It's one of those games that manages to push buttons in your brain you never knew you had, and make you feel like a genius when something finally clicks.
And it does all this without ever needing to explain anything.
Jonathan Blow's enigma variations. A meandering meditation on the means by which humans gain knowledge and understanding of the world, by standing on the shoulders of a hacking minigame.
Also it's gorgeous.
Did I mention it's BRILLIANT?
Made me very interested in playing it!
I understand your point about filler, but the puzzles are the game, and if you're enjoying them then it probably doesn't come across as filler, just more to get stuck in with (though I do wonder whether so many slight variations on a theme are required in certain areas).
Hyped it may be, but that doesn't mean that you absolutely have to enjoy it at all costs. There are other games, and other developers :)
I haven't found ANY puzzles where I feel like you're guessing at the solution. Every puzzle I've solved has had well defined rules. I don't want to give too much away, but broadly speaking there are two types of puzzles: Those that rely on the symbols, where whats on the screen in front of you is all thats required and those that...don't.
The first category, you slowly build up your understanding of the various rules as you progress, and they all play by the same rules. The second category though, the real puzzle is to figure out what you're missing, generally by observation.
But once you learn the difference between the puzzles that you can take a face value, and the puzzles where you should look around, it feels much more fair.
The only time I felt truly frustrated was the few puzzles that introduce audio as a mechanic. I think deaf players will be unable to 100% this game because of a handful of puzzles, and theres no indication that the piece of the puzzle you're missing is sound.
Though, I have to admit, I like giving this game my full attention. I don't mind the lack of music as the environmental audio fits so well in the "whole picture" of the game.
This is the first time I've seen this mentioned, so thank you. I've been thinking about buying a PS4 just for this game, so that's a major bummer. I hope there's a patch in the future for some kind of visual indicator or subtitle to make it a bit easier.
You don't need to complete all the puzzles to finish the game. A small minority rely on hearing.
(I agree it sucks... trying to be optimistic; not trying to argue with you :) )
Imagine if you paid for a book and there were appendices about characters or something extra, but written in a language you didn't know. It would kind of suck.
Edit: As a side note, these comments seem to be the internet equivalent of:
A: =~#$())##~
B: Sorry, what was that? I couldn't hear you.
A: Nevermind, it's not important.
Which I think most people would agree is incredibly rude and dismissive.
(You have to play the game to get why he can't give hints)
If you don't already know about it, you may want to check out the book Finnegan's Wake :)
Joking aside, I think you're right that there should be some kind of notice somewhere, in-game or out (even on the Steam page) that indicates that some parts of the game are difficult or inaccessible for players with a degree of hearing loss.
Even better might be to have an option in the game that turns on an additional visual cue that could augment whatever the original audio cue was. Actually designing it to make sense in the same way would of course be difficult, but I don't doubt that there are enough players that would appreciate that option.
So you can definitely finish the game without sound, but if you're a perfectionist aiming for 100% you'll need to resort to outside help, which does suck.
The puzzles don't even have a visual cue to let you know audio is important, so if you're not expecting it these puzzles just seem unsolvable.
This and no colour blind support are probably the two biggest criticisms I have of the game.
I must admit that I also sometimes fail to remember making the software I create accessible to deaf or blind persons. It's never because I don't want to, it's just that there's often nobody on the team that has this particular problem and so it is forgotten.
I think you'll still be able to enjoy the game.
On the other hand, there are audio logs scattered about which you might prefer to be able to hear. They don't tell a story though; it's more of an examination of things Jonathan Blow feels are important. I think that's a cool part of the game, even though I suspect that I disagree with him entirely.
The elephant in the room is obviously that there's no accommodation for the blind at all.
This does come at the cost of their not being quite as wholly integrated into the environment as some of Riven's puzzles, for instance, but it also means a lot of the arbitrariness and guessing is gone.
(There are environmental connections with the puzzles, just to be clear. The game is simply a lot more careful and conservative with them.)
There are well-defined (mathematically) and natural ways in which 6 is a better continuation to 1,2,3,4,5,... than say 15 or whatever else.
By which I mean, I think it's a common misconception amongst those that argue this is a common misconception that the knowledge which they possess and view as straightforward, natural and obvious, is neither straightforward, natural, or obvious.
Common sense is really just another phrase for popular bias...
1)Puzzles about getting a solution that follows a set of rules, which can be deduced, and are reused from puzzle to puzzle. The game just checks that the rules are followed, so there is more than one valid solution sometimes. The different solutions might even have different effects.
2)Environmental puzzles, where the right solution is indicated by the environment. Without giving too much away, imagine that there's a line near the puzzle, matching the puzzle's grid, and the solution is just to trace that same line in the puzzle.
So there's never an arbitrary rule that you can't figure out. That said, a part that is difficult for some people is that they make assumptions about what the rules of the puzzles are, and the assumptions might be incomplete, or outright wrong. There's typically simple puzzles that are trying to teach you the rules. Part of the game's progression is to find those tutorial puzzles.
I'm only about 100 puzzles in but so far some of the coolest "aha!" moments have been from this realization.