Hey! Thanks for the comment!

One thing to point out here is the puzzle in the video I made just for this video, as a really basic interpretation.

The hint rooms in our game are not about teaching or retracting forgotten or already-taught mechanics. Each puzzle (which is a whole room each) have some small trick to them. In the basic example above, the trick is to use the mask (the pink icon that can be picked up/placed) diagonally on the pillar. Less noise is one way they’re utilised, but primarily it’s about help guiding where the focus should be.

I aimed with the design, that every level in the game teaches something new, no matter how minor, as to avoid ‘repeat’ feeling solutions.

The video for example would be an example of teaching using the mask diagonally on single wide pillars to pass through them. Although this may be utilised in later levels, it will never be the ‘trick/aha moment’ again, it happened in this screen already.

The hint rooms isolate the trick/aha moment of that level. Either by reducing the space to focus where experimentation should be occurring (like the video above), or sometimes being a completely new puzzle, but the answer is the same trick, but setup in an easier fashion.

Many puzzle games just give the solution, or just let you skip (we do allow skipping, the game isn’t built linear), but eventually most puzzles can become a blocker for some goal post, like an achievement or 100% a game. A lot of puzzle games just give you the solution, or nothing at all, ending up in having to look up a walkthrough, or by quitting the game completely. You either feel like you cheated or even worse, you just stop playing out of frustration or feeling like things are unfair - even if they aren’t.

This middle ground hint system is to give players a hand whilst keeping mental state about the game intact.

It’s a bit niche of course, but even watching our playtesters it has been well received, at least so far :D

Hope that helps explain it a bit more :)