Notan

2023 was a blessing to puzzle game aficionados. There were many good puzzle games released throughout this year, piling up to my already-long list of games to play. I know there's no way I could possibly play them all, but still I occasionally make some time to sit down and play games off the list. This article is a review of games I played in 2023 which evoked feelings, and an attempt to learn from them as a game designer.¹

Proof of Equivalence via Explicit Construction of an Ambient-Isotopy

Jack Lance is a missed talent in the puzzle communities. He shared his amazing works with the world in many forms², including puzzle games, paper puzzles, puzzle hunts, and wordplays, before he passed away on May 1, 2023, at the age of 25. His phenomenal puzzlescript game Pushing It made a huge influence on me in many ways, and I even named one of my games after it.

Proof of Equivalence via Explicit Construction of an Ambient-Isotopy, his one-screen puzzle game from 2022, is a tough nut to crack. It's what some folks call a rule-discovery game. It gives you instructions on the controls and the goal, but nothing beyond. You have to figure out the rules yourself by dragging around the vertices and lines.

A good rule-discovery game is hard to design. If you don't place any guides to learn, the game becomes obtuse and frustrating to play. If you spoon-feed the rules, it's no more a rule-discovery game. Proof of Equivalence struck the perfect balance between the two for me. It gave me a nice feeling of gradually getting a grip on the game system. The whole point of this game is object manipulation, and its high tactility helps a lot in understanding the rules.

Figuring out the rules is only the first half of the game. Despite the simple look of the end state, it's actually a multi-layered puzzle with surprising depth. Each step is a hustle in the deeper layers, and making small progress is a delight in itself. Though I haven't played, I imagine it's a similar feeling you get in Getting Over It.

N Step Steve: part 2

The basic premise is simple: You die in N steps, and touching flags refills the step count. From this game system, combined with not-so-unique-on-its-own game mechanics, Ethan made 3 fully-fledged puzzle games which are not like any other: 5 Step Steve, N Step Steve: part 1, and N Step Steve: part 2.

In terms of "game mechanics", the only new addition in part 2 is wormholes, which mainly act as shortcuts. But the change in game structure also changed the feel of the game a lot. The main path in part 1 was mostly linear with a couple of branches here and there. In contrast, part 2 is an open world game. You can visit the puzzles in any order. This allowed an interesting substructure in the game called "the chain". It's a hidden path with a chunk of secret puzzles intertwined with the main puzzles. You have to solve them in order to follow "the chain", but you can always fall back to the main puzzles.

My mind was blown when I wandered into "the chain" in the first hour of playing this game. Like, in theory you can find this right after finishing the tutorial section, or you can reach the credits without ever noticing it. I don't think I've had fun in exploration like this for a long while.

The overall difficulty of part 2 is much higher compared to part 1 or 5SS. In part 1, at least the puzzles on the main path were fairly approachable. But in part 2, even some of the main puzzles had me stumped across multiple sessions. I could only make time to play this game every 2-3 weeks, so naturally it made me frustrated to get stuck. Usually I try 100%ing the games I'm invested in, but I eventually gave up in this game with some puzzles unsolved. I looked up the solutions later and, while I think they are all great puzzles³, I'm glad I decided to not spend any more time on them.

On the other hand, I had great satisfaction in overcoming these puzzles especially because of the difficulty. Thinking about a puzzle while lying in bed, then suddenly getting the insight to solve it, the aha moment, that feeling is like no other. I'm still split on whether I want to include highly challenging puzzles in my game.

corru.observer

My first encounter with corru.observer was a single chost. It just said "I have found the best website ever made. I am not allowed to tell you what it entails." It didn't even say it is a game. It piqued my curiosity, but not enough to make me open the link. However, the surging number of chosts with #corru.observer in the following weeks eventually convinced me to check it out.

To be honest, my first impression was not that good. It looked like a visual novel/adventure game, but I was not sure what it actually is. The art style is unique and the interaction with "the game" was interesting, but I couldn't see the big picture. Part of it is the narrative settings (uncovering the history of human-alien interaction the protagonists don't know themselves), and the immersive worldbuilding/UI that made it look too real.

But then, suddenly it clicked with me. The interview scene explained enough for me to understand the background. Infodump is often a problem with narrative-heavy games/stories, and this game managed it well by keeping some basic concepts as mysteries. Another bonus of this type of storytelling is that it leaves room for readers to "solve" them. There are many words that are unique to the alien culture, and guessing their meaning is often a fun little puzzle.

And just when you think you got a good understanding of the game, it starts throwing curveballs. And it's not only once. Actually there's too much stuff in the realm of spoiler zone that I can't talk about here. I understand now why the first chost gave out so little about this game.

The character building is also fantastic. I really love when a story gives subtle hints on how someone thinks based on what another character thinks/knows, like how receptors are depicted in this story. It's truly a fine art.

You drove off the road!

You drove off the road! starts off as a simple 2D driving game. Just follow the road, and you are good. Then a few levels in, it adds targets you have to hit with the car. Plain and simple, right? Then it adds traffic signs. Then it adds more colors. Then it adds weird symbols. You eventually realize it is a rule-discovery puzzle game.

I can't believe it was made for a jam-adjacent event. The level design is excellent! There's this one level called "hey you made it here" later in the game, which looks very simple and very impossible at the same time, and that's when you know how the designer did a good job. The moment you find the solution is guaranteed to be satisfying.

There are some bumps in the difficulty, and some of the rules are a bit obtuse, but overall, it's really good. The only major flow is that the control is too difficult for a thinky puzzle game. Part of me wishes it was a pure line-drawing game, but I can't say I didn't enjoy the driving experience.

Celeste Strawberry Jam: paint

Okay this is not a puzzle game (again!), but bare with me. Strawberry Jam is a massive collab modding project for Celeste, containing 100+ maps⁴ made by 350+ members. It has so many maps that I don't think I will play to the end, and I have no intention to talk about it as a whole in this article either. Instead, I want to talk about one specific map: paint.

The most striking part in paint is its worldbuilding. There are cat persons chilling out, upside-down buildings covered with vines, paint brushes floating in the sky... It feels like having a little walk in a peaceful dream. Combined with the soothing soundtrack, it's really relaxing to play this map. The level design is rough around the edges, but I can tell a lot of care was put into the art.

There are also many secrets in this map, most of which are not tied to any collectibles. Getting strawberries feels great, but I think there's something special to secrets which don't give you anything. The game doesn't care if you got them or not. Finding them is a reward in itself.

A good secret also makes exploration fun: There's one cat person in the map who's looking far away into the sky. There's nothing visible in the direction, not even platforms to stand on. But it made me curious what could be there. When I jumped into that direction, the screen scrolled to reveal hidden platforms, and there was indeed a little secret. I think puzzle games can benefit from utilizing similar design patterns too. It's hard to incorporate secrets into the games I'm currently working on (or those I've made before), but I hope someday I can try it myself.

Konkan Coast Pirate Solutions

I've only played this 2 hours yet, but I get to decide what to write. Konkan Coast Pirate Solutions is a simulation/programming puzzle game which veers more into having clearly designed solutions rather than being open-ended puzzles. You control ships by placing commands like "turn left/right" and "wait" on the grid of the sea.

One of the most innovative systems in this game is that the ships can take the commands out the sea, or swap the commands with what they currently have. This makes it possible to make interesting knock-on effects with a small setup. You have to plan how they change the board state dynamically in addition to which routes they take.

Difficulty balance in puzzly simulation games can easily get out of hand, but chapliboy managed to keep it under control. The board size is small and you have only few number of commands to place, which makes it easier to read the designer's mind. Each puzzle has cool insights in it, and solving them gives you a nice little epiphany each time.

Okay, that's all I have to say for now. I've got to play more this game.

More games I wish I had the time to write in detail

• Patrick's Parabox: What can I say? An absolute masterpiece with a lot of care went into accessible level design.
• Sokoban... in 3D!: A short puzzlescript game with a simple yet mind-blowing twist. It is indeed in 3D.
• Headlong Hunt: It has the best difficulty curve I played this year and it's what I would aim for in my own games.
• 12 Word Searches: A rule-discovery puzzlebook that gets increasingly cursed the further you go. Solve the puzzles in order for the best experience.
• Confounding Calendar 2023: I haven't got to play them all, but so far this year's puzzles feel exceptionally great.

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1. This list is by no means meant to be "GOTY 2023", and they are not ordered by recommendation.⁵ These games are all great, but it doesn't cover all my favorite games. Also I wouldn't recommend Proof of Equivalence unless you can tolerate making no visible progress for a long time or you are a math nerd.

2. Joel's article on Jack Lance has a resources section which is a pretty extensive list of his works.

3. Technically there's one optional puzzle which I don't think is good. It is a collectible you can get only if you use the editor mode. But who cares ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

4. A map roughly corresponds to a chapter in the main game. Considering the original had only 7 main chapters, you can tell how big this project is.

5. In fact they are in order of date I played for the first time.