Notan

At the end of last year¹, I made a long post about the games I played during that year and what I can learn from them as a game designer. I was hoping to make it a yearly tradition starting from that one. But then, you know what happened to cohost.² Luckily I was slowly working on the second edition throughout this year, so I can share the smaller version before the lights go out. There are some rough edges in this post and I wanted to fix them by the end of this year, but I don't have the time anymore. No one does here. So, enjoy the slight messiness I guess.

Alephant

Le Slo's puzzle games are notorious for their difficulty. So much says how his Alephant, a wordless game about language, got nominated for Most Challenging Game in this year's Thinky Awards. But difficulty alone can't make for a good³ game. The game has to show reasons to pursue the challenges. In Alephant, the reason is the stories told in its level design.

I'm not talking about "narrative" stories here. They are not "ludonarrative" either. A story here means an idea conveyed to players about how a level is constructed or how it should be solved. When a level is designed with care, I can feel the designer talking to me:

Don't you think this trick is cool?

How would you untangle this constraint?

It almost feels like having a conversation with the designer. The puzzles in Alephant are focused and packed. Le Slo knows how to effectively tell stories in a small space.

Another unique point of this game is level ordering. The levels are not numbered and there's no immediately clear order⁴, but by the time you finish most of the levels in Chapter 2, you'll realize it has some patterns: In each chapter, the levels are organized into 5 rows. The center row has the most "basic" puzzles. They are relatively simpler than other levels. The top row and the bottom row each has only 1 level. The level at the top is a conversation-themed level, which adds an extra flavor to the regular rules. You can even tell it's a special level by the ox symbol in the level select screen.

The level at the bottom is, however, a massive liar. The bottom level in chapter 1 looks pretty normal. There's no new type of objects, and no special symbols in the level map. But actually it is a wolf playing an innocent sheep. It uses a game mechanic not tutorialized anywhere in the game, which means you can't solve this puzzle while you are thinking under your existing knowledge. You would even stumble on a different new mechanic, only to find it's not related to the solution at all. After all, this "wrong" mechanic is properly introduced in the next chapter. It's just that hard to find the "right" mechanic in this level.

The bottom level in Chapter 2 is similarly difficult. But remember, this game has patterns. It becomes much more manageable once you realize you can reuse the untutorialized trick from Chapter 1. To be honest, as a puzzle game developer myself, I would struggle to tutorialize this mechanic too. Even more so if I had to employ this game's approach and make players naturally learn it through experimentation, as opposed to shoving it into an obvious tutorial level which spoonfeeds the players with the core idea. Le Slo made an interesting design choice to put it away in the corner of optional levels and signal it with patterns.

Gordianaut (from CosmOS 9)

In late 2020, an assortment of small games was released on itch.io and Steam as 10mg Collection. The idea is that 10 different teams worked on 10 small games, each taking 10 minutes to play, and sold as a bundle of $10. I don't have the backstories on how this particular project came to fruition, but I've witnessed some of my fellow gamedevs inspired by it to make small commercial games. Indie devs, especially those with no prior experiences, tend to spend an infinite amount of time making their "dream games", only to get burnt out and not releasing them in the end. In a way, 10mg was counteracting against this gamedev's nature. Empowered by the idea of making small-scoped games, the folks from a puzzle game community⁵ eventually made a space-themed puzzle game bundle, CosmOS 9.

Gordianaut from CosmOS 9 is a short puzzle-platformer with one simple core mechanic: You can control platforms while you are on them. It is exactly how it sounds. There are no mind-blowing surprises like in Baba Is You or The Witness⁶, but it does well what it does. It thoroughly explores the design space, presenting small yet unique ideas in each puzzle. While some levels are fiddly by nature, I liked how each puzzle feels different in its own way.

As a player, I appreciate that people are making shorter games. A massive game with hours of gameplay has its own appeal, but it's infeasible to chase all these big fish in the endless ocean of indie games. Just from 2024, I missed Islands of Insight (Feb), Entwined Time (Apr), Lorelei and the Laser Eyes (May), Isles of Sea and Sky (May), Star Stuff (Jun), Maxwell's puzzling demon (Aug) all because I've been playing 3 big games (Alephant, Can of Wormholes and corru.observer) this whole year. I haven't even finished any of these 3 yet. Sometimes I just want to pick up a small game in a weekend evening and reach the ending by the night. Gordianaut was a perfect game in this regard.

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

• Can of Wormholes: Interesting mechanical twists and solid level design. This game never ceases to surprise me. No wonder it won Game of the Year in Thinky Awards this year. It has an innovative hint system too.
• Hempuli's Covemountlikes (the first 20 and the rest): Hempuli made 20+ block-pushing games in the span of 5 months earlier this year. Truly astonishing work. In particular I want to mention That's a Warp. It has similar mechanics to one of my old prototypes, and yet it feels so different. I also recommend it as an introduction to this series; it's relatively approachable (but not easy) and you can have a taste for the chaos of these games.
• UDLR-Modify: Unique mechanics and strong level design. Nice bump sound too. I heard they are working on a post-jam version and I'm excited about it.
• Sokobrawn: This game's style of level design is quite unusual. It has minimal tutorial for the core mechanics, and then leaves the rest for players to figure out. Some mechanics are used only once in the entire game and you need to find them in already-challenging levels. It's something I wouldn't do myself, but certainly interesting.
• corru.observer: It feels kind of cheating to mention this game when I've already written about it last year, but I can't skip a game I've played the most throughout 2024. I'm at the end of EP3 (the 4th episode) now and it feels a completely different genre from the beginning of the game. It's really cool. Sometimes I'm lost in the breadth of the gameplay and I need to remind myself I'm playing this game for the story.

1. Technically speaking, it was the beginning of this year that it was published. I was aiming to get it done within 2023 and missed the target only by a week, so I think we can all agree to call it approximately the end of last year.

2. 

3. The quality of good is subjective. There can be many ways to define a good game. Here I loosely use the word to describe games that evoke net-positive feelings in/after playing them.

4. This design pattern to have no signposted level order itself is not particularly new in puzzle games of this kind. There are Stephen's Sausage Roll, A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build, and Recursed, just to name a few.

5. It is thinky-puzzle-game, a Discord server for puzzle game developers and players alike.

6. Actually I was spoiled the "surprise" of The Witness before playing it, so I can't know if it's really "surprising" myself. Also I haven't properly played it yet. I'm not sure if it's still worth playing after everything.

I wanted to write "Notan Made Games 2023" too but I don't have any more energy left to write another long post

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.

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.