Loophole

短小精悍的解密，大概5-8h，难度适中，后期有几关略难 比较突出的点是几种特殊道具与玩法结合的很自然，尤其是绿色蘑菇，一下把复杂程度提升了很多，且趣味性相当高（但是要数格子的关有点烦）。最后的结局也很有意思，[spoiler] 开头和结尾形成了一个闭环[/spoiler] 比较可惜的是感觉没有完全发挥出来几种道具的潜力，有机会再去试试社区关卡。还有就是每次要探完所有房间才知道怎么去设计，既然是独立的关卡不如一进去就直接能看到本关所有房间。另外有些关卡感觉有点点水，不是很精致，不过总体感觉很好

Reminds me of Induction, but simpler and more intuitive. While the game also features zero text guidance, it introduces tutorial-like levels guiding players to uncover how different items function and combine. I just wish the ending let you look down upon the thousands of 'yous' rushing through the time loops.

Some major annoyances of the game: There is no turn timer, so you have to count how many steps it takes before the level collapses every time.... You have to walk once through the level to see all roomes and see what each button even does. Rewind and restart could be better, since like every time travel game, if you messed up at the start, you have to undo everything and start over. At the end ok to good to maybe even great puzzle game... but held back by bad design decisions.

Loophole is a super smart puzzle game about time travel, assisting your future selves, and avoiding time paradoxes. I liked it a lot. [h3]The Mechanics of Time Travel[/h3] For the basic game mechanic, I recommend watching the trailer. Essentially, you control an alien-lizard-thing in a top-down perspective, and your goal is to reach the exit of the current area. However, you only have a limited number of turns (steps) to do so until the level starts blowing up row by row, and never enough to solve the puzzle all by your lonesome. So what do you do? You go into a timeline cloner which ends your current timeline, rewinds time to the start of the level, and spawns a new copy of you which begins at the cloner. At that point you control the new copy, while the previous timeline version follows your previous instructions until it walks into the cloner and vanishes. As a result, you solve puzzles by co-operating with your fellow timeline clones, who help you press down buttons, open doors, carry items, etc. The catch is that you must not cause a time paradox: if you didn't see something with timeline copy A, then during later timeline copies it must not happen within A's vision (which spans whichever room it's in): timeline copy B must not appear in its vision, and nor must adjacent doors open or items get picked up or placed down where they weren't there before. One interesting aspect of this mechanic is that it is not enough for you to reach the exit; a level only counts as won if you both reach the exit *and* any remaining timeline clones reach their cloning chambers without encountering a paradox. That's the game. Later puzzle regions mostly expand on this paradox mechanic, giving you more interesting ways to avoid paradoxes than just staying out of sight. [h3]Visuals & Clarity[/h3] Aesthetically, Loophole is rather limited in terms of art assets and presentation, but in terms of gameplay it uses the few assets it has very well. This kind of minimalism makes a lot of sense given the time loop mechanic which already makes levels visually complex enough. As-is, the visuals are quite clear. My one minor criticism here is that there are multiple color-coded items, and in the grey fog outside your room vision, they look insufficiently distinct. A far more annoying issue is that the near-top-down perspective makes it hard to tell when the red zones are not bordered by walls. That really tripped me up in the final puzzle section and thus slightly spoiled some of those puzzles for me. And finally, I really wish we could've more often seen adjacent levels from our own level, or that there was a way to continually replay previous solution loops, as it is quite aesthetically pleasing to watch your previous timeline clones continually solve their respective sections. So that seemed like a bit of a missed opportunity. [h3]Puzzles & Level Progression[/h3] I liked the puzzle difficulty here. On the lower end, easy puzzles are quick to solve while helping you gradually understand the initially very confusing timeline clone mechanic. And on the upper end, there's plenty of challenge here even though even lategame puzzles are always kept to a rather low number of puzzle-relevant objects. There's no in-game hint feature or anything, but I still only needed to look up ~3 puzzles (two in the final regular section, plus some parts of the final puzzle). Level progression is partly nonlinear: to progress to the next section, you need to solve like two thirds of the puzzles, but solving a puzzle only unlocks adjacent ones, so a few puzzles end up being mandatory. I wish the game had been less strict in that regard. Also, to reach the full ending, you need to solve all other puzzles. In terms of puzzle design, there were plenty of good puzzles here. And in the final regular puzzle section, there was one optional puzzle that outright blew me away with its crazyness, because you get multiple moments of trying a solution, realizing that it's impossible, adjusting your solution, realizing it's still impossible, etc. [h3]UI[/h3] There's an Undo, which is good and absolutely necessary. I just wish there had also been an on-screen clock to show you where in the timeline you are; as-is you occasionally need to count your steps or undo parts of your solution a few times to e.g. insert or remove a pause somewhere. There's one lategame puzzle which I found rather unreasonable because it expects you to solve a rather complicated puzzle pretty much entirely in your head. For these puzzles, it would've been very helpful if there had been an on-screen indicator of your entered button presses, like in e.g. [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/2830480/Gentoo_Rescue/]Gentoo Rescue[/url]. [h3]Conclusion[/h3] Highly recommended, provided you don't mind time travel mechanics. [quote]For more puzzle game reviews, news and everything puzzle-related, follow [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/25928931-Puzzle-Lovers/]Puzzle Lovers[/url] and check out our [url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/puzzlelovers]Steam group[/url].[/quote]

好玩不难 开头结尾很有意思

One of the best time-loop puzzle games I've seen in a while. The crux of most puzzles is avoiding paradoxes rather than simply getting to the end, which means you have to think about your past just as much as your future. Short, but fun the whole way through.

A fun puzzler that keeps it relatively simple (though sometimes you'll wish you could "edit" a snippet of code instead of having to rewind). Mind you, it's still a programming game, but a much more accessible abstraction. Doesn't wear out its welcome, and only a couple groaners. Also, a few really tricky ones. Pretty cozy game, all considered.

IT WAS VERY HARD

Short, great game I think in spite of how short it is, there are a few puzzles that felt same-y, and in general it wasn't too challenging. The game lets you move on to the next area with many levels still unfinished, so they could easily have made these much more challenging and interesting without hurting accessibility. Still, the visuals and theming is great, the main idea is great, and the level design feel extremely smooth and interesting all the way through. A very rewarding 3~5 hour experience. Would recommend!

Enjoyed this a lot. The controls are simple, and each mechanic is introduced gradually, building up to a final puzzle where you need to combine everything. The fact that everything's on a grid means you can count out your movements where needed, so there's no guessing or trying to count time, and there's no time pressure, only movement pressure, making it cosy-ish (you know you have as long as you need to figure it out, and an instant rewind if you messed it up). There's no explicit tutorial, so you have to figure things out via trial and error; if you don't like that then you probably won't enjoy this. That said, the puzzles introduce complicated mechanics slowly, you don't just step into the first sector and the puzzle is instantly the most complex you'll ever see... instead, each sector introduces one new idea (like the mushrooms that make you invisible to your past self) and you get a bunch of puzzles that both require that you figure out various ways to use that to your advantage and encourage you to play around until you have a solid grasp of it. My main critique would be the fact that you have to reveal the map as you go. Realistically, you're just going to run ahead and rewind again, and doing so doesn't really serve a purpose, so it's a bit of a waste of time to have to do it. It'd somewhat help immersion (the character doesn't know what's coming of course) IF there was a character/world to get immersed into -- but because the story is so simple, I don't think it adds much. I do think the negative review complaining about this is being a bit unfair about which the extent of the hidden bits of the level is the puzzle: they played for ~10 minutes, there's no way they started to get into the more complex mechanics that get revealed as the game goes on... but they're not wrong that it's a pain and that it doesn't add much of anything positive. I think that the suggestion about being able to edit your past actions makes sense too, but the way it was implemented (having to just rewind yourself) is probably more intuitive. I think rewinding yourself would be a bit fiddly. I love that now there's a level creator and community-created levels to try too; that means that there could be basically infinite puzzles to come back to now and then, or the fun of creating your own.