Timed Level is awful

[Aerotactics]

Why do you give a casual experience, then throw in a timer and expect people not to panic?
I attempted it 3 times with the timer and failed half way in. The hints are not helpful. Sure, I could take picture along the way, but I only have a limit of 10, and I WILL run out.

This level is awful because it tells you to take pictures along the way, like how am I supposed to have the forsight to know what I need without playing through the level multiple times? I shouldn't have to need parts of a level in a future level without knowing what is in the future level. It's poor puzzle design.

[Earthplayer]

The level can be completed without using pictures from previous areas if you are good enough (it's really hard though) - taking pictures with you just makes it a bit easier to give you room for error where you need it.

This is actually good game design as it allows very good players to succeed without using "tricks" while actively encouraging casual players to abuse the new "keep photos between teleports" feature which makes it a puzzle in of itself to figure out which things you will need and which things you won't require. It adapts the difficulty downwards on each run without feeling like cheating because you actively use a "new ability" and your gained knowledge of the previous runs to make your life easier. There is also not a single new puzzle element outside of the "take pictures with you" ability. The difficulty of other levels comes from figuring out how to solve puzzles and how new puzzle elements work - the difficulty of the final level comes from using all the knowledge you gained over the span of the game and using that to solve 9 short puzzles quickly.

The best things to take with you are the bridge at the start (that way you already have a bridge photo ready before the timer even starts which is long enough for the entire first puzzle), the radio (to skip the entire audio puzzle) and taking two pictures of yourself instead of one (which doesn't eat up your limited pictures) which let's you skip the last puzzle which saves a chunk of time, too. If you do those three things of which only two eat an additional picture you should have plenty of time to solve the remaining puzzles. The 10 pictures limit shouldn't ever be an issue unless you used an overcomplicated solution on one of the puzzles or skipped some of the "free" pictures (photocopy, standing camera, picture on a table near the roomba). In one area you can even find another 2 filmroles to increase your picture count even further. If you accidentally waste a picture just rewind quickly by doubletapping rewind and try again.

It's also the final challenge of the game and supposed to be hard. The sudden spike in difficulty due to a timer which keeps counting down even on rewinds (which you never had to deal with before) makes it a lot more memorable for me. I failed on my first attempt and then barely managed to make it on my second one. (in that winning run I had a spare battery photo, spare bridge photo and a spare roomba bot photo on me in the end which I took with me just in case as I didn't reach the final puzzle area on my first attempt hence your argument of not knowing what to take with you doesn't really apply as I took one of everything which looked useful with me and still finished my run without needing half of the bonus pictures I took without running out of pictures to take. You have enough spare pictures to waste on things you take with you "just in case".

And it's not like they didn't think about people still having trouble after many attempts: You can disable the timer in the settings. Checking and altering the settings is the first thing most people do when starting up a game which means most will remember that such a setting exists.


#JusticeForCait

[Craig1287]

Sorry you feel that way. The timed level is probably my favorite part. It really raised the stakes and tested my understanding of the tools the developers taught me up to that point. I don't want to spoil much for The Witness, but it had a similar section in it that was timed and also randomized so that if you were to look up guides or videos on YT, then you wouldn't be able to find your exact challenges in the order you're experiencing them, and it changed each time you'd retry it.

[SOS Jacob]

If you're not a fan of the time limit, there's an option in the accessibility settings to disable the timer - at the bottom of the accessibility settings, set the "Timed Levels" setting to "Disabled Timed Level Timer", and the time will count up instead of down - so you can still judge how long it took you, but there's no stress or frustration of the timer running out

[fuggles2k]

There is no difference in replaying the level, which is basically a string of puzzles, than there is in trying solutions to a singular puzzle. The first two times I found it pretty tricky, got stuck on the same place until I realised you could take images with you - doh.

[&rew]

Originally posted by Craig1287:

Sorry you feel that way. The timed level is probably my favorite part. It really raised the stakes and tested my understanding of the tools the developers taught me up to that point. I don't want to spoil much for The Witness, but it had a similar section in it that was timed and also randomized so that if you were to look up guides or videos on YT, then you wouldn't be able to find your exact challenges in the order you're experiencing them, and it changed each time you'd retry it.

One tests your ability to actually solve the puzzles as defined by the rules, as an optional bonus. The other is necessary for completion and is the same every time, testing your patience for having to redo the same puzzles under an arbitrary time limit. I'm with the OP. This level sucks. And it's patronizing to have the option to make it not suck under "accessibility" (like when Spider-Man puts the QTE toggle under accessibility settings as well), rather than just tweaking an option that removes a lousy part of the game.

[fuggles2k]

It's fine, just practice. Probably you are missing something obvious.

[&rew]

No I turned off the time limit on the fourth try and found that the previous time I failed, I was off by a matter of seconds. It's not a satisfying way to end the game.

[rumpelstiltskin]

what's annoying is that rewind doesn't affect the timer. i was prepared to truly hate the game after many failed tries, but then it offered me to disable the timer. would have been nice to know it in advance. always repeating everything up to a new section really serves no purpose apart from pissing people off.

[fuggles2k]

It's largely a straightforward walk apart from the audio trigger and that's until I stopped being a moron.

[DxDark]

Hardly a "straightforward" walk when the best options are taking pathways with you because they want you to jump back and forth in front of cameras every so often or there is no actual path forward other than ripping up the ground behind you...the boombox being a carry-along is more than proof of that, since without it you waste about 30-60 seconds activating the powered-pad-speaker.

Even then you're left with ~1 minutes for the last switch with no pictures on hand, 1-0 film left, a box of film across a gap (that you can't snap-copy like you can for every other one for some reason...), and a wall. Obvious solution would be create a platform in front of the camera so you can create your teleport-shadow...assuming you had the 1 fricking film, or had enough time on hand to reach the film anyway.

[fuggles2k]

You can totally photograph those films and put them next to you

[seed oil consumer]

Originally posted by Earthplayer:

The level can be completed without using pictures from previous areas if you are good enough (it's really hard though) - taking pictures with you just makes it a bit easier to give you room for error where you need it.

This is actually good game design as it allows very good players to succeed without using "tricks" while actively encouraging casual players to abuse the new "keep photos between teleports" feature which makes it a puzzle in of itself to figure out which things you will need and which things you won't require. It adapts the difficulty downwards on each run without feeling like cheating because you actively use a "new ability" and your gained knowledge of the previous runs to make your life easier. There is also not a single new puzzle element outside of the "take pictures with you" ability. The difficulty of other levels comes from figuring out how to solve puzzles and how new puzzle elements work - the difficulty of the final level comes from using all the knowledge you gained over the span of the game and using that to solve 9 short puzzles quickly.

The best things to take with you are the bridge at the start (that way you already have a bridge photo ready before the timer even starts which is long enough for the entire first puzzle), the radio (to skip the entire audio puzzle) and taking two pictures of yourself instead of one (which doesn't eat up your limited pictures) which let's you skip the last puzzle which saves a chunk of time, too. If you do those three things of which only two eat an additional picture you should have plenty of time to solve the remaining puzzles. The 10 pictures limit shouldn't ever be an issue unless you used an overcomplicated solution on one of the puzzles or skipped some of the "free" pictures (photocopy, standing camera, picture on a table near the roomba). In one area you can even find another 2 filmroles to increase your picture count even further. If you accidentally waste a picture just rewind quickly by doubletapping rewind and try again.

It's also the final challenge of the game and supposed to be hard. The sudden spike in difficulty due to a timer which keeps counting down even on rewinds (which you never had to deal with before) makes it a lot more memorable for me. I failed on my first attempt and then barely managed to make it on my second one. (in that winning run I had a spare battery photo, spare bridge photo and a spare roomba bot photo on me in the end which I took with me just in case as I didn't reach the final puzzle area on my first attempt hence your argument of not knowing what to take with you doesn't really apply as I took one of everything which looked useful with me and still finished my run without needing half of the bonus pictures I took without running out of pictures to take. You have enough spare pictures to waste on things you take with you "just in case".

And it's not like they didn't think about people still having trouble after many attempts: You can disable the timer in the settings. Checking and altering the settings is the first thing most people do when starting up a game which means most will remember that such a setting exists.


#JusticeForCait

I've never seen a more home run reply to a low-effort petty critique on this forum. Out of the park.

[joridiculous]

Anything timed when it comes to puzzles is cancer.
Not gotten to the "timed level(s) yet, but the timed puzzles i found already is boring enough, to turn timer off.
Keep timed BS to platformers where they belong.

[Sloi]

It's... really not supposed to be that big of a challenge if you successfully navigated your way to the end.

It took me two attempts, and only because I sniff glue. (Also, picture count shouldn't be a problem, the devs were very generous.)

[Delumen]

Having failure states like this in puzzle games just means that if you fail halfway through, you have to re-solve the same parts you've already solved. Which isn't fun, it's drudge work. It's the absolute worst sin a puzzle game can have in my opinion.