2025 GOTY is here

blue sky

GO THE FUCK BACK

i-it's deep and meaningful!

Its on gamepass so Ill try it atleast
Its a puzzle game/roguelite mix. I assume the Outer Wilds comparison is because you just work towards a "once you know it, you can never replay the game" type solution.

Is this another shat out idea made in an indie game jam?

part first-person puzzle, part-strategy deckbuilder, part-rougelite, part-narrative mystery box

it's another Gone Home

why do journalist love this shit?

It was a groundbreaking game.

it's like a copy of another, better game

Well why not boot up the better game then.

Made for Puzzle sickos.

why are you niggers so negative and cynical?

Because we're White.

it's going to filter all the retards
and they'll call it a walking sim to cope

High IQ puzzle game is the defining White Man genre

V IS PAUL TASSI BOARD

Shame about this low iq roguelite then.

Be me in 2024

Hear about this game

It looks kind of cool, I want to try it

See good reviews from people that played the demo

See that it's coming out soon

Keep hearing good things about it

On MythicSpoiler checking out the cards for the next MTG set

Turns out the guy from this website is the creator of this game and advertising it there

This is literally a MTGchad game

Apparently it's a game that is sort of like drafting in MTG

Possibly a draftchad game

Looks like too much of a roguelite
Anyways, check this out: store.steampowered.com/app/3521490/Mystery_of_the_Malign/

Anon. you are giving them free advertising. Jason jewer said it was the best game ever. So you in jest and retaliation make a joke out of it. People flock to the new game which probably won't be worth the bandwidth to download. It becomes a major seller even though it's a 6/10 game.
You've all done this numerous times. Stop taking the bait.

Hey I think I remember you and your game from a previous thread a while ago, how's it going?

I'm better now. I have a demo out. I've been following Blue Prince for some time but I see it as too much of a modern game that's way too softened and casual friendly

It seemed like a typical puzzle game from the demo. I don't get why it's suddenly getting hype

so much kike shilling for this game

So how pozzed it’s?

Downloaded the demo

Bummer I was sort of interested in this game until now.

They said all this about Disco Elysium too

it's easy and casual enough to be beaten by journos

roguelike

dropped

Post pics of your developper socks or I won't wishlist.

puzzle game

but RNG card based mechanic to spawn the rooms

time limit

I'll download the demo.

I've been playing a lot of detective games lately and also looking for games with very minimal handholding. But it's been such a frustrating journey. Do you have more recs? What are your influences?

If I'm using Obsidian instead of a notebook, is it considered cheating?

It was pretty fun trying it out during Steam Next Fest last year but all indications from trying it out didn't give me GOTY vibes, it was at best going to be a niche breakout indie game. I think this is just journalists being dumb when we're 1/4 into the year.

I don't have developer socks I just think late 90s games looked better.
Well MotM is similar to some obvious ones like Obra Dinn and Case of the Golden Idol but recently there was the Roottress are Dead which is also pretty competent and enjoyable.
There's also Her Story and Unheard but those are shorter and more simple. Outer Wilds is also one I consider a detective game.
Grunn is exploration-discovery-learning but I wouldn't say it's a detective game

I just think late 90s games looked better

I agree.

I don't have developer socks

You straight or something?

What engine are you using?

GoldSrc I wish. It's Unity

le quirky dev joke

Fuck you, just hit "Ignore" on your game's Steam Page.

Jej, nice

Quirky? Dev joke? Anonymous, I'm being completely serious

Good, I love all of these. If your cases really have logical complexity and minimal handholding, I'll happily buy the game.

Few minutes into the demo. I don't mind the low-poly style.

You start off with way too much text/dialogue exposition. I want some form of narrative in my detective games but I want the game to let me figure it out. I don't enjoy VNs or tedious "press to to skip dialogue" simulators. Try more show, less tell. For example a newspaper clipping in my inventory that I'd check out on my own would be better at conveying the intro exposition from the friend about what happened at the museum.

And you could make dialogue snappier. You don't need to have that one second delay between each screen of dialogue. I hate when VNs or other games do shit like this. Don't you? If I repeat a dialogue, then it gets annoying. Why do I have to click the top right arrow to skip dialogue? Text should skip when I press E or do a left click anywhere. Why do I have to press E to look at the mailbox instead of a left click, or why not both?

UI could use more work. Why do I already have many listed theories when I have barely began investigating myself? It feels like you're placing ideas in my head I haven't thought of myself, betraying the promise. If you're gonna borrow from Golden Idol with the test questions, they have a good UI idea by making names or verbs sections in different colors.

Wish you good luck anon. I hope you take it as constructive criticism from a fellow lover of this genre who wants you to succeed. I'll keep playing the rest of the demo.

I'm not going to address all of these but thank you for giving your thoughts. I will just say that this this a game which intentionally was built around the concepts of dialogue really mattering, minimal handholding, and dealing with absolutely overwhelming amounts of information. I did it that way because other games shy away from it. A lot of design choices were made to keep this approach from breaking the game. It's not perfect but believe me I've seen what happens when it's done in various other ways.

clinical depression

Also something I think is very important: The dialogue plays a vital role in hammering the context down repeatedly. This is because it's always possible to miss some dialogue, and context is everything in a detective puzzle. It's a delicate balancing act.

oh I love puzzle games

"rogulite"

dropped. I will stick with thinkygames recommendations

thinkygames.com/reviews/blue-prince-review/

huh? i'm surprised. i mean ill almost never put down indie success, but from what i remember of people talking about the demo through that demo fest thing. The game wasn't what they expected it to be. It was some nerdy math card game shit more than actual puzzling

There’s some Myst and Riven in there (The Witness - not so much), some Outer Wilds, and some Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. Blue Prince feels like an endless tessellation of locked doors, clues, and mysteries, like a puzzle box designed by M.C. Escher. It's certainly one of the best puzzle games I've played this year and might very well end up being the best puzzle game of 2025.

wait a minute... that screen

Turns out it was actual puzzling underneath the "nerdy math card game". The roguelite elements are a cover for the real, non-random puzzles underneath.

I looked at a couple of videos and I can see the Outer Wilds comparison. It seems like each room has a semi-fixed puzzle/reward, but the order you encounter the rooms is semi-random and up to your choice. With the time limit, the goal would be to plan your steps to solve the mystery and find the secret room before the day ends.
Not sure where the StS comparison comes in, beyond just general roguelike/lite conventions.

If it's really popular then its puzzles must be shit.

You draft what room you want when you open the door """"just like"""" slay the spire. Apparently the puzzles usually extend beyond one room, requiring you to find the right rooms to get all the pieces you need, probably over multiple runs.

Seem to be stuck now. Wish you had proper sprinting speed and a jump button because going around the park looking for something I may have missed in the flowers areas is very annoying.

I played the demo once and I don't get how the doors work, cause you can't rotate the room orientation right? So you just get shit options and barricade yourself in.

Doom came out 20 years before gone home

now it's been 20 years after gone home release

Where did the time go frens?

So what's the angle in targeting this game for shitposting? Reverse psychology advertising? Culture war idiocy?

Huh? It's literally not anything like Gone Home. Where are you fuckers getting your talking points?

Oh man that was painful... I guess the trigger to end the demo was having to find every clue in the garden - no deduction involved. I missed one that easily blended with the background (the chalk near the entrance). So it turned into garbage pixel hunting with agonizingly slow movement speed, the worst type of point and click nonsense instead of what you'd want from an investigation game, and that ruined my interest in the demo. Please don't do that in the main game. Let the player enter the museum or go wherever non-linearly if they want, let the player miss some clues, make mistakes and deal with consequences or revisit on their own (or at worst, do like Golden Idol, and have a clue counter telling the player they have 14 out of 15 clues needed to progress, so they can know when to go from clue collection phase to deduction phase, because here I had zero feedback on what was actually required to progress, was I supposed to fill the notebook, was I supposed to deal with the ARC thing in the car or collect samples...? No these had no purpose to end the demo... Now I can understand it must be hard to make a demo out of a "one big case" kind of game, but still, that makes me leave on a bad impression).

I'm not playing this slop on principle because you didn't buy an ad.

Bro what the fuck is this profile picture

roguelike

Trash tedium like all games in that genre.

metroidbrainia

I'm sold.
Schreier might be a huge fag, but I'll trust him this one time.

When I played the demo it seemed like there was a bunch of random shit in disparate rooms that must be related to some puzzle or another, and you have to keep notes on where they are. Several game elements are noted in-game, but those aren't.

roguelike

Fuck off. If you like this shit you are a retard who probably like other retard shit like MMOs and Gacha games.

I will take all of this into consideration going forward and I will keep it in mind for adjustments.
I will only let you know so that there's no misunderstanding - the demo doesn't require finding everything to allow the end screen. I don't really think reaching the end screen is necessary to understand what the game is about. I put it there more as a hard stop for people looking for one.
There is no solving required to progress and the full game is barely gated. Yeah I don't know what to tell you. It varies based on player expectations. I'm only going to ask you to keep and open mind and give the game the benefit of the doubt because gameplay-wise a lot of this only pays off when you experience it in the full non-linear scale. I won't reveal anything.
Your feedback was very valuable but I will warn you that if you're a completionist you might dislike the game. It's not built to favour completionism.

Are there any good recent puzzle games out now?

No worries I'll keep an open mind, I like the general approach especially if the full game is non-linear and open-ended as you claim. So is it just gonna be one big case, or multiple smaller ones?

Do you have an estimated release date?

puzzleslop that'll be forgotten about in a year while 100 people total won't shut up about it for 10 years

Baba is you is still the best puzzle game I ever played.

It's one case all in the museum. There's a few minor 'mysteries' that have to be ironed out to determine if they are connected. No exact release date but development is mostly done and it will be sometime this year.

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes.
Rise of the Golden Idol
Riven remake (they changed enough that it'll be a new experience)