Taiji

小巧惊艳👍

A good logical puzzler game. some caveats: to get the full enjoyment of the game, you have to be willing to seek out every possible puzzle and work things out yourself. there's no real story to speak of, all the enjoyment you derive will be from solving the puzzles themselves. I was tepid on the game when I reached the first ending - it was fine but a bit short. Seeking out the optional puzzles and the 'true' end nearly doubled my playtime and left me feeling very satsfied. the puzzles here are all pencil puzzle styled grids, no rules explained, the kind where you have to figure things out for yourself. sometimes it's frustrating and unclear what the answer to something is, but you have to be willing to wander around and look for other places, there's usually a section with easier puzzles that let you understand the rules. there were a few times i felt rug-pulled by the game getting sneaky with the mechanics and trying to trick me. however, once the game stops being obscurantist with its rules, the late game puzzles are very satisfying - you can always work out a path logically, but it's usually not trivial to do so. there's obviously heavy inspiration from The Witness, however, I think the formula doesn't work quite as well in 2D, you don't have the immersive aspect of exploration, and environmental puzzles are all pretty trivial. I know some didn't like the pretentiousness of The Witness, but without the audio recordings and videos this game feels a bit bare - there's this somewhat big world but there's nothing to interact with in it, nothing to really find. the music is very nice though. still, it's a relatively compact game that can be gotten through in a reasonable amount of time, while building on its puzzle mechanics to create something satisfying.