alt Hacker NewsIf you count names and causes of death as separate puzzles, Return of the Obra Dinn is around 100 puzzles long. The two Portal games are less than 100 puzzles put together. Blue Prince is what? 50ish elaborate, intricate puzzles? (darts and parlour notwithstanding). Chants of Senaar, Opus Magnum, Space Chem are all in that same ballpark too. Puzzle games with a lot of levels, like Patrick's Parabox or Baba Is You, clock in at 250ish puzzles.
So... why would I want a game with 1400 puzzles? At one puzzle a minute, that's 24 hours of gameplay. There's no reasonable scenario where each individual puzzle is something you can savour while having the game be completable in a vaguely timely fashion. How many of those puzzles are going to be even remotely memorable?
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It's not trying to be Portal. It's a Sokoban game. If you like playing Sokoban games, here's a package of ~1400 hand-crafted puzzles, probably with a handful of interesting gimmicks/rule alterations to spice things up.
> At one puzzle a minute, that's 24 hours of gameplay.
Unfortunately we're not all as smart as you but in TFA he estimates it'll take 400-500 hours to complete all of them.
I am equal parts daunted and excited about the size of it. On one hand, of course it's a lot of time (he's said it might the average person 500 hours to complete), and I'm liable to binge. On the other, I imagine there will be some incredible depth to it, and maybe a "little and often" strategy might not be too bad (if possible). Despite adoring The Witness and Braid, I'm still not sure if I'll get this one. Would my life be richer from finishing this or a few hundred films? My money is on the latter.
Btw Patrick's Parabox in full is 364 puzzles (I know this off hand because I left it at 363 for a few months before coming back to finish the last one, and it's one off 365).
Well, but wait, why doesn't each Parlor count? Is your expectation that somehow each of the 1400 puzzles in Blow's game will be like finding Room 46 in Blue Prince?
[[Massive spoilers implied, stop reading if you don't want a Blue Prince playthrough "spoiled" in some sense]]
Take the Atelier, if you're Jon Blow that's obviously 45 puzzle boxes, plus 45 picture pairs = 90 puzzles just to spell out the clues before you even try to understand how to "solve" the Atelier and actually inherit the manor [[If you're reading this and thinking "But I did inherit the manor by finding room 46, hey, shoo, you didn't finish the game I told you not to read this]].
Completable in a timely fashion is not a design goal of this game. Currently being playtested by professional puzzle game designers and they are over 200 hours in without completing it.