Thanks for watching! My very first game, Mind Over Magnet, is launching on Steam on November 6th. Please consider adding it to your wishlist! store.steampowered.com/app/2685900/Mind_Over_Magnet/
as someone who recently finished Tunic and whose favorite game ever is Outer Wilds (which i discovered through the gtmk episode on time loops!) this video was MADE for me
I have to disagree regarding the payoff of the mystery being unimportant. This is the same opinion that J.J. Abrams espoused in his "mystery box" TED talk. It creates an experience like the "Lost" TV show, which you referenced, whose ending famously disappointed everyone. Or in Star Wars, where "somehow Palpatine returned", because there was no planned answer to the various mysteries from the beginning. When you set up a mystery, you're making a promise. It's important to deliver on your promise.
The mystery box only works when the answer is not plot relevant. In Pulp Fiction, Wallace's box is a great mystery box, because the answer, to "what is inside the box?", doesn't actually matter. It doesn't affect the story at all. But the grand mystery in Lost, or Rey's parents are very important because the answers are relevant to their stories plot.
I think he says something closer to 'tyoo-nik'! Brits tend to retain the 'y' sound in words like 'tunic' more often than Americans, who are more likely to drop the 'y' sound. So, British speakers will either say 'tyoo-nik' or combine the 'ty' sound into 'ch,' turning it into 'chew-nik'!” Brits often do the same thing with the word "Tuesday" as well, which I love to hear!
i'd argue that answers ARE important to some players. imagine if every time you asked a question, the answer was always "just because" - as mark said, players will start predicting the answer, and stop asking the question in the first place. i've lost interest in some games very quickly because although their worlds were fascinating and complex, there was never anything hidden below the surface. "what's through that door?" "what could i find in that dark corner?" and "i already know which way is forward, but what could be behind the other passageways i haven't explored?" are all questions that can be just as compelling as any puzzle, but if there's never anything to find in those areas, players will quickly stop exploring. answers don't have to be limited to items or upgrades, either. a beautiful view, a bit of environmental storytelling, or even more questions to answer are all great rewards for an attentive player who took the time to investigate the most unassuming of locations. sincerely, a player tired of poking around empty rooms.
also, regarding the tunic door mark mentioned, i do remember what was up there! the puzzle to open the door was one of the greatest puzzles i've ever solved, and i'd argue that the reward ensured the puzzle wasn't just incredible to solve, but also became permanently lodged in my memory. in my opinion, a person's unique playthrough of a game is a story in and of itself. "i solved a really good puzzle" is just a statement, but adding "and it gave me a reward that helped me later in the game" makes it a plot beat.
I love how virtually all progress in Outer Wilds happens inside your head. Once you learn its secrets, beating the game is almost trivial. I also love how it provides a mind-map to track what you've learned, in lieu of saving your progress.
This video was from start to finish a talk about the games in my top 10, love it :) (everyone should also try Noita or atleast look up the secrets of that game... it's insane)
@@poleve5409 Nah, you just have to press X to bring up the "press + to skip" prompt and then press +, no need to press both together. X is used to skip smaller cutscenes like cooking food or activating a shrine, it just has the added layer of needing to press + so you don't accidentally skip a cutscene (all of the more important cutscenes have this extra layer of protection). I found the skip right away by just testing the regular "skip cutscene" button and getting the prompt to show up. It's a standard feature in basically any game that allows you to skip cutscenes.
I think that I'm just a guy who doesn't care for mysteries, because I NEVER found Outer Wilds compelling enough to become invested in, despite playing it for hours, on multiple occasions. Perhaps playing games for 40+ years has left me jaded, but I can't stop looking for the "game" behind the mystery, because the mystery doesn't engage..
That might be that you engage with games just like people play board games. You know the rules before starting, you play by those rules. I'm the opposite, I like to not know the rules and have my expectations subverted
For sure the mystery is way more valuable than their solutions. That being said I want to warn against the JJ Abrams style 'mystery box' technique running rampant in modern storytelling, which prides itself on aggressively riding the hype of mysteries that turn out to be completely arbitrary by design. Feelings of wonder are one thing, feelings of being ripped off are another. This is ultimately a problem of expectations though, so you aren't going to run into this problem by having a random hidden chest with a worthless item in it for example. The player wouldn't really have anything riding on that chest to begin with. Larger scale mysteries on the other hand...be careful
An underrated mystery game is actually Carnivores. Yes on the surface its a deer hunting game with the deers replaced by dinosaurs, but once you dig deeper into the lore of the hunting preserve actually being an alien planet, it gets quite interesting.
I start every puzzle game thinking "I'm going to solve this myself!" only to end up with a walkthrough telling me the solution. It's at the point where I'll have a guide open while a friend plays a game so I can give them a bare-minimum hint if they get stuck. Even as simple as "Hey, you can solve this with what you have" That kind of makes it suck to have a puzzle like the Animal Well one in your game that REQUIRES you to collaborate without any indication in the game itself that that's what's expected of you. Are you following the developer intention by jumping on reddit, or did you just spoil the game for yourself?
With the exception of Chants of Sennaar, which as someone passionate about linguistics I found to be a breeze, every one of these games that I've tried has made me feel stupid and bad about myself. So I'll pass on this whole genre, thanks. I prefer games that use their words.
Glad to see Riven get a mention in this! It remains my favorite game of all time and the Remake is phenomenal, even if somewhat different from the original. Honestly I'm just posting this comment to let people know that they should absolutely play it. Cyan deserves all the attention they can get for what they do and for what they did with Riven.
I think that I'm just a guy who doesn't care for mysteries, because I NEVER found Outer Wilds compelling enough to become invested in, despite playing it for hours, on multiple occasions. Perhaps playing games for 40+ years has left me jaded, but I can't stop looking for the "game" behind the mystery, because the mystery doesn't engage..
In that case I'd recommend "Voices of the Void", I've been similarly jaded on the whole "mystery" aspect of games and I also didn't enjoy outer wilds on my first go of it, but something about VotV just... it's hard to describe it as anything other than an "it just clicked for me" moment that just smacked the years of jading right out of me, it's free on itch io and it's best to go in totally blind, so definitely give it a try! Only thing I'll spoil is that the tutorial goes deeper than it lets on... MUCH deeper
I unfortunately found Tunic absurdly frustrating. It withholds so much and gives so little I just gave up. For starter starting a game like this with zero long term goal, zero plot gives little incentive to the player to explore the world. And second I personally found the game pretty difficult right from the get-go. If the player dies too much, especially when starting out, it's honestly discouraging. You gotta throw them a bone or two so that they feel confident they can progress and want to keep playing.
It can be a tricky balance between mysterious and confusing sometimes. You also have to convey to the player that a mystery they should not be able to work out is not meant to be solved till later. Doing that implicitly can be tricky, but it's so important if you don't want the player to research it on the internet, potentially spoiling their experience.
Not a game but reminds me of first time Beast titan spoke in Attack On Titan, broke my understanding of the world that story was taking place in & made me even more interested in the story & it paid off unlike Lost.
Spoilers for the Games the Witness and Outer Wilds. I LOOOVE this in games. But as I thought about my long ago experience of the witness and my very recent experience of outer Wilds..... In the witness I got the big mystery spoiled by a review. What was very sad... I couldn't figure it out on my own, but it was still wtf! I needed to make work and vacation breaks in outer wilds, what was bad for the experience. The ship log did the best it could do to keep my knowledge uptodate. But I still needed guides several times. Because first I was super scared of this one planet so I never bothered going there😅... and I kind of forgot it And second there is nothing else in this world that the big mysteries. And yes you get better at the controls but just going trough your log in hope you find somewhere something... sadly it was not interesting enough. So my head wanted a guide. Especially at the end part. Where only one information was missing. .. and I could just not figure it out. I guess I still have the DLC (which is beautiful but scary) Fez, starseed pilrgim, rainworld and Tunic to play. And I am sure there are more arround the next corner😅
Animal Well was a weird case, i didnt play it myself, but i watched Pirate Software play it. One thing i realizes was that the game has like a first barrier of mystery that you dont even know you can break. After that, you go "deeper" with each new mystery, break through new Meta Levels until you reach the final Treasure hidden in the game. I would have never been able to go through this game like Thor has, but damm I was not just impressed by his problem solving, but by the Devs that went cracy on how hidden and Meta their secrets are.
Less than 2 minutes into the video and I already love it. BotW is, in my opinion, one of the best games EVER made - because it gives you ALL the tools from the very beginning but NO explanation and just throws you in. And it is entirely on you and your own sense of curiosity and exploration what the game turns into. And whatever you do make of it, the game encourages you to just DO it. It is such a unique and refreshing adventure, there's few games that could ever capture the awe I felt any time I rounded a corner to find another hidden little piece of the greater puzzle that is BotW.
MY favorite genre! The worst part of Metroidbrainias, especially Outer Wilds, is that you can only play them once without having the knowledge keys and you are forever seeking out games to replicate that feeling of discovery.
Two games that I would love solely for their mystery aspect if I didn't love everything else already are Doors and Pressure (on Roblox, I know, but they're part of the 0,001% of worthwhile games I promise). They're horror roguelikes, with a die and retry spice, where you'll probably not survive long enough to see the third of the way on your first run, but where each death tells you a little more about the danger you've died to. The gameplay they share is clever enough to rely on the unknown at the start of your journey, and brings answers little by little as you play them, making you litterally better at the game. Being able to avoid a danger on your first try doesn't guarantee that you'll avoid it next time as you might have not understood its intricacies and just got lucky thus keeping the learning useful throught the journey, and validating players who understood on their own, which don't need the indications. And even once you know how everything works and the mysteries are solved, the gameplay loop is still fun. The one that does the mystery better of the two is Pressure in my humble opinion as it ties in presentation, lore and gameplay in a little bow tied package that I find amazing. If you can (and you probably do, 'cause Roblox is free), go try them, they're excellent games made by dedicated devs that truly want to make good games and not money (as in a priority, they still wanna live from it, but there's 0 predatory tactics and microtransactions are there for the bare minimum and easily avoided).
I love the idea of puzzle box games, but I don't like them in practice. Take Outer Wilds. I enjoyed it, but I explored basically everything and was never able to figure out the last slate of puzzles. I had to look it up, and in so doing I realized there was an entire story and timeline that I hadn't really captured in my explorations.
The best mystery is the one you weren’t even aware was being hidden from you. The reveal of the “sacred cross” mechanic in Tunic was so great because it was hidden in plain sight the entire time, and it completely shifts the genre of the game from Zelda to something like The Witness. I can’t think of a moment in a game where one piece of information being revealed does so much work at recontextualizing an entire game
I wanna talk a second about something that has been on my mind lately about video games, and especially games like Animal Well, Tunic, Rain World etc where the crux of the game is how you interact with the game. What I mean is our actual physical and mental capability of interacting with games. These games to me are like celebrations of video game design and only people with "inside" knowledge on video games would get them. We give for granted our ability to interact with games but what trying to teach a young person to play Super Mario taught me was that actually playing video games is a skill that has to be learned, and actually not that easy. Only somebody deeply familiar with video games would really "get" these games. It's the "always check behind waterfalls" phenomena but multiplied 100 times. I don't know where I wanna go with this, that we should consider video game literacy as important as other kinds of knowledge maybe? It's one of the reasons why I love GMTK, Mark is the cool teacher giving insights into this human phenomena called video games and how it has evolved and still evolving and how we interact with them.
It’s interesting, I’ve always said the Talos principle 2 is like 1 in terms of the puzzles, but more like a AAA game, and yeah I think it’s both the scale of the environnements (which I like), and having characters talking (which I don’t care for). So I would say it’s about on the same level as the first game in terms of enjoyability, maybe a little more because I like the mechanics they introduced
Aw man, I wish I'd headed the Witness spoiler warning, because I can tell that would have blown my mind to experience. Oh well, I'm sure I'll get that with some other games. 🙂
I don't think the Witness example is a mystery at all : either the player has a "Eureka !" moment about something he never knew about, or he keeps happily ignoring it. Unless the explanation here is incomplete and there are hints about you missing something, I've never played the game (and probably wouldn't have seen this if I had, to be honest). Still interesting though
Playing Talos Principle 2 while watching this and you explained it so well. The puzzle mechanics are better in this game, but I don’t care about the story, characters, or philosophy at all in this game compared to the first that felt more mysterious.
I also love secrets that don’t reward the player with something like an item or something materialistic. One example could be lore or some small items and a great view of an area. You know, the in between kind of. One example I can think of is Half Life 2 with its lambda caches which sometimes are pretty simple to get but other times they lead you to a very remote location. Think of the one in Ravenholm for example.
Another GMTK added to the saved videos. Any plans to do a video on Deadlock? You haven't even done a video on MOBAs like dota before and tbh it's a topic worth talking about on this channel imo
Adventure click and point games like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis also captured this. There is a book to consult and figure out answers from.
Mentioning anything about outer wilds (yes even the length of the time loop) feels like such a massive spoiler. Going into outer wilds with absolutely no knowledge or context has got to be one of the single best game experiences there are
I consider Tunic to be one of the greatest games ever made. It really does feel so mysterious when you play it, and the game booklet mechanic is brilliant.
I just started drafting an outline for a first game concept and learning the basics of Blender for making assets. This is exactly the kind of ideas I need to hear about right now.
As you mentioned it can be overwhelming to have too many locked doors, I literally thought of Lorelei and you brought it up. I can't even finish it because there's too many mysteries. Perhaps one day I'll return.
I am currently playing Tunic and the amount of discoveries that keep happening and the way it plays with my base knowledge for games just makes me fill with the want to solve everything
Ah see the first time I saw that dragon I was clambering around the eldin skeleton and then the music changed and when I turned around and looked up it was right on me.
I'm very thankful that you've found a way to describe what these games are like without spoiling them... Simultaneously winking at anyone who knows what you're talking about, and acting as a game recommendation for people who don't I mean, now I really want to play Rain World, and I can basically do it blind now
except for The Witness. Bit of a shame to spoil the biggest discovery to such a big audience. Given that he barely talks about the mechanic itself, it could have been done like the Tunic references without spoiling the sense of mystery and discovery for exactly the people who would appreciate those things the most (people who like the rest of the games mentioned).
I know that "Metroidbranias" are not new, but recently it starts to emerge as a proper sub-genre and I am all for it. I've been playing many games of that genres this year. Tunic and Void Stranger were my favorites so far, though Tunic I played when it released. With Tunic discovering how to interact with certain things in the world really caught my by surprise because it really felt like the answer was staring me in the face the entire time, I just didn't know I was looking at it, though after that all the big mysteries kind of fell into place, including the big door and what to do there. At the very latest it would become obvious once you find a certain page of the manual, but even before that you are likely to notice something. Void Stranger was even more fun. The game also features a made up alphabet and I actually sat down and decyphered it by myself long before the game hands you the answer, which I actually found a bit disappointing, because I really spend a lot of work analyzing murals and was excited whenever I found a new one. And then at some point I discovered completely by accident that you could interact with a certain thing I never even considered trying to interact with (though then not too long afterwards I was in a new room which contained a very obvious hint to try it). Kind of wished Void Stranger wouldn't have these hints or would hand you solutions on certain things, but then again some of the later puzzles are so hard to discover or figure out without a hint that there's still stuff left to do. The Witness I actually found very disappointing to be honest, because... well you start the game in this kind of tutorial-castle, right? Then as soon as you leave it you go along a little path and there's an obvious gap in the bushes that allows you to look across the lake. On the far side of the lake is a very obvious environmental puzzle, so I stumbled over the "big twist" within less than a minute of leaving the starter castle. It simply never even occurred to me that puzzles would be limited to these boards. Many other environmental puzzles are also very obvious, such as the river when you look from the top of the mountain or some of the paint on the wreckage of a ship by the ocean that you can discover within a few minutes of just walking around.
I just recently played Void Stranger, and I have to say I was pretty disappointed. I enjoyed the base puzzles, but the tedium of going through the rooms over and over, just wandering around looking for the next thing to catch my interest, all while solving the same puzzles repeatedly was really off-putting to me. I think for me the deeper layers of the game were just too obtuse to be engaging. On the other hand, Tunic really worked for me. I think the difference is that it feels like the game wants you to uncover its secrets, whereas with Void Stranger it really feels like the game just wants you to hit your head against a wall until you give up and go away. And I had a great time with the Witness, but I didn't discover the second layer until a few hours into the game, so maybe it had more impact for me just by chance and good timing.
Thanks for watching! My very first game, Mind Over Magnet, is launching on Steam on November 6th. Please consider adding it to your wishlist! store.steampowered.com/app/2685900/Mind_Over_Magnet/
Great! That's so soon
Would you consider putting the sound from your video essays onto Spotify? I'd like to be able to listen on the go!
I find Return of the obra dinn still being underrated despite being one of the best mystery game.
This reminded me to put it on my Steam wishlist!
Check out the Case of the Golden Idol for a game that has a similar idea and a fairly cool story.
Phenomenal mystery game, though I’m not sure it’s quite the same kind of “mysterious” he’s talking about here
Just started my playthrough of it, somehow managed to avoid everything related to the game.
RAIN WORLD IN MY GMTK??? YES, PLEASE?
Long have we waited... our reckoning is come.
Rain world SWEEEEEP
Yes!
Literally my exact reaction!
RAIN WORLD SWEEP
Oh SNAP! I actually worked on Rain World! Super happy to see it get represented on a big channel! Nice!
as someone who recently finished Tunic and whose favorite game ever is Outer Wilds (which i discovered through the gtmk episode on time loops!) this video was MADE for me
Tunic looks so cuuute
Absolutely recommending Void Stranger for one of big great mystery games!
Seconded. Also Fear and Hunger 1&2
The secret sauce is banger soundtracks
The secret is having piano riffs play as you near something big.
So not Breath of the Wild then?
@@E_Fig05𝐄𝐗𝐓𝐑𝐄𝐌𝐄𝐋𝐘 𝐋𝐎𝐔𝐃 𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐎𝐑𝐑𝐄𝐂𝐓 𝐁𝐔𝐙𝐙𝐄𝐑
@@E_Fig05 shots fired! But I have to agree lol. BotW had a boring soundtrack imo.
I have to disagree regarding the payoff of the mystery being unimportant. This is the same opinion that J.J. Abrams espoused in his "mystery box" TED talk. It creates an experience like the "Lost" TV show, which you referenced, whose ending famously disappointed everyone. Or in Star Wars, where "somehow Palpatine returned", because there was no planned answer to the various mysteries from the beginning. When you set up a mystery, you're making a promise. It's important to deliver on your promise.
The mystery box only works when the answer is not plot relevant.
In Pulp Fiction, Wallace's box is a great mystery box, because the answer, to "what is inside the box?", doesn't actually matter. It doesn't affect the story at all.
But the grand mystery in Lost, or Rey's parents are very important because the answers are relevant to their stories plot.
Honestly? I'm just here to hear Mark say "chewnic"
On youchewbe
I think he says something closer to 'tyoo-nik'! Brits tend to retain the 'y' sound in words like 'tunic' more often than Americans, who are more likely to drop the 'y' sound. So, British speakers will either say 'tyoo-nik' or combine the 'ty' sound into 'ch,' turning it into 'chew-nik'!”
Brits often do the same thing with the word "Tuesday" as well, which I love to hear!
i'd argue that answers ARE important to some players. imagine if every time you asked a question, the answer was always "just because" - as mark said, players will start predicting the answer, and stop asking the question in the first place.
i've lost interest in some games very quickly because although their worlds were fascinating and complex, there was never anything hidden below the surface. "what's through that door?" "what could i find in that dark corner?" and "i already know which way is forward, but what could be behind the other passageways i haven't explored?" are all questions that can be just as compelling as any puzzle, but if there's never anything to find in those areas, players will quickly stop exploring. answers don't have to be limited to items or upgrades, either. a beautiful view, a bit of environmental storytelling, or even more questions to answer are all great rewards for an attentive player who took the time to investigate the most unassuming of locations.
sincerely, a player tired of poking around empty rooms.
also, regarding the tunic door mark mentioned, i do remember what was up there! the puzzle to open the door was one of the greatest puzzles i've ever solved, and i'd argue that the reward ensured the puzzle wasn't just incredible to solve, but also became permanently lodged in my memory. in my opinion, a person's unique playthrough of a game is a story in and of itself. "i solved a really good puzzle" is just a statement, but adding "and it gave me a reward that helped me later in the game" makes it a plot beat.
I love how virtually all progress in Outer Wilds happens inside your head. Once you learn its secrets, beating the game is almost trivial. I also love how it provides a mind-map to track what you've learned, in lieu of saving your progress.
Also a masterclass in the impact of music. End Times, and the final campfire music... Gets me every time.
RAINWORLD RAINWORLD I LITERALLY STARTED JUMPING UP AND DOWN WHEN I SAW THE THUMBNAIL
This video was from start to finish a talk about the games in my top 10, love it :) (everyone should also try Noita or atleast look up the secrets of that game... it's insane)
i see scug i click
the rainworld community appearing as soon as its mentioned:
(im community)
damn you really gonna make me pause this to play the (reportedly) great games I've put in my backlog forever. Damn you GMTK.
Void Stranger! Void Stranger!! Void Stranger!!!!
if you want a more obscure but really good mystery game play void stranger. It's as good or even better than outer wilds
you sold me on it, ill do it
@PhantomThiefXI it takes a while for the mysteries to really get going but once it does you'll love it trust me
0:48. Fuck the blood moon. I get why it's there from a development standpoint, but everytime it came up it felt like an ad just interrupted my game😒
The creepy music and everything slowly turning red gave me so much anxiety every time 😬
you can skip it but it requires a weird button combination no normal human being will ever find. It's X and + together.
@@poleve5409 Nah, you just have to press X to bring up the "press + to skip" prompt and then press +, no need to press both together. X is used to skip smaller cutscenes like cooking food or activating a shrine, it just has the added layer of needing to press + so you don't accidentally skip a cutscene (all of the more important cutscenes have this extra layer of protection). I found the skip right away by just testing the regular "skip cutscene" button and getting the prompt to show up. It's a standard feature in basically any game that allows you to skip cutscenes.
I think that I'm just a guy who doesn't care for mysteries, because I NEVER found Outer Wilds compelling enough to become invested in, despite playing it for hours, on multiple occasions. Perhaps playing games for 40+ years has left me jaded, but I can't stop looking for the "game" behind the mystery, because the mystery doesn't engage..
Understood, youtube user StunningModelDonnaDempsey
That might be that you engage with games just like people play board games. You know the rules before starting, you play by those rules. I'm the opposite, I like to not know the rules and have my expectations subverted
bot
For sure the mystery is way more valuable than their solutions. That being said I want to warn against the JJ Abrams style 'mystery box' technique running rampant in modern storytelling, which prides itself on aggressively riding the hype of mysteries that turn out to be completely arbitrary by design. Feelings of wonder are one thing, feelings of being ripped off are another. This is ultimately a problem of expectations though, so you aren't going to run into this problem by having a random hidden chest with a worthless item in it for example. The player wouldn't really have anything riding on that chest to begin with. Larger scale mysteries on the other hand...be careful
An underrated mystery game is actually Carnivores. Yes on the surface its a deer hunting game with the deers replaced by dinosaurs, but once you dig deeper into the lore of the hunting preserve actually being an alien planet, it gets quite interesting.
Thank you for including my favorite game, The Witness, in this incredible list of games.
A fantastic game but overlooked
I start every puzzle game thinking "I'm going to solve this myself!" only to end up with a walkthrough telling me the solution. It's at the point where I'll have a guide open while a friend plays a game so I can give them a bare-minimum hint if they get stuck. Even as simple as "Hey, you can solve this with what you have"
That kind of makes it suck to have a puzzle like the Animal Well one in your game that REQUIRES you to collaborate without any indication in the game itself that that's what's expected of you.
Are you following the developer intention by jumping on reddit, or did you just spoil the game for yourself?
to be fair it's also a third level secret, but it's not like you can really know that without looking it up
you have summoned the entire rain world community
With the exception of Chants of Sennaar, which as someone passionate about linguistics I found to be a breeze, every one of these games that I've tried has made me feel stupid and bad about myself. So I'll pass on this whole genre, thanks. I prefer games that use their words.
did you also find "Heaven's Vault" to be a breeze?
@@zejugames5045 Yes!
Glad to see Riven get a mention in this! It remains my favorite game of all time and the Remake is phenomenal, even if somewhat different from the original. Honestly I'm just posting this comment to let people know that they should absolutely play it. Cyan deserves all the attention they can get for what they do and for what they did with Riven.
I think that I'm just a guy who doesn't care for mysteries, because I NEVER found Outer Wilds compelling enough to become invested in, despite playing it for hours, on multiple occasions. Perhaps playing games for 40+ years has left me jaded, but I can't stop looking for the "game" behind the mystery, because the mystery doesn't engage..
is the mystery that you also posted this comment as "StunningModelDonnaDempsey-r8d"? because now i'm engaged in this mystery!!
I'd like to point out that I spent over half of outer wilds hunting for the compelling part. And then it hit me.
@@zejugames5045 I'm fairly certain that's a bot that just stole this comment. Bleak
In that case I'd recommend "Voices of the Void", I've been similarly jaded on the whole "mystery" aspect of games and I also didn't enjoy outer wilds on my first go of it, but something about VotV just... it's hard to describe it as anything other than an "it just clicked for me" moment that just smacked the years of jading right out of me, it's free on itch io and it's best to go in totally blind, so definitely give it a try! Only thing I'll spoil is that the tutorial goes deeper than it lets on... MUCH deeper
Below also does a great job not telling you half of its mechanics
I unfortunately found Tunic absurdly frustrating. It withholds so much and gives so little I just gave up. For starter starting a game like this with zero long term goal, zero plot gives little incentive to the player to explore the world. And second I personally found the game pretty difficult right from the get-go. If the player dies too much, especially when starting out, it's honestly discouraging. You gotta throw them a bone or two so that they feel confident they can progress and want to keep playing.
It can be a tricky balance between mysterious and confusing sometimes. You also have to convey to the player that a mystery they should not be able to work out is not meant to be solved till later. Doing that implicitly can be tricky, but it's so important if you don't want the player to research it on the internet, potentially spoiling their experience.
Not a game but reminds me of first time Beast titan spoke in Attack On Titan, broke my understanding of the world that story was taking place in & made me even more interested in the story & it paid off unlike Lost.
Very exiting when a reward is not guaranteed.
Also I love when something peaks that I never saw before in the game and then leads down a rabbit hole.
There is one catacomb dungeon in Elden Ring that breaks the pattern in a very unique way. I enjoyed it a lot!
I don’t know how GMTK cracked the code, he must be really good at finding secrets
What, no Voices of the Void?
Still, banger video, keep it up man!
never been this early! buckling up for what's gonna be a great video for sure!!!
as much as i love rainworld, i do think it takes the obfuscation a little too far at times.
Um video novo do GMTK é igual a parar tudo que to fazendo!!! Muito bom!
RAINWORLD MENTIONED 🌧️⛈️RAINWORLD MENTIONED🥹
🐌🐱
LITERALLY ALL MY FAVORITE GAMES
rain world thumbnail = click
Boss Keys for Zelda TOTK and EOW when?
Hopefully never!
I like these types of games when they're artsy
Erm what the rain world
Spoilers for the Games the Witness and Outer Wilds.
I LOOOVE this in games.
But as I thought about my long ago experience of the witness and my very recent experience of outer Wilds.....
In the witness I got the big mystery spoiled by a review. What was very sad... I couldn't figure it out on my own, but it was still wtf!
I needed to make work and vacation breaks in outer wilds, what was bad for the experience. The ship log did the best it could do to keep my knowledge uptodate. But I still needed guides several times.
Because first I was super scared of this one planet so I never bothered going there😅... and I kind of forgot it
And second there is nothing else in this world that the big mysteries. And yes you get better at the controls but just going trough your log in hope you find somewhere something... sadly it was not interesting enough. So my head wanted a guide.
Especially at the end part. Where only one information was missing. .. and I could just not figure it out.
I guess I still have the DLC (which is beautiful but scary) Fez, starseed pilrgim, rainworld and Tunic to play. And I am sure there are more arround the next corner😅
Animal Well was a weird case, i didnt play it myself, but i watched Pirate Software play it. One thing i realizes was that the game has like a first barrier of mystery that you dont even know you can break. After that, you go "deeper" with each new mystery, break through new Meta Levels until you reach the final Treasure hidden in the game. I would have never been able to go through this game like Thor has, but damm I was not just impressed by his problem solving, but by the Devs that went cracy on how hidden and Meta their secrets are.
Less than 2 minutes into the video and I already love it. BotW is, in my opinion, one of the best games EVER made - because it gives you ALL the tools from the very beginning but NO explanation and just throws you in. And it is entirely on you and your own sense of curiosity and exploration what the game turns into. And whatever you do make of it, the game encourages you to just DO it. It is such a unique and refreshing adventure, there's few games that could ever capture the awe I felt any time I rounded a corner to find another hidden little piece of the greater puzzle that is BotW.
MY favorite genre!
The worst part of Metroidbrainias, especially Outer Wilds, is that you can only play them once without having the knowledge keys and you are forever seeking out games to replicate that feeling of discovery.
Two games that I would love solely for their mystery aspect if I didn't love everything else already are Doors and Pressure (on Roblox, I know, but they're part of the 0,001% of worthwhile games I promise).
They're horror roguelikes, with a die and retry spice, where you'll probably not survive long enough to see the third of the way on your first run, but where each death tells you a little more about the danger you've died to.
The gameplay they share is clever enough to rely on the unknown at the start of your journey, and brings answers little by little as you play them, making you litterally better at the game.
Being able to avoid a danger on your first try doesn't guarantee that you'll avoid it next time as you might have not understood its intricacies and just got lucky thus keeping the learning useful throught the journey, and validating players who understood on their own, which don't need the indications.
And even once you know how everything works and the mysteries are solved, the gameplay loop is still fun.
The one that does the mystery better of the two is Pressure in my humble opinion as it ties in presentation, lore and gameplay in a little bow tied package that I find amazing.
If you can (and you probably do, 'cause Roblox is free), go try them, they're excellent games made by dedicated devs that truly want to make good games and not money (as in a priority, they still wanna live from it, but there's 0 predatory tactics and microtransactions are there for the bare minimum and easily avoided).
I love the idea of puzzle box games, but I don't like them in practice. Take Outer Wilds. I enjoyed it, but I explored basically everything and was never able to figure out the last slate of puzzles. I had to look it up, and in so doing I realized there was an entire story and timeline that I hadn't really captured in my explorations.
The best mystery is the one you weren’t even aware was being hidden from you. The reveal of the “sacred cross” mechanic in Tunic was so great because it was hidden in plain sight the entire time, and it completely shifts the genre of the game from Zelda to something like The Witness. I can’t think of a moment in a game where one piece of information being revealed does so much work at recontextualizing an entire game
I wanna talk a second about something that has been on my mind lately about video games, and especially games like Animal Well, Tunic, Rain World etc where the crux of the game is how you interact with the game. What I mean is our actual physical and mental capability of interacting with games. These games to me are like celebrations of video game design and only people with "inside" knowledge on video games would get them. We give for granted our ability to interact with games but what trying to teach a young person to play Super Mario taught me was that actually playing video games is a skill that has to be learned, and actually not that easy. Only somebody deeply familiar with video games would really "get" these games. It's the "always check behind waterfalls" phenomena but multiplied 100 times.
I don't know where I wanna go with this, that we should consider video game literacy as important as other kinds of knowledge maybe? It's one of the reasons why I love GMTK, Mark is the cool teacher giving insights into this human phenomena called video games and how it has evolved and still evolving and how we interact with them.
It’s interesting, I’ve always said the Talos principle 2 is like 1 in terms of the puzzles, but more like a AAA game, and yeah I think it’s both the scale of the environnements (which I like), and having characters talking (which I don’t care for). So I would say it’s about on the same level as the first game in terms of enjoyability, maybe a little more because I like the mechanics they introduced
so many more games could benefit from mystery in some capacity
Awesome video! Surprised that you didn't showcase any Daniel Mullins game
Aw man, I wish I'd headed the Witness spoiler warning, because I can tell that would have blown my mind to experience. Oh well, I'm sure I'll get that with some other games. 🙂
6:21 Dark Souls stats are "cryptic" until you just press the "Explanation" button ... THE PROMPT IS RIGHT THERE !
I don't think the Witness example is a mystery at all : either the player has a "Eureka !" moment about something he never knew about, or he keeps happily ignoring it. Unless the explanation here is incomplete and there are hints about you missing something, I've never played the game (and probably wouldn't have seen this if I had, to be honest).
Still interesting though
Playing Talos Principle 2 while watching this and you explained it so well. The puzzle mechanics are better in this game, but I don’t care about the story, characters, or philosophy at all in this game compared to the first that felt more mysterious.
You don't understand how much I will be revisiting this video! Thank you Mark for this banger! Probably my favorite video so far that you've put out
I also love secrets that don’t reward the player with something like an item or something materialistic. One example could be lore or some small items and a great view of an area. You know, the in between kind of. One example I can think of is Half Life 2 with its lambda caches which sometimes are pretty simple to get but other times they lead you to a very remote location. Think of the one in Ravenholm for example.
Another GMTK added to the saved videos. Any plans to do a video on Deadlock? You haven't even done a video on MOBAs like dota before and tbh it's a topic worth talking about on this channel imo
I'm surpised Noita isn't here! 90% of that game is mysteries (The other 10% is dying to your own incompetence)
Step by step guide to boost your views slightly-
1. Put rainworld in the thumbnail
2. That’s it
Adventure click and point games like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis also captured this. There is a book to consult and figure out answers from.
Mentioning anything about outer wilds (yes even the length of the time loop) feels like such a massive spoiler. Going into outer wilds with absolutely no knowledge or context has got to be one of the single best game experiences there are
I believe there is missed opportunity to include subnautica as a game that use Mystery and unknown to give the player the "terror" feeling
I consider Tunic to be one of the greatest games ever made. It really does feel so mysterious when you play it, and the game booklet mechanic is brilliant.
I just started drafting an outline for a first game concept and learning the basics of Blender for making assets.
This is exactly the kind of ideas I need to hear about right now.
Totally loved this episode of gmtk. Lots to chew over and a very fun topic. Love Animal Well.
As you mentioned it can be overwhelming to have too many locked doors, I literally thought of Lorelei and you brought it up. I can't even finish it because there's too many mysteries. Perhaps one day I'll return.
you should play outer wilds NOW!
Fantastic video. Always one of my "Stop everything" moments when one of these pops up on my subs list.
You mentioned Boxes: Lost Fragments, and I instantly bought it. (and also Doors, because yes)
What a perfect video to find after starting my blind playthrough of Return of the Obra Dinn.
I've been saying the witness is metroidvania adjacent for years! Lol finally sweet sweet validation
FINALLY! rain world on gmtk is what ive been waiting for, thats what its all about!
I am currently playing Tunic and the amount of discoveries that keep happening and the way it plays with my base knowledge for games just makes me fill with the want to solve everything
Subnautica. That's the game that filled me with the sense of wonder and mystery the most, as well as dread and unease.
Ah see the first time I saw that dragon I was clambering around the eldin skeleton and then the music changed and when I turned around and looked up it was right on me.
I'm a simple man, if I see Rain World in a preview, I click it
You would really love the game Antichamber. It does a bit of this... and so much more.
0:20 Why is the UI censored in the beginning? Lol
Spoilers I guess?
Could be from older footage that censored the Champion powers for spoiler reasons.
Man, it would be a lot harder to do that to the TotK equivalents...
The music at the beginning was giving major Body Double vibes!
Opening the mountain door in Tunic gave me the same feeling as Outer Wilds and is the only game to have done that
have you heard of noita? i feel like its something you would love talking about
Do you smell that? *Sniff* ah yes smells like „Developing Season 2“
0:38 Why are the powers blured ?
He's recreating a moment early in the game when he didn't have those powers
I'm very thankful that you've found a way to describe what these games are like without spoiling them... Simultaneously winking at anyone who knows what you're talking about, and acting as a game recommendation for people who don't
I mean, now I really want to play Rain World, and I can basically do it blind now
except for The Witness. Bit of a shame to spoil the biggest discovery to such a big audience. Given that he barely talks about the mechanic itself, it could have been done like the Tunic references without spoiling the sense of mystery and discovery for exactly the people who would appreciate those things the most (people who like the rest of the games mentioned).
Wow i thought i was the only one who jumped with excitement when i saw rainworld lol
this video spawned just as i sat to have lunch, you are a blessing mark ❤
I have absolutely no regrets about giving up on Rain World.
I know that "Metroidbranias" are not new, but recently it starts to emerge as a proper sub-genre and I am all for it. I've been playing many games of that genres this year.
Tunic and Void Stranger were my favorites so far, though Tunic I played when it released.
With Tunic discovering how to interact with certain things in the world really caught my by surprise because it really felt like the answer was staring me in the face the entire time, I just didn't know I was looking at it, though after that all the big mysteries kind of fell into place, including the big door and what to do there. At the very latest it would become obvious once you find a certain page of the manual, but even before that you are likely to notice something.
Void Stranger was even more fun. The game also features a made up alphabet and I actually sat down and decyphered it by myself long before the game hands you the answer, which I actually found a bit disappointing, because I really spend a lot of work analyzing murals and was excited whenever I found a new one. And then at some point I discovered completely by accident that you could interact with a certain thing I never even considered trying to interact with (though then not too long afterwards I was in a new room which contained a very obvious hint to try it). Kind of wished Void Stranger wouldn't have these hints or would hand you solutions on certain things, but then again some of the later puzzles are so hard to discover or figure out without a hint that there's still stuff left to do.
The Witness I actually found very disappointing to be honest, because... well you start the game in this kind of tutorial-castle, right? Then as soon as you leave it you go along a little path and there's an obvious gap in the bushes that allows you to look across the lake. On the far side of the lake is a very obvious environmental puzzle, so I stumbled over the "big twist" within less than a minute of leaving the starter castle. It simply never even occurred to me that puzzles would be limited to these boards. Many other environmental puzzles are also very obvious, such as the river when you look from the top of the mountain or some of the paint on the wreckage of a ship by the ocean that you can discover within a few minutes of just walking around.
I just recently played Void Stranger, and I have to say I was pretty disappointed. I enjoyed the base puzzles, but the tedium of going through the rooms over and over, just wandering around looking for the next thing to catch my interest, all while solving the same puzzles repeatedly was really off-putting to me. I think for me the deeper layers of the game were just too obtuse to be engaging.
On the other hand, Tunic really worked for me. I think the difference is that it feels like the game wants you to uncover its secrets, whereas with Void Stranger it really feels like the game just wants you to hit your head against a wall until you give up and go away.
And I had a great time with the Witness, but I didn't discover the second layer until a few hours into the game, so maybe it had more impact for me just by chance and good timing.
you have summoned the rainworld fans with that thumbnail
Only watching because of Rain World
Eu2 is extremely mysterious shouldn’t be in the video?
any other americans have to go google the word "schtum"?
hey Mark! I know the secret of "Black Monolith"
I had the same experience!! but with Farosh, instead