Yep! Season 2 is already well in development. There'll probably be a little gap between the seasons, but we'll probably have some bonus content to entertain you during the wait.

Really glad you're enjoying it!

Right, for a small site that's mostly static content, it's not going to matter. It's really causing problems for the Thinky Games site though.

And half the pages they go to are not even valid pages. What is the actual point? The waste of energy must be horrendous.

Yep, exactly!

I'll be starting a new video series of yet another short puzzle game tomorrow, so please do subscribe if you want to see more games like these! www.youtube.com/@JoePlaysPuz...

The Apothecary of Trubiz - cure the townsfolk's ailments, but your book of potions is written in a fictional language that needs deciphering. Cool mix of Strange Horticulture and language deciphering puzzles.

Buy: store.steampowered.com/app/4083190/...
Watch: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPjP...

Sisyphus is a Bug - a very condensed metroidbrainia experience. Learn platforming tech to roll your ball of dung up a hill within 60 seconds. Lots of great discoveries. The second level was maybe a little too fiddly.

Buy: store.steampowered.com/app/3971000/...
Watch: www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPfM...

FWIW, I personally really enjoyed the demo! 😄 My video is embedded in the article in case you want to hear my thoughts on it.

Yeah, it becomes a lot harder to draw that line. But for something I was stuck on late in the game, I asked others if there's a clue for what I need to do, and they responded "not really, you just have to 'get it'", which feels like way too far away from wherever the line might be, haha.

I guess in general I'm fine with community puzzles that actually require multiple people to be involved and are clear about that (maybe each person gets different info). I'm more bothered when they're only really "community" puzzles because you need 1000 players just so 1 stumbles into the answer.

So things I love:
- Games with deep secrets
- Games that have stuff that many players might not see

Things I don't love:
- Puzzles/secrets that are only difficult by being very obscure and underclued.

It's often assumed that to do the first 2 things, you have to do the 3rd, but I don't think so!

I agree with you! I think it's easy to conflate my "why are these puzzles being made difficult through obscurity?" with "I want to solve 100% of a game". I'm generally fine with not 100%ing something, but regardless, I think the puzzles should be designed for a satisfying solve.

This is all sounding quite negative, so just to repeat that I really love a lot of the game and admire how much heart has been put into it. It's incredibly impressive.

I don't necessarily think that the goal of a puzzle game should be to solve every puzzle, but I do think puzzles should be designed for people to enjoy solving them. I find it jarring for a game that's about a love of problem solving to then be so adversarial to players who want to solve it.

I think there could have been another off-ramp between the will and the next one.

And for that next one, it does get more dramatic and feels like an ending, but then that's not actually the ending of that bit. Instead it gives you one more thing to do for a very anticlimactic ending. It's so weird.

Interesting, I felt like after the first ending, there weren't enough off-ramps. The will is maybe the next best stopping point, but it didn't feel like an ending to me. If it showed a cutscene and the credits, that would be clearer.

It feels like a design trend that's held up entirely by people who want to be smug about knowing things, but the only reason they know is because they looked it up.