![]() ![]() The voice over is omniscient, yet it’s you who’s talking. The narration seems to exist outside the game. Instead, he teases future revelations, briefly mentioning things likes “the caves” or “the ice fields” long before we ever see them, and by the time we do see them, we’ve forgotten what we were supposed to be expecting. The protagonist/narrator seems to know what all the symbolism means, but he doesn’t let us in on those meanings. MIND cares deeply about its story, but you won’t. I'm rubbish at it, of this there is no doubt.MIND: Path to Thalamus has ambitions of being a deeply personal and dreamy metaphor for loss and life, but its amazing dream imagery overshadows its poor narrative. There’s a nice touch that it’ll compare your solution with your chums’ on Steam, too, which might fire up some competitive edge. There’s no doubt that if you’re a brainbox, and enjoy a puzzler that’s more free-form, a bit sandboxy rather than aiming for a perfect solution, then there’s huge appeal here. ![]() And if you’re a SpaceChem fan, then it’s safe to say you’re going to be diving head-first into this.ġ7 pounds and 9 pence strikes me as a heck of a lot for an unfinished puzzle game in development, but then I don’t understand you young people and your new-fangled schemes. It’s very clear that the brains at Zachtronics are much bigger than my own, and kudos to them for creating a game that isn’t afraid to scare people off. I’ve stared blankly at puzzles, or aimlessly floated around them (thanks, jetpack), muttering to myself. I’ve barely got anywhere with the game, but despite the issues, I’ve had a rather good time not getting there. Sure, we’ve been captured by aliens, but it’s not like we’re getting probed – we’re being given jetpacks and asked to solve clever puzzles! Jetpacks, for goodness sakes! Were they sobbing about how bloody difficult it is, then yes, I could understand. I’m not entirely sure what it is that previous captives were so distraught about. Moments that seem to be extremely distressed. Dead bodies can be found on levels, with recorded logs capturing their final moments. Phew, thank goodness I have this website to say it on instead.Ī lovely touch is the slight maintenance of the story as you go. It’s an odd, seeming contradiction, but sadly there’s not room to give a more nuanced explanation there. “Did you have fun solving this puzzle?” Yes. I think this is best reflected in how I respond to the survey at the end of each puzzle. I’m pretty certain some much clearer explanation of what blocks actually are is heavily necessary. I’m yet to decide how in favour of it I am. And while less hand-holding is extremely welcome across most gaming, it’s interesting to see the effect of having too little. ![]() They’d likely create a puzzle where you were carefully guided to do a very basic version of this fusing. Most other puzzlers would tell you that the blocks that make fizzy lights are there to fuse other blocks together. ![]() However, once stumbled upon, the incredibly tricky fun does begin. It’s extremely clumsy, leaving out key instructions that aren’t fun to stumble upon for yourself. And that happy-go-lucky comedy tutorial will have in no way prepared you. You’re then seemingly approved for further work in a beautifully timed and very silly sequence featuring some sort of alien overlord, at which point it abandons most of the façade and just becomes a straight puzzle game, challenges selected from a menu screen. Quickly you’re shown that this can be used to create factory lines that transfer other cubes from one place to t’other. You’re stamped into a special suit, which equips you with the ability to place cubes into the environment. It’s an alien kidnapping! You wake to find yourself in a series of chambers, forced to complete very basic challenges to progress through rooms. It opens with you sat in a car, driving down a long road in what looks like the American mid-west, when bright lights flicker about you and all fades away. Which is a surprise, after its glorious opening. Firstly, because it’s a brutally tricky puzzle game, and secondly – at this stage in its alpha - because it’s horribly poorly introduced. Have a trailer:Īnd, as mentioned, good gravy it’s hard. Infinifactory looks at them and says, “Pah! For babies!” An obvious evolution from the developer’s previous SpaceChem, this is a three dimensional block-arranging puzzler, where you’re tasked with creating factory lines that move blocks about in certain formations. I’ve been delighted by the recent spate of 3D first-person puzzlers, like Mind: Path To Thalamus, The Talos Principle, Puzzle Dimension, and of course Portal and Portal 2. Oh my goodness, Infinifactory is difficult. ![]()
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