Am I the only one who is extremely annoyed by the poor puzzle design?

[mrmarcelluswallace]

I usually really like puzzle games. Played both Portals, played The Turing Test and Lightmatter. But this one here is super annoying. Not only do the characters go on your nerves pretty much all the time, but the puzzle design seems to be really bad.

I don't understand what should be the point in having to follow cables for several minutes until you have a halfway decent idea about what you are supposed to do. A puzzle should be hard to solve but not hard to figure out what you are even supposed to do. There are so many occasions where you can't even properly see a button or area you are supposed to reach.
Another huge "no-go" is the fact that you can get stuck at several points in the middle of large puzzle areas. And the only possibility to continue is to reset the whole puzzle. This is extremely bad game design.

[MetalSnake]

Yes you are the only one. I loved the puzzle design.

[angore]

That is why I did not reach the final, the puzzles began to annoy with their heavy cross-country ability ...

[Lolo]

Some puzzle were hard to figure out for me but I didn't find it annoying.

As for getting stuck - there are "fail saifes" as I call it on most of the levels. But let's be honest, in a game like this, where there is a lot of barriers and gravity manipulation, you can't foresee everything. People are curious and people will break a game llike this, many times :)

[mrmarcelluswallace]

Originally posted by Lolo:

...
As for getting stuck - there are "fail saifes" ...
People are curious and people will break a game llike this, many times :)

I fully agree that it's impossibly to forsee everything, but there are many such loopholes. Also regarding curiousity: The game actually punishes curiousity. Whenever I got stuck I immediately opened an online walkthrough to check what I have to do next, because often when I tried something on my own and a cube got stuck or fell down or whatever, you had to start a whole sequence all over again and that feels super stupid. There is literally nothing that I hate more than to do the same stuff multiple times all over again.
On other ocassions I already had the right idea how to solve a puzzle but dismissed it because I thought "No, it can't be this stupid", but it turned out it was.

I don't all puzzles are bad, but almost every second puzzle had elements where I just shook my head and thought "Seriously?"

[MAKAIROSI]

You forgot The Talos Principle and Witness.

Yeah, I just want to finish the two extra stories to get their achievements and uninstall the game to free up space. Like, with the games you mentioned, I was genuinely looking forward to coming back to them. This is not the case with this one.

It's not that the puzzles themselves are hard. It's that they're obscure. You can't possibly foresee you're going to need something later on, because you can't see it until you're at that point.

Plus, I'm not sure if I solved all puzzles in the legit way - I'm pretty sure I broke some of them. That is not supposed to be like that. You couldn't beat the other games OP mentioned by "cheating" - and I'm not calling it cheating because I really don't know if that was the intended way for them to be solved.

I think, however, that what this game lacks is giving you the motivation to move forward. You're literally solving the puzzles because the track is simply in the way of where you want to go so this, imo, is what makes it the most annoying. The game literally tells us that the puzzles are annoying obstacles, when there's a pressing matter and you need to get there, which means that the player (like the MC even states herself) doesn't even want to solve the puzzles!! .

I'm really torn and I don't want to give it a bad review because it did what it said on the lid: it was, indeed, a puzzle game with a story. And the graphics were good I thought. And the idea was novel, although I was expecting the game to explore that aspect more.

[ＫΞＬΛ]

Originally posted by Diskutant:

Yes you are the only one. I loved the puzzle design.

+1

[Yilku1]

Originally posted by Lolo:

Some puzzle were hard to figure out for me but I didn't find it annoying.

As for getting stuck - there are "fail saifes" as I call it on most of the levels. But let's be honest, in a game like this, where there is a lot of barriers and gravity manipulation, you can't foresee everything. People are curious and people will break a game llike this, many times :)

Maybe they could add a quick save like all the other games?

What is this? 2009 where you only save in a checkpoint?