This dev has a really interesting perspective. Should be a very cool experience.

I think the puzzles have been clever but not devilish so far, but I’m only maybe 10-15% through them. In the first game the truly hard / mind bending stuff was realizing you needed to solve some harder puzzles by “breaking” the puzzles and getting items out of them and such. So far that dimension hasn’t shown up as much, but it’s early and knowing these developers they have some proper challenges in the game for people who want them.

Talos Principle 2 is just… wow. It’s been years since I played the first game and it’s remarkable how fast the sequel was able to get me back in the space of “I’m here to solve puzzles and argue philosophy…”. Everything I loved about Talos Principle has been polished or expanded, and the way the writers somehow managed to get me to accept that we need to solve a bunch of puzzles to advance the plot - AGAIN - is impressive.

I’m so happy the game is this good.

Talos Principle 2 is just… wow. It’s been years since I played the first game and it’s remarkable how fast the sequel was able to get me back in the space of “I’m here to solve puzzles and argue philosophy…”. Everything I loved about Talos Principle has been polished or expanded, and the way the writers somehow managed to get me to accept that we need to solve a bunch of puzzles to advance the plot - AGAIN - is impressive.

I’m so happy the game is this good.

Thinking through how to transition from my bus to a modular design feels like it’s leveled up my Factorio-fu by an order of magnitude lol. I realized that I don’t need to start with full block design as long as I can work towards getting everything on trains. That’s gotten me moving again and I’m well on my way to the first off planet resources now. What a great game.

Sounds like you’re doing it right! A good corp can help; I think it’s most important to get into something fun ASAP so you don’t think the whole game is just grinding missions or whatever. When I started I fell in with a small gang of wormhole explorers and eventually joined the big Reddit corp. Good times.

Cocoon - Big puzzle game fan but this one has me underwhelmed so far. It feels disappointingly linear, and I haven’t needed to think very hard to solve anything yet. The design and atmosphere is fantastic, but I hope it gets a little more confident in its mechanics soon (just 2hrs in).

Curse of the Golden Idol - Played the first DLC. Great stuff, still has all the weirdo charm of the main game with some new logic puzzles to figure out. I thought the last chapter here felt a little too straightforward to solve for how complex it seemed at first glance, but overall it was a good expansion. On to the next one!

Factorio - 70 hours into Space Exploration and currently trying to plan a transition of my base from a main bus design to city blocks. I started SE immediately after my first vanilla Factorio victory, so it’s been a bit of an uphill climb but very fun. I really enjoy reaching a new science tier and then pausing for a while as I automate and upgrade everything that I unlocked. No rush in space!

To this day RL is the only game I play with a claw grip for exactly this reason lol.

building your economic empire is definitely my favorite thing about the X series. X4F was pretty weak when I played it on release but I’ve heard it’s much better after a few years of updates.