73 lines
4.5 KiB
HTML
73 lines
4.5 KiB
HTML
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<html lang='en'>
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<title>gome — parabox</title>
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<a href='..'>back to gomepage</a>—<a href='.'>journal</a>
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<main>
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<article>
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<h1 id='title'>I played <i>Patrick’s Parabox</i></h1>
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<time datetime='Mon, 26 Dec 2022 22:30:00 CST'>26 Dec. 2022, 10:30 PM</time>
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<p>
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It’s been a while since I played a really good puzzle game.
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The last really great one was <i>The Witness</i>.
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The central mechanic (tracing paths through mazes) was simple to understand, but presented a lot of possible variations.
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</p><p>
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I appreciated how the pacing of the game gives you time to build mastery over the various puzzle elements.
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Generally, each puzzle is based on one key insight. Once you solve that puzzle, you’ve learned something new about the game.
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Subsequent puzzles could then build on that understanding, giving a steady sense of progression without overwhelming the player.
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On top of having some very challenging, delightful, and satisfying puzzles, <i>The Witness</i> has great aesthetics too.
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</p><p>
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Ever since I played through <i>The Witness</i> a few years ago, I hadn’t gotten into another puzzle game.
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It’s not for lack of trying.
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I’ve started a number of them, including <i>Snakebird</i>, <i>Baba Is You</i>, and <i>Stephen’s Sausage Roll</i>.
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Each time, I would enjoy it for a while (I think they’re all good games), but eventually I’d get stuck on a hard puzzle and rapidly lose interest.
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</p><p>
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I don’t think I bounced off these games because I’m bad at puzzles.
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I was able to solve every puzzle I encountered in <i>The Witness</i>, which has some pretty tough ones.*
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However, most if its puzzles are static screens you can take in and reason about in one eyeful.
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These other games feature puzzles that take sequential turns, so the state of the puzzle changes over time.
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So for a while, I thought I might just be bad at turn-based puzzles.
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</p>
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<img src='img/parabox.webp' width='593' height='537' class='no-border' />
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<p>
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Fortunately, I recently had a great time playing a turn-based puzzle game: <i>Patrick’s Parabox</i>.
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The game is a <i>Sokoban</i>-style game, which means you push boxes around a grid.
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The twist is that some boxes have smaller worlds inside of them that you can shrink down into and enter.
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This is only the first twist of many.
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The game does a great job of keeping things interesting with a small set of simple mechanics.
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</p><p>
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It also does a great job at pacing, teaching you important insights as you go, just like <i>The Witness</i>.
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I think that pacing is the key to keeping my interest in a puzzle game, because I need that sense of mastery.
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When I got stuck on a particularly tough puzzle, I was confident I already had all the tools I needed to solve it, so I would persist, rather than lose interest.
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</p><p>
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My favorite unexpected thing about the game is just how funny many of the puzzles are.
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It’s not that there’s some additional comedy element. I mean that the actual logic of the puzzles made me laugh.
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There are all these wonderful surprises in the solutions, things that seem crazy or goofy, but actually work according to the rules laid out.
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That was a delight I had not had in a puzzle video game before.
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</p><p>
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Have you played <i>Patrick’s Parabox</i>?
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What is your favorite puzzle game?
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How is its pacing?
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Let me know your thoughts at my Ctrl-C email: <code>gome<span style='user-select: none;'> ​</span>@<span style='user-select: none;'> ​</span>ctrl-c.club</code>.
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</p><p class='footnote'>
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* I’m particularly proud of how few tries it took me to beat “The Challenge”.
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</p>
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</article>
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</main>
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</body>
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</html>
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