The "moon puzzle" had me stuck because I didn't realize THAT was the puzzle, being distracted by the symmetry in the room that meant nothing in the end. That moment largely killed my trust in the game's puzzles. Antichamber was a far more satisfying non-euclidean puzzle game, I think. That "use the only interactive object to climb to the exit" montage was how I felt about shrine bonus chests in TOTK.
Criminal that this channel has so few views and yet has some of the best critiques I've heard in ages. I finished this game a year or two back and felt it was kind of a wet paper bag in terms of puzzles and the narrative they had going wasn't much better, and I was quite disappointed. I hope these devs can learn something from it and make something great, I believe they could. Portal 2 was a big step up from Portal 1, after all.
After discovering your channel, I have gone through and watched every video on it. Like you - Matthewmatosis and Joseph Anderson are big influences to me, and this channel sits alongside those for me now. Hope to see new content from you soon
An excellent video essay, thank you. I personally just gave up on this game - I instead went to other games on Xbox Game Pass which offered far richer experiences (namely Humanity and Firewatch).
Very solid critique. When I finished my first playthrough I saw the challenge mode and got excited, expecting different versions of the same puzzles that were more challenging. Needless to say I was very dissapointed when they were the exact same simple puzzles only with restrictions on the number of moves. Interestingly, though the game has a bunch of notes that claim 'Perception is Reality', this is challenged whenever you are presented with any of those optical illusions because if perception was reality then your perception would never be wrong (or atleast incomplete) and you would never be surprised by any optical illusion. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it and those notes are just stating 'Perception is Reality' because you're in a dream world the whole game.
Thanks for the comment! I felt the same way about the challenge mode, I think the developers missed a lot of opportunities for puzzle designs there. That's an interesting point about the optical illusions proving that perception actually isn't reality after all! I think there's a lot of potential in that idea, and Superliminal just doesn't do it justice. Hopefully some puzzle game will come out in the future that delivers!
i keep coming back to this video, great stuff. i think you're too unkind to the "gotcha" moments, especially with the "white wall" puzzle and the hidden doorway, they were fairly satisfying on my first playthrough to do and that's because they're fairly late into the game, and i already knew that the game loves trick like that. so the game's consistently inconsistent, but in a good way imo because you have to keep changing your perspective, which ties back into the theme as you said. It's a problem of analysing a game purely through genre, if you come in expecting a standard puzzle game you can (understandably) come out a bit miffed, though the simplistic puzzles could serve as way to disperse those genre expectations too, in a way.
seriously how are your videos not getting more views, these are some of the best critiques ive seen and the editing is actually good
amazing video. I had gradually stopped watching video essays and your channel is SUCH a breath of fresh air due to the quality.
Thank you, it really does make my day to get a comment like this. Glad to hear you're enjoying my channel, and stay tuned for more.
The "moon puzzle" had me stuck because I didn't realize THAT was the puzzle, being distracted by the symmetry in the room that meant nothing in the end. That moment largely killed my trust in the game's puzzles.
Antichamber was a far more satisfying non-euclidean puzzle game, I think.
That "use the only interactive object to climb to the exit" montage was how I felt about shrine bonus chests in TOTK.
That was when I stopped.
Everyone complains about the moon puzzle, but i found it right away, just because i wanted to see if i could grab the moon XP
Criminal that this channel has so few views and yet has some of the best critiques I've heard in ages. I finished this game a year or two back and felt it was kind of a wet paper bag in terms of puzzles and the narrative they had going wasn't much better, and I was quite disappointed. I hope these devs can learn something from it and make something great, I believe they could. Portal 2 was a big step up from Portal 1, after all.
Thank you, I'm always grateful for comments like this!
Here before 100k subscribers
Ditto.
After discovering your channel, I have gone through and watched every video on it. Like you - Matthewmatosis and Joseph Anderson are big influences to me, and this channel sits alongside those for me now. Hope to see new content from you soon
An excellent video essay, thank you. I personally just gave up on this game - I instead went to other games on Xbox Game Pass which offered far richer experiences (namely Humanity and Firewatch).
Very solid critique. When I finished my first playthrough I saw the challenge mode and got excited, expecting different versions of the same puzzles that were more challenging. Needless to say I was very dissapointed when they were the exact same simple puzzles only with restrictions on the number of moves. Interestingly, though the game has a bunch of notes that claim 'Perception is Reality', this is challenged whenever you are presented with any of those optical illusions because if perception was reality then your perception would never be wrong (or atleast incomplete) and you would never be surprised by any optical illusion. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it and those notes are just stating 'Perception is Reality' because you're in a dream world the whole game.
Thanks for the comment! I felt the same way about the challenge mode, I think the developers missed a lot of opportunities for puzzle designs there. That's an interesting point about the optical illusions proving that perception actually isn't reality after all! I think there's a lot of potential in that idea, and Superliminal just doesn't do it justice. Hopefully some puzzle game will come out in the future that delivers!
i keep coming back to this video, great stuff.
i think you're too unkind to the "gotcha" moments, especially with the "white wall" puzzle and the hidden doorway, they were fairly satisfying on my first playthrough to do and that's because they're fairly late into the game, and i already knew that the game loves trick like that.
so the game's consistently inconsistent, but in a good way imo because you have to keep changing your perspective, which ties back into the theme as you said.
It's a problem of analysing a game purely through genre, if you come in expecting a standard puzzle game you can (understandably) come out a bit miffed, though the simplistic puzzles could serve as way to disperse those genre expectations too, in a way.
how the hell does this just have 100 views
What was the game with the guy with the red coat thing? That looks fun
I think the game you're referring to is Puddle Knights. Definitely worth a try if you like puzzle games.
@@Erumore thanks, i got it on Steam for $5!