnhfr V nz n pbzchyfvir znc purpxre. Nyfb trarenyyl ntnvafg qbvat ercrgvgvir fghss juvyr jngpuvat lbhghor ba n frpbaq fperra… V qba’g unir n frpbaq fperra naq V qba’g yvxr gubfr lbhghorf… gubhtu znlor V fubhyq fjvgpu gb gheavat gur fbhaq bss naq cynlvat zhfvp ba zl fgrerb, zvtug znxr zr srry orggre nobhg ubj zhpu gvzr V’z chggvat va.

    Joel in re that: Letting the players break the game with an ingeniously constructed Rube Goldberg of their own can be fun! As long as it doesn’t happen every time, or wind up forcing them to do a lot of tedious busywork to keep the machine running. Slice & Dice has some of those that are semi-accidental and a couple of things where, e.g., the tier 0 joke items are designed to have one specific interaction that makes them go off (like removing keywords from the ten damage-all manacost).

    General Blue Prince late game observation:

    V thrff gur vaxjryy pbafgryyngvba znl or zrnag gb fbyir gur vffhr V jnf pbzcynvavat nobhg jvgu qensgvat, ol znxvat vg rnfl gb sbepr ebbzf, gubhtu V hfrq vg fb urnivyl n pbhcyr gvzrf gung V unir gb ohvyq zl fgnef onpx hc. Cebonoyl jvyy qb gur ovt ynhaqel znpuvar nsgre V’ir znantrq gb ohl gur oyhr gragf. V guvax vg jnf gur irel svefg gvzr V qensgrq gur ynhaqel gung V hfrq gur ovt znpuvar gb hc zl nyybjnapr, abg rira ernyvmvat gung V jnf hfvat obvyre ebbz cbjre ba vg.

    Naljnl nsgre pbzcynvavat nobhg ubj uneq vg jnf gb trg Ure Ynqlfuvc’f Punzore, V qvq trg vg arkg gvzr ol hfvat gur Fghql jvgu gur qrnq-raq ebbzf pbafgryyngvba, gubhtu V jnf qbja gb zl ynfg wrjry jura vg unccrarq.

    Though this leads to another iteration of the same problem:

    Abj V arrq gb hfr gur fuevar. Naq V unq qenja gur fuevar gung qnl naq jbhaq hc jvgu n oyrffvat gung’f abg gur bar V arrq. Fb V’z ybpxrq bhg bs guvf cyna sbe n juvyr. Tehzoyr.

52. Wait the coded phrase in this post isn’t from the game? Aaaargh.

53. matt w: v gbb nz n pbzchyfvir znc purpxre, so it is quite handy that the laboratory allows you to pause/resume experiments from the terminals too (although there was a bug—unsure if yet patched—that made the laboratory main menu appear blank while the experiment was paused; it was still functional though, you just had to remember how many steps down the ‘pause/resume experiment’ menu option was).

    alternate options for building up stars:

    vs lbh pubfr gur fgnesvfu ndhnevhz, gura gur ‘rirel erq ebbz/fubc ebbz/unyyjnl qensgrq sebz nabgure unyyjnl -> nqq 3 ndhnevhzf gb gur qensg cbby’ rkcrevzrag gevttre vf na rnfl rabhtu jnl gb ohvyq hc 30-40 fgnef va n qnl. be vs lbh pubfr gur gbzbeebj unyyjnl, n srj qnlf bs qensgvat vg rirel gvzr vg nccrnef jvyy tvir lbh n qensg cbby nofbyhgryl fghssrq jvgu unyyjnlf, naq gura gur ‘rirel unyyjnl qensgrq sebz nabgure unyyjnl -> tnva 1 fgne’ rkcrevzrag npuvrirf zhpu gur fnzr. naq obgu bs pbhefr orarsvg sebz gur furygre pbzchgre’f fcrpvny novyvgl, fb qensgvat gur furygre va gur bhgre ebbz gb obgu frg hc gur rkcrevzrag rneyl naq unir npprff onpx gb vg jura vgf fcrpvny novyvgl vf ernql vf unaql.

    theyre maybe less time efficient than the coin-building strategy, but require less setup. and one or two days of doing these sets you up very well for several days worth of redraws when you need them.

54. *heavy sigh* already knocked myself out of the second strategy by choosing the +1 key upgrade to that room as one of the very first upgrades. Though I think that was defensible. Keys are good.

    Haven’t upgraded the other room yet, though upgrades are kind of thin on the ground yet. My Cloister upgrade gives me a shot at stars though not in a reliable way. Though in some ways going to a huge amount of effort to set one of these up seems counterproductive, since the point is to save effort later.

    Feels like something that would help the later game is to have a lot of intermediate and incidental drafty goals that you could do in a non-monomaniacal way while waiting for the right room to pop up in the draft pool. Like maybe graduated access to the blue tents, where you get one tier at two trophies and 100 gold, one at four trophies and 200 gold… which would also have saved me from the sticker shock when I did unlock it. Seems like those would give you some goals that you could try to accomplish while accomplishing other things, whereas for the tents as is I am going to have to focus on that or get knocked out of it early (or get lucky/waste a ridiculous amount of time in the casino).

    I did accomplish two (I think) incidental tasks while killing time for the reasons we discussed before:

    eboorq gur pybfrq rkuvovg naq gbbx gur svany rknz, gubhtu V’z abg fher V cnffrq unun. Gur svany rknz vf nyy-pbafhzvat gubhtu, V unq gb sbepr gur fpubbyubhfr naq gura qensg pynffebbzf ng cerggl zhpu rirel bccbeghavgl, naq gur pybfrq rkuvovg (jubfr tvzzvpx V unq jbexrq bhg rneyvre) bayl jbexrq orpnhfr vg cbccrq hc va n yhpxl ynlbhg. Nyfb V xrcg abg znxvat vg guebhtu zl sbhe ebbz ybbc va gvzr naq (univat ybbxrq ng zrpunavpny rkcynangvbaf) V guvax ba zl fhpprffshy nggrzcg V znl unir fghzoyrq vagb gur jvaqbj jurer lbh trg gbaf bs gvzr. Naq gura V ybbxrq hc naq fnvq “jurer qvq nyy zl fgrcf tb?” Sbeghangryl qvaare jnf jvguva ernpu.

    Also I’ve sort of felt like the payoffs for the later game unlocks have often been less dramatic than earlier ones? Like the Basement is dramatic as hell. The Precipice is dramatic. The Inner Sanctum, incredibly dramatic. There’s tons of stuff in those. And then it’s like, solve the giant metapuzzle bridging the Inner Sanctum (and weeks’ worth of drafting) and Room 46 and… lbh bcra bar pnovarg gung pbagnvaf bar vaqvpngvba bs n arj chmmyr, V guvax. Assemble all the clues for that and… n xrl gung pna bayl or hfrq va n ebbz gung’f ernyyl naablvat gb qensg. Meanwhile, solve the puzzle of oynpxoevqtr tebggb naq obbz obbz obbz qenzngvp zhfvp! arj nern! jnyx nybat naq… bar ybhfl sbhaq sybbe cyna? Juvpu qbrf unir n erdhverq vgrz sbe gur nsberzragvbrarq zrgnchmmyr ohg bgurejvfr vf whfg frggvat hc fbzr fghss gung lbh pna’g, cre irel yvtug fcbvyref, rira qb hagvy lbh’ir jbexrq guebhtu gjb zber fgntrf bs gung chmmyr? Furrfu.

    I know I’m asking for a lot of work to be put into stuff that only true sickos will see, perhaps, but games like A Dark Room and Universal Paperclips and Inscryption had pretty great pacing unlocking new areas or modes of interaction as you did things. Of course making new assets for the text games was real cheap, and, uh, I never have finished Inscryption.

55. Falling asleep last night I was kind of kicking around an idea for a similar game where you have some gameplay loop that conceals lots of puzzles in the background details and I was thinking: News of the Word? You are at your computer doing some kind of word puzzles and alternating between that and news clippings. Sometimes you can do a World Search. One of the kinds of puzzle is your basic word search with the classic old Edith Rudy “hidden message in the unused letters” trick.* But smaller. And as you progress you unlock more kinds of puzzle, and the lights in the apartment buildings across the street become a clue, and eventually you get to stand up from your desk and move around. And the reason you’re stuck in your apartment becomes a clue. And the news stories you learn eventually become clues for some crossword you have to solve. Needs some kind of repeatable procedural thing you can loop like the drawing game, maybe a word-laying game? Though that raises the question of how the game reveals clues (earning points unlocks new puzzle levels for the day?)

    Part of the thought process here (besides “game centered around sitting at computer” = “fewer art assets to begin with”) is to give a setting for a political oppression and resistance storyline that doesn’t center around a mansion and ancient nobility.

    *So you don’t have to do the whole puzzle, JUra lbh unir ryvzvangrq gur vzcbffvoyr, jungrire erznvaf, ubjrire vzcebonoyr, zhfg or gur gehgu. Dhbgrq ol Fureybpx Ubyzrf sebz Gur Fvta bs Sbhe ol N P Qblyr. Rqvgu Ehql. Lovely quote to use here!

56. matt w: “V guvax ba zl fhpprffshy nggrzcg V znl unir fghzoyrq vagb gur jvaqbj jurer lbh trg gbaf bs gvzr.”? what is this? i always had to rush.

    i certainly think blackbridge grotto justified its dramatic music in terms of the story revelation. and the late game things have drama too, just their starting threads are undramatic so as to stay better hidden; the drama comes when they start revealing things.

57. > Part of the thought process here is to give a setting for a political oppression and resistance storyline that doesn’t center around a mansion and ancient nobility.

    hell yes! its a shame blue prince was pushing a “true king” story. i would have loved it more if mary had been fighting to bring down the royalty and the class system instead of only trying to make sure her kid would be the one to benefit from it.

58. About the rot13:
    nppbeqvat gb fbzr jvxv, vs lbh erfrg gur nynez nebhaq gur fnperq ubhe lbh trg fvkgl frpbaqf vafgrnq bs gra? guvf vf uvagrq ol gur gvzvatf ba gur urvfg cyna lbh pna svaq va gur fnsrubhfr. V fher qvqa’g svther vg bhg zlfrys, gur bayl ernfba V guvax V zvtug unir uvg ba vg vf V jrag guebhtu frireny gevrf boivbhfyl abg trggvat pybfr naq zl ynfg gel V tenoorq gur pebja naq uhat nebhaq ba gur cbqvhz jvgu abguvat unccravat, gubhtu cebonoyl gur nynez qbrfa’g pbzr onpx ba bapr lbh unir gur pebja.

    Blackbridge Grotto revelation: You’re referring to the flavor text on the found floorplan I think? Fair maybe… what I really mean isn’t drama but something like juiciness. Stuff to do. The West Path, Basement, Reservoir, Precipice, Sanctum, and Room 46 all open many different things to do–Room 46 initially perhaps gives you one poem but that hints eight separately achievable objectives. When I saw “Orindian Ruins” I was like “wow I am going to get to go to that room I could see from behind the red door” and that did not happen. And when I got to the sleep diary I was like “this will open a new area!” and it did, and then the new area seems to contain one flipping poem. And the poem refers to something that, modulo spoilers, I have absolutely no idea how to get.

    Where I’m at now I think the only clued objectives I have are:
    1) grind my way through the Treasure Trove memos
    2) manage to buy the Blue Tents
    2.5) get more letters in the mailroom
    which I guess have some synergy between 1) and 2) but boy does 1) look it’s going to take a lot of days. 2) more likely I will be able to pull off through Freezer abuse but… am I missing a goal here? Oh I did a thing and realized out why I hadn’t seen any of those experiments you were talking about.

59. Design notes:
    1. I think a word search would probably not be the main thing to do for News of the Word. What it really needs is an engaging proc gen word game that people might enjoy playing on their own. Hm.
    2. But the other thing is that the game should be kinda easy, at least to achieve some initial goals. Like the way the deckbuilder in Inscryption is probably a lot easier in story mode than in the mode that’s just about playing the deckbuilder.
    3. And the tricky thing is finding a way to have some Special Things that you can unlock and conceal Stuff in. Maybe… attain certain kind of combos in the game, which I’m imagining as sort of a Dave’s Word Game or Spelltower but not legally actionable, to get a bonus Tarot card or friendly animal that will have Stuff on it? Some of the combos being secret, and clued, of course. And you are working toward some kind of sweepstakes, and also you have some kind of energy mechanic (like literally an energy mechanic on the game you’re playing in game) that you boost up through ordinary gameplay, and if you win the sweepstakes it gets you credits to unlock new games (which can be fixed things like word searches and crosswords and other handcrafted puzzles) and also new sections of the News of the Word website, with stories that also conceal Stuff (including things necessary to solve the crossword).
    4. Also every single thing you unlock is archived in a way that you can look back at it, and there’s an in game notetaking app.
    5. You may have noticed that I am much more of a verbal than visual person.
    6. As the CRPG Addict teaches us, where there’s an economy there has to be a money sink. Something you can spend your currency on that is reliably helpful so you don’t just sit around with big piles of credit and nothing to do with it. This is a passive-aggressive complaint about where I’m at in Blue Prince.

60. matt w:

    pybfrq rkuvovg: oh, i didn’t twig to that about the sacred hour and the heist. i *did* try messing about with the closed exhibit on the same day of the year as the actual heist, but found nothing. however i can definitely confirm that the alarm does come back on after you pick up the crown: on all of the times i picked up the red crown, the alarm rang and the cage came flying in moments after i got it.

    gung cbrz: yes, it seems rather important, doesn’t it? really not a very good poem though. it reads more like a shopping list!

    i am of the opinion that the blue tents really ought to have been available much earlier. there are so many things to go through with it, and many of them are literally just trivia. would have been much nicer to be able to squeeze in one or two here or there while pursuing other drafting goals, instead of working through them methodically (my foundation placement on rank 7 helped immensely for that though).

    (1) is worth pursuing. (2) is… well probably only six of them have clues of use to you anymore. and there is some overlap with (1). if you still have sigils outstanding, then both can help with some of those. (2.5) might as well finish it off, if only to complete your stamp collection; i dont think it will have much useful information.

61. closed exhibit (the rot13 has gotten to the point that epstein files email where they redacted the sender’s name but left in “Love, Melania”): yeah I definitely stumbled into the extra time window then.

    Everything else: hurrgshhghsh [not rot13, just a strangled groan] this is sure sounding like my next step is to look up the contents of those memos on the wikis. If not give up. There are times one might feel bad about doing that, rather than getting the clues legitimately, and this is one of the other times.

    I did get all the sigils (think I had to, in order to solve the Room 46 puzzle that unlocked the extra area that…) and this brings home what you said about how these clue sources should be available sooner. Particularly since one of the things that helps unlock the option to purchase it is getting all the trophies. I did get sigil help from the fifth treasure trove memo and… I’ve done twelve and there are forty-six. Ahhhh!

    News of the Word: Pretty obviously the tarot or whatever things you earn through achieving combos should be powerups. Someone on the design team should familiarize themselves with Balatro. Anyway one of the powerups could be the Wheel of Fortune that lets you spin letters (possibly in exchange for currency, there’s your money sink) (got to have lowercase letters as well as uppercase so it’s not just MW) and one of the meta moves could be something that requires you to spin the cards.

62. Maybe I just had one very unusual draft that allowed me to sequence break, but memo 28 is a hint for a sanctum key that I stumbled across even before unlocking the sanctum (mentioned above but hard to find because apparently I think znpuavnevhz spells something in rot13). Definitely think these hints could be coming faster and the critical path late game puzzles could be more densely hinted. It might have been good to make it work like the bottom of the reservoir, where accessing new memos was about spending keys not days.

    One definite thing about News of the Word is that it will make clear that after the credit roll, when the People have triumphed and our hero joins the crowd streaming down the hitherto deserted street, there will be remaining puzzles to solve but they will be optional. Maybe there will be another hinted storyline about reconnecting with your long lost sibling? Anyway, the other things you can do will be more along the lines of “ace the exam” (I got a B+ btw, sigh) and less “We are telling you that your life will be unhappy unless you accomplish something more, which requires running a linear gauntlet of puzzles.”

63. OK, on the one hand I should have figured out what the Treasure Trove memos were telling me after seven memos, on the other hand having spoiled myself on the reward I’m out. More gauntlet!