Everything got better when I became a green-haired 2D girl. I do fun and unusual things with video games and pinball.

cohost inspired me to do more. Thank you



lexyeevee
@lexyeevee

lingo is an exceptionally clever rule-discovery word game, designed around panels that prompt you with just a word (occasionally several) and a space to type in a response. figuring out how it works is a genuine delight and there's nothing else quite like it.

unfortunately,

lingo is also a fucking nightmare labyrinth of identical single-file hallways and silent one-way teleports. this becomes worse as you progress, because more paths open up, and they all look fucking identical — especially because the nature of silent teleports means the world needs to be obscured for the teleport, so most hallways are C or S-shaped and you can never see where you're going. there is fast travel of a sort, but it mostly takes the form of either (a) a one-way route that only works sometimes and you just have to remember when it works and where it leads, or (b) a nigh infinite number of shortcuts that take you back to the beginning of the level, the one place you do not ever need help reaching, because you can warp there from the pause menu at any time.

if you discover a new area, you had better not leave until you solve everything there, or so help you god you will never ever find it again. there is virtually no direction within the game, you cannot google hints for an obscure game whose name is a common word, and what hints you can find generally take the form of "it's near the SMITHEREEN panel" like you remember where that is or how to get there.

most of my play time has consisted of wandering around in circles. if i finally find some new puzzles i can solve them pretty quickly and then it's back to wandering. a number of the later-game """puzzles""" involve simply retreading the entire fucking map again, looking for a number of secret walls that have opened to reveal a new trivial non-puzzle.

towards the end you do receive a """"""""map"""""""" of sorts, which is almost completely useless — you can't readily tell where things are on it, it doesn't show hallways anyway, and there are so many silent teleports that even if two places seem to be right next to each other that means nothing about how they might actually be connected

technically this is all about "level 1". there is a "level 2" which is somewhat easier to navigate but still exhausting in its own right (and with harder, and often more ambiguous, puzzles). allegedly there are more levels but i have never found them. i thought i had explored level 1 pretty exhaustively and yesterday i finally checked how many panels i was still missing and it was one hundred sixteen.

and if you're missing something but can't find it then that's just kinda too bad. maybe you just never turned right at one of fifty intersections. good luck i guess, fuck you

it's weird. i don't think i've ever played a puzzle game where i've thoroughly enjoyed the puzzles but then come away feeling like i can't really recommend that anyone actually play the game


You must log in to comment.

in reply to @lexyeevee's post:

Dev: look at this lovely puzzle game I made!
Pub: not bad. It's a bit short though.
Dev: what? It takes 15 hours even if you're good at the puzzles.
Pub: studies show gamers want games at least 60 hours long these days.
Dev: I guess I could make some more puzzles.
Pub: oof, localization's already done. No more words.
Dev: then what do you suggest?
Pub: well...

wholeheartedly agree with all expressed opinions. I have completed nearly every puzzle in the game, including the several post-level-2 expansions, and fiercely love the puzzle design while simultaneously hating the non-euclidean wandering bits. such a clever game that feels so burdened by unnecessary obfuscation

that said, if you can muster the patience, level 2 and the hidden levels have some really good puzzles that expand on the premise of the first level in satisfying ways

as a longtime member of the lingo community, i agree with you. the game's navigation puzzles are mostly fine individually, but the issues compound on each other horribly. the dev is severely afflicted by the curse of knowledge (particularly relating to being familiar with the map). i and a few others tried to explain the issues, and several things were changed... but obviously, not all of them.

i ended up making this set of maps for level 1 to help people along: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16xeCwuXGL8wN_lJC-sUyGe5SoGiCwdSSpBDONbuCYEI/edit?gid=1159116515#gid=1159116515

and this hint guide for level 2: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oMvaq6_O8ffIffgZnWEm3NEtd4vreuw55MSf8NzchhA/

i believe something like my first level 1 map should've been in the game but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

yeah i just went and powered through and 100%ed level 1 with some hints and the savefile map thingamajig, and at least half the time was still spent wandering around in circles, preoccupied with such thoughts as "it's cool that i found champions rest by myself. i wonder where it is"

and then found out there's a whole part where you do a big journey without using silent teleports. which are not marked in any way. on purpose. because they are silent. so you don't know where they are. or, crucially, where they aren't. except by trial and error i guess.

this map is very cool but yeah it's inherently hamstrung by not being in the game :( a huge part of the early game is having stuff open up and link together, and a map that can't see your save file will naturally spoil that

level 2 at least has somewhat less silent teleporting and somewhat more landmarks, but it has similar bottlenecking where i'm still missing two panels for the mint pyramid and i just seem to be out of things to solve

Starting to play Lingo felt so good, and continuing to play Lingo felt so bad. The fact that Level 2 is functionally not completable unless you are the dev or have additional hints from outside the game has given me trust issues around playing other puzzle games.

I searched the Lingo discord for a hint on one puzzle. When I found it, a frustrated player was asking "so was the intended mechanic here 'guess what I'm thinking'?" The dev confirmed that it was, and did not consider this to be a critical flaw in a puzzle game

was it magenta cat, by any chance

(i did just have to cheat on a level 2 panel, in an otherwise relatively breezy cool area, that turned out to be a french loanword i only vaguely recognize but would never have come up with in a thousand years. not as bad but maybe not great either, when a bunch of other stuff is probably gated behind it)

I forget. I may be thinking of a level 1 puzzle in a room that transforms from twisty passages to a wide-open foyer as you solve more puzzles in it. But you have seen my thoughts on magenta cat, of course, and they are similar

I really wanted to find out what's beyond or at the end of level 2, but the obvious door remains stubbornly closed. It seems to expect me to do absolutely all the other things first, including a set of things that I simply am not going to find all of

Re the final comment of "thoroughly enjoyed the puzzles but can't recommend the game", that was largely my opinion of The Witness... I don't think I'll ever understand how that game became generally-beloved.