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Video game thread. What have you been playing?
Posting mine in a response to this because it's long and I don't want to derail everyone else.
The Order of the Sinking Star might be the best puzzle game I have ever played. That's not a super high bar, because I don't play a lot of puzzle games, but it does a really good job and avoids most of the problems that turn me away from other puzzle games.
Created by Jonathan Blow, the creator of Braid and The Witness, it shares enough commonalities with them that it's recognizably one of his works, while being much higher quality in my opinion. Fundamentally, it's a grid-based block puzzle game. You move in one of four directions, you push blocks onto buttons, or into pits to create platforms, or to block line of sight for lasers or monsters, or to push other objects. There have been many games like this, It reminds me of Baba is You without the text rule interactions. But there is a LOT of depth and complexity here that replaces the need for those.
There are four different worlds, each having their own characters (with unique mechanics) and several puzzle elements (with unique mechanics) beyond just pushing blocks. One world has monsters that kill you if you get too close, or kill each other, and has a bunch of heroes that do stuff like teleport or transform objects. Another world has mirrors that reflect characters or objects and lots of water. Another world has laser beams with different effects.
But, after doing the initial levels for each world, you unlock the intersections between them. To the North is Hero world where you learn about those mechanics, and to the East is Mirror world where you learn about those mechanics. Then all the levels to the Northeast are at the dimensional boundary, where levels have mechanics and characters from both of these two worlds. Now you have monsters with mirrors, and the teleporting guy interacting with mirrors. Also it turns out there person who has an invincibility field against monsters can float on top of water, but only while being threatened by monsters. Every pair of worlds has levels dedicated to that combination, and involves cool and different interactions between the mechanics in each of the other worlds. This allows for a LOT of puzzles that don't feel repetitive. The game does a good job of introducing new mechanics naturally with simple puzzles where there's not very much to do other than mess around until you discover the new mechanic, followed immediately by more complicated puzzles that involve using that mechanic in various less trivial circumstances.
I'm still only partway through the game, so I don't yet know for sure, but I suspect the end levels might involve mechanics from all four worlds simultaneously.
The game is not perfect. The story, as far as it exists, is mostly just lore dumps from characters about the background of their world. A lot of the dialogue and voice acting is kind of lefty artsy cringe. It's not really political so much as, quirky girl is respectful and affirming of the culture of these people from another world she just met, while girlboss explains how her sentient boat is a "spirit" which are respected members of society, not a "ghost". And on the overworld there is some guy anthropologically talking about how he's watching the people in these worlds and has a suspicion that some greater being might be watching him (oooooh, it's yoooou, it's threatening the fourth waaaaall). Nothing unexpected if you've played Braid or The Witness. Jonathan Blow is really good at making puzzles, but he's got a bit of a pretentious artsy streak.
...I just checked and apparently he got a lot of leftists mad at him for supporting Donald Trump, being against DEI, and stuff like that. Which confuses me, because there are a lot of what I would consider cringe lefty cultural characters in this game. I think it's just from being born and raised in California, he absorbed enough of the culture around him even as he rejected their politics.
Anyway, all that said, the story and characters are less than 1% of the game. This is a mechanics based puzzle game, not a narrative puzzle game. And the mechanical puzzles are really really good. They're difficult enough not to just trivially blow through, while not too complicated to be frustrating or obscure. The ability to rewind any of your steps allows easy experimentation without having to redo parts you already understand after every mistake. And the grid base prevents a lot of the stupid meta puzzles in The Witness where something is just hidden behind a rock in the overworld. There are finitely many actions you can do at any time, and the rules are well-defined, you just have to figure them out and put them together.
I'm about 20 hours in and it feels like I'm maybe halfway through the content. Maybe a little more, it's hard to tell how much secret end game stuff there will be. But it's long and it's good. I highly recommend it.
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