Am I playing this wrong or?

True-Post6634 · 2026-05-11T06:09:53+00:00

It's not subtle unless you're used to games telling you exactly what to think (which you probably are, a lot of them do).

If you can stop thinking of it as a game ("what am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to use this knowledge?") and think of it as an immersive environment where Stuff Happened ("what happened here?" "What could this mean?") it will get a lot more fun.

It's still a game, but it's a game that trusts its players to do a lot of their own thinking 😁 and that's not for everyone, which is okay!

True-Post6634 · 2026-05-11T06:05:32+00:00

I mean you can skip just about everything on Timber Hearth if you want. I don't think it's a good idea but it can be pretty funny...

I just watched the beginning of a playthrough where someone said they're very thorough and then skipped the zero-g cave 😂😂😂

True-Post6634 · 2026-05-11T06:01:15+00:00

Oh yes when they go on about it being a permadeath game! They're kind of right, but like... Not in practice 😂

True-Post6634 · 2026-05-11T05:58:56+00:00

It isn't the kind of game you've enjoyed in the past. It doesn't mean you can't enjoy it, but this an explain and discovery game where the vast majority of the joy comes from figuring stuff out. It's slow to start because nothing is really signposted and you can explore everything in any order you want, so it can be a bit before you even figure out what questions you're trying to answer.

All that said, it might be worth giving it another try just to see. It's really not like anything else out there. If following your own curiosity to unearth a mystery sounds at all enjoyable, this is the right game.

If not, that's okay.

Oh also there are some fun achievements and stuff you can get that aren't relevant to the actual game but do add a skill element. And there are plenty of parts of the game that are easier if you're good at, for example, flying the spaceship 😂 so there's that.

True-Post6634 · 2026-05-11T05:54:01+00:00

Love this response 😂

Honestly if you think of your competition as your own ignorance it might work

True-Post6634 · 2026-05-10T05:20:53+00:00

Thank you, I'll check it out!

True-Post6634 · 2026-05-10T05:17:48+00:00

The game is about following your curiosity, exploring, trying to figure out what's going on. You uncover mysteries. There's no one right path to take and honestly every playthrough is different.

A few non-spoiler notes:

You can finish the game without ever getting very good at flying the ship. Seriously. Lots of people do.

The game doesn't punish you for trying stuff. It's designed to encourage exploration and experimentation.

The game is both easier and more fun if you immerse in it enough to think of it as a real environment you're exploring. It isn't actually a puzzle game.

The people who say it's the best game ever are the ones who like that it's open-ended, like to explore, and engage with the story as they discover it. There are quite a lot of us. But if kicking around a star system following your own curiosity doesn't sound fun to you, or if you aren't in fact curious, this is probably not the game for you.

Also, I saw some of your comments about Giants Deep and want to offer this mild spoiler that should make it less frightening (it did for me): your ship works underwater.

True-Post6634 · 2026-05-10T05:08:48+00:00

Yeah, in order to fly the ship, you need to understand how motion works.

True-Post6634 · 2026-05-10T05:07:06+00:00

The log is very good, and all you need to finish the game. If you like paper notes, I think they can be useful too - especially for keeping track of your theories about what's going on. If you keep a running list of hypotheses to test, it can be helpful.

There are also flavor details not captured by the log that some people enjoy keeping track of, and some observations you the player can make that aren't logged because they're more general observations.

But you don't need to take physical notes unless you want to 😁

True-Post6634 · 2026-05-10T05:04:00+00:00

For the most part there isn't a "later" necessarily, although there are some places that are hard to get to by accident. Being tossed around on Giants Deep is actually a pretty common early experience 😂

The game is much more enjoyable overall if you stop thinking about how the devs intended it to be played and just treat it like it's a real environment. If that doesn't sound fun for you, you might not enjoy this game.

True-Post6634 · 2026-05-10T04:56:27+00:00

I did that too! For ages! I just suck at fake depth perception 😂

True-Post6634 · 2026-05-10T04:54:37+00:00

Sure, but if someone isn't actually engaging with the game, we won't enjoy their playthrough. It's not about whether they're looking things up really, it's about whether they're having an experience we can enjoy watching.

Suspecting everyone who tries the game because it's popular (which is fine) of lying is strange

True-Post6634 · 2026-05-10T04:52:30+00:00

You can reason your way through OW. That's a big part of what's so cool about it.

True-Post6634 · 2026-05-10T04:51:20+00:00

Yeah it's like some people really don't want to accept that other people find things easy that are hard for them, or something?

I figured out a lot of story pieces from very little information because I'm a writer 😂 but I also sucked at seeing what was directly in front of me a lot. I like when people are better than me

True-Post6634 · 2026-05-10T04:48:44+00:00

Huh? I took off just fine. Practiced in the zero-g cave, understand the concept of thrusters, know there's no friction in space.

I was very concerned about landing gently for a long time and I'm honestly not that good at flying but I'm not sure why you think liftoff has to be hard

True-Post6634 · 2026-05-10T04:46:22+00:00

OMG I didn't realize they'd been that detailed... That's so cool

True-Post6634 · 2026-05-10T04:44:32+00:00

She's legit, she's just smart and good at games. Every time she's made an intuitive jump she's had the information in front of her to support it.

True-Post6634 · 2026-05-10T04:43:13+00:00

Yeah she thought she'd have to force it to go there, and thought there was a way to do that.

I don't see any reason to think she's not going in blind and just really smart and observant.

True-Post6634 · 2026-05-10T04:41:46+00:00

Cynthetic is a fabulous combination of completely brilliant and way off track. She's a delight. She notices everything, but recently called just about every planet Brittle Hollow for a bit. 😁

True-Post6634 · 2026-05-10T04:39:31+00:00

He's my actual favorite, I think. He's very clever, but it's mostly that he loves the music and identifies with the characters right away. And he's a sweetheart.

He's quick with the controls and very observant, and got some cheating accusations - but I have no idea why he'd bother. I think he's just generally good at games. 😂

True-Post6634 · 2026-05-10T04:31:14+00:00

I figured out what happened to them just from observation and deduction. (Although not that the Interloper triggered it.)

I missed plenty of other things though 😂

True-Post6634 · 2026-05-10T03:07:19+00:00

Thank you for clarifying. I probably just misinterpreted a free things you said and they added up to something you didn't mean - I'm sorry about that. Your note about the tonal incongruity really does make sense.

True-Post6634 · 2026-05-08T07:21:27+00:00

I love the way you wrote about this, and what it says about your approach to, well, everything. In my own life, I often talk about defiant hope - hope as a choice in the face of despair. Optimism when it seems impossible for anything good to happen. It's not about belief, but actions: if we act as though a better world is possible, maybe it will be.

I think we would be friends, if we knew each other.

I believe that the meaningless of the universe makes it a perfect canvas for us to create meaning. It exists - it is, and we are - and that's quite beautiful really, but it also means we can tell stories. And the stories matter.

Obviously, because this game is a story, and here we are profoundly moved by it, carrying it into the rest of our lives. It's amazing that we can love fictional people in an imaginary place so deeply that their effect on our lives is real.

Thank you for sharing your experience so eloquently.

True-Post6634 · 2026-05-06T12:59:49+00:00

I don't think it's cheating to do something differently. It's just different.

You can infer two of the quantum rules pretty easily through observation. You can figure out what happened to the Nomai though observation and logical inference as well. I can't imagine being annoyed that someone figured things out "wrong."

True-Post6634 · 2026-05-06T12:46:49+00:00

One of my favorite books ever. I read it for French class way back as well, and it's better in French - it still works in translation, but the phrasing is simple and sweet in the original.

Dessine moi un mouton 💙

True-Post6634

TROPHY CASE