TIS-100

[Draco18s]

I was hamstrung by the lack of pieces.

Lack of pieces is the point of their puzzles. To produce something workable under severe constraints and make it better than everyone else's under same constraints. If that's something you do not like - and I expect many don't - the game is not for you.

Its not that.  Well, partially.  Its more that its a puzzle with exactly one solution.

You remember how Portal was so good because it said "here's a room, there's the exit, go?" and some people found shortcuts or would do things slightly differently?  Remember how Portal 2 didn't have that?

That's why I don't like Space Chem (etc).

I had to work really god damn hard to solve a puzzle in Portal 2 in an alternative manner.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=14770601
It's a fair ways in, if I recall.  That was the first one I managed to solve without all the pieces I was given (the task was "get the cube on the other side of the barrier."  Note that both portals are back there too, meaning I did it from this side).  If the puzzle had been set up with this solution as the intended one, I'd have quit the game.  Not because it was too hard, but because it required that I divine exactly what the developers were thinking and execute it with no room for error.

I'm really enjoying Talos Principle, many many of its puzzles have alternate solutions.  It is in fact through figuring out some of those alternatives that you get to collect the stars needed to unlock some extra areas.  Many times these stars are put out in plain view and taunt you to figure out how to solve the puzzle again using one fewer device, so you can carry it forward to unlock an extra door or jump over a wall.

Or to get the item outside of the puzzle all together.

The only "flaw" I see with the game is its hint system.  While cleverly structured into the game, the number of hints you get is 3.  Total.  There are 49 puzzles that give you red colored tetris bits (the hardest ones to solve, excepting the areas accessible via the stars).  I found three I was having trouble with before I even unlocked my first hint.  Admittedly in one case I had forgotten the puzzle's title ("Deception") and was fooled.  In the other two cases it was due to not having discovered a particular mechanic (placing boxes on top of roaming drones that explode and kill you if you get close) and having not-seen a door at long range that held what I needed behind it (I opened it by accident at one point, just at the right time, for a drone to come out and blow up a sentry turret, solving my problem).

Anyway.  I'm not trying to say that TIS-100 is a bad game, I'm just explaining why I don't like that dev's stuff.  They're good games, I just don't like them because I want a touch more freedom to experiment.  Let me half-ass it now and later on make it important that it be perfect so I can come back and analyze how to make what I did better.  Make execution time important, utilizing three or more prior components (in this case, the sort function would be one).  Have it so that only one of those three needs to be perfect and the other two just need to function.  If I haven't optimized any of the three, I'll have to go back and pick one to improve.

(If you think about it like stars, a 1 star is "complete" and a 3 star is "perfectly optimized."  So in this case, out of 9 total stars from the previous solutions, I'd need to have 5 or 6 in order to get the first star for this puzzle.  If I've only got 4, I have 3 options open to my in order to get another one).

[eRe4s3r]

If you live for alternate solutions and tuning and improving a convoluted design to perfection and absolutely no "you have to do this exactly this way" like in SpaceChem, then Infinifactory ( http://steamcommunity.com/app/300570/ )  is definitely the only Zachtronic game for you Although it has a few (way, way advanced) levels where I feel like they only have a very specific solution. But for everyone one of these, you have maps where you are basically told, here is what you have, there is what you have to build and you need to get it there..... good luck ;p

From what you say, this kind of method of solving puzzles should work in your puzzle games (brute force approach, throwing as much material at the problem that it literally CAN NOT fail
(Goes to a Screenshot by me on Steam)
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=466051207

And that is why I loved Infinifactory... and hated SpaceChem (especially later levels..., where there is literally only 1 way (mechanically speaking) of solving a puzzle)

[Traveller]

I'm liking TIS-100 because most of my solutions are convoluted and bad, and I can look at the histogram to see how much better everyone else has managed to do them.  It doesn't force me to perfect it, which is nice, I can do it on my own time for bragging rights and comparisons versus friends.

Quite a lot of the puzzles have "obvious" and bad solutions, and some really fussy and totally nonobvious manipulation you can do to optimize.  They usually give you enough cores to spare that, when you don't use them all, you can at least feel like you didn't do the worst possible job.

And of course a lot of the later problems are just plain malicious, but they're stated so simply that you can come up with solutions in the shower.  Or the solution is obvious, but the trick is compressing it into a tiny amount of space.  (Like, sort 50 numbers in the range 0-9.)  There's evil stuff like drawing character strings to video output, or implementing a drawing program where your input is path length and turn angle.  Eh.  It's been a long time since I've played a game where you can figure out puzzles while not at your computer, by gesticulating wildly at the air to figure out how you want your data flow to work.


...Man, I really loved The Talos Principle.  I do think that their hint system was a good idea though.  You can only get hints on red puzzles (ones that you don't need to unlock all the areas or get the basic ending), because those are the only ones hard enough to need it.  And since they don't block you, you're expected to come back a few times over the course of however many days you play the game, and try and rethink them a lot.  It encourages solving things with your own brain and really earning your victory.  Remember how the Myst series didn't give any hints?  I kinda miss that.  Puzzle games like Riven used to take months or more, especially the most epic text adventures (Zork Zero).  Hell you could drag that one out over a year or more.

Is that not something people do anymore?  I think that's a real shame.  "Nintendo Hard" is annoying when it's fake difficulty like really bad jumping puzzles, but thinking games ought to be savored instead of rushed through.

[zespri]

...Man, I really loved The Talos Principle. 

If you did not understand that yet - I personally like TIS-100. But Talos Principle was a huge disappointment for me. It was just like Portal only worse in every possible way. Portal was a great game. I was very intrigued by the talos game before I bought it, but when I actually played a few levels the game play appeared dull and uninspiring to me. And the stupid pieces/shape puzzles are just annoying, I don't believe they sell a collection of them as a separate game.

[Traveller]

The stand-alone tetrominoes game isn't being sold.  It's free.  I'm really not sure why it's out there, but...

[Draco18s]

...Man, I really loved The Talos Principle. 

If you did not understand that yet - I personally like TIS-100. But Talos Principle was a huge disappointment for me. It was just like Portal only worse in every possible way. Portal was a great game. I was very intrigued by the talos game before I bought it, but when I actually played a few levels the game play appeared dull and uninspiring to me. And the stupid pieces/shape puzzles are just annoying, I don't believe they sell a collection of them as a separate game.

I agree that Talos Principle does things "not as well" as Portal did, but I am enjoying the other mechanics that they have created as well as the story.  The tetrominoes thing isn't the greatest thing in the world, but I recognize that they needed another puzzle mechanic that one was both easy to implement and with a wide complexity rating (bigger grid: harder.  certain pieces: harder*).

My only "real" complaint is that a second mechanic was not introduced soon enough.  You had to learn the first mechanic and then complete like six more "optional" puzzles before you could unlock the next tool.  After that, though, it was pretty well spaced out as there were enough puzzles with enough variety that I wasn't getting bored like I had with the "move the jammers around" early game.

*The squares are a pony and a half to deal with.

[Traveller]

I just wish that the very last tool (the platform) was more interesting.  It felt almost tacked on.  Very single-use.  Would have been more fun if you could, like, drop a block on a platform, and force it to be carried around, but I guess the recorder mechanic by itself already covered that.  Eh.

[Draco18s]

I just wish that the very last tool (the platform) was more interesting.  It felt almost tacked on.  Very single-use.  Would have been more fun if you could, like, drop a block on a platform, and force it to be carried around, but I guess the recorder mechanic by itself already covered that.  Eh.

Platform has to be paired with the recorder, yeah.  And while it's not the world's greatest mechanic, it added some more stuff you could do with the recorder.