Good lord. It just keeps going. I love it, and I still crave more!

[Badgerlord]

This game... this bloody game... I know I haven't played a massive amount of this type of puzzle game over the years. I've played Myst 1-3 and love them all, but this... this just feels like a whole different beast. I don't mean the Drafting stuff, I am specifically talking about just the sheer number of puzzles in this seemingly simple game.

Every single time I think "Damn that took me a while, that must have been the big puzzle!" Oh no no. The game just mocks me. That was but a clue to a bigger puzzle. And when I try to solve that bigger puzzle, more puzzles show up that I didn't even expect to find, or didn't even know were puzzles to begin with.

At day 80 now and I have taken so many notes. Solved so many dart board puzzles, hell I even dared to Take the Final Exam. I got a D. I clearly wasn't ready. There is a part of me that doesn't want it to end. I want to keep finding more puzzles years from now, but I know that it will EVENTUALLY end. But I've said that before... the madness continues.

I know the RNG sours people on this game but man... once you learn all the drafting strategies, how certain rooms affect rooms you haven't even drafted yet, how much manipulation you can do and how to eliminate choices for the higher rooms to give yourself a better chance. It's so good, it's so FREAKING good. Hell, forgetting the meta puzzles for a moment. I have spent days (in game) just... wandering. Drafting for the sake of it. The delicate balance of maintaining Keys, Gems, and Items feels just so good (To me, anyway). I've never once gotten frustrated or mad that I didn't get the room I wanted because I spent the last 30 minutes balancing resources as a game anyway.

There are, maybe, two puzzles I thought were annoying but with a little tweaking I think could have been made better. I'm absolutely convinced I missed the memo on one of them and was guessing but from the forums here I can see that I probably wasn't.

Spoilers for those 2 puzzles
The Gallery & Room 08
The Gallery itself was the worst puzzle by far for me. I had to look up the answers and I STILL don't understand what they were. One of them made sense, sort of, but the other three? Nope. Not a clue. And the room this eventually leads to, 08, had a puzzle that made more sense, but I still don't... quite understand how the Rabbit worked. I got it by getting 5 of them and just guessing on the other 2. My complaint is mostly about the Gallery itself. Unless I missed an "art appreciation" book somewhere in the library/bookstore... this was just too obtuse for me as it was asking me to evaluate art, which by definition, has no solution, it is merely how we feel. If there ISN'T a book somewhere that describes these pieces, I would add one in the master bedroom or something. At least a hint to them. Maybe like this would be something we need the Magnifying glass for.

The Clock Tower
From an actual puzzle standpoint, I think it's brilliant. the drafted room itself showed what time I needed to be there, as did one of the clock faces, and the floor. That part I had no issue with. My issue is that knowing the solution is one thing... sitting around for 15 minutes to WAIT for that time is another. Time moves so slowly in game it's not very fun to just... wait. I did everything else I could in the mansion during the day, filled pretty much all the rooms and wandered around but I still had to wait. A while. The actual puzzle AFTER that was fun, and as a kicker (This is my fault mind you) I got the key, but was low on steps the first time I got it. It PAINED me because I actually had enough to get to the sanctum... but Only exactly enough. As I entered the damn sanctum my step count went to 0 (The shoes failed me). I lost the key and had to wait AGAIN. Sadness. As for how to circumvent this... maybe make it so at the very least, time passes faster in the clcoktower itself? Like you can sit in a chair and wait or something, I'm not sure how to do so without making the puzzle painfully obvious. It's very frustrating to have solved a puzzle, and have to wait around to get to it's next step.

Everything else, so far, brilliant. The amount of times I've gone "oh THAT'S what that was for." or "Oh damn that makes sense! How did I not see that before..." or the times where I come across something new only to check my notes and go 'Oh I have this solution. Sweet!" is staggering. No game has had this many, for me, before. On TOP of a fun Roguelike game (I try to fill the mansion every day even though I already have the trophy)

I also want to give a special shoutout to the Dartboard puzzle. I've probably done about 75 of these (It's one of the early rooms I draft without fail as it's a source of keys) and the fact that it's still adding new mechanics to the dartboard math astounds me. I'm quite good at algebra and the 70+ day variants give me pause and make me think. I love it. I'm inversely terrible at the parlor. half the time I just go 'Eh... 1/3 chance GO!' I don't know if there will be even more later added to the dart board but ya'll used that thing's space well! I'll never look at a dartboard the same way again.

I also love raising my allowance. I'm up to 75 now, it's funny to me and I find it entertaining.

All of this is to say, I #*@%ing love this game. I've been laying in bed due to back pain and playing it on my steam deck (If i had any complaints, the steam deck lags a fair bit once you've filled out the mansion). I've taken a photo album of pictures on my phone, filled out so many pages in my google doc of notes... and I keep coming back for more. I haven't even tried Dare mode yet! This game has infected my brain, and even my dreams. I'm drafting rooms IN MY SLEEP. Even after 80 in game days I'm still learning new things about some of the rooms that I never tried before. Not super important for puzzles, but just ways to get more resources. Like the Planetarium. So much fun adding more to that one!

Thank you, so much, for this game.

P.S. - It took me until like day 65 to realize that the name of the game is both the description of it's plot... and a word pun. You sneaky devils you.