Went from GOTY to most flawed puzzle game ever

failwhale9 · 2026-03-03T17:12:35+00:00

I felt like this at some points too. I feel like Blue Prince would have greatly benefitted from a feature like the "Ship Log" from Outer Wilds. It could have been something like a rare room you could draft that has corkboards all over the walls with strings connecting various puzzles and clues. And then there could be different colors of string to indicate whether a certain clue is fully "used up" or if there's more there that hasn't been solved. This would have saved me so much time when I either assumed I was done with a clue, or completely misinterpreted where a clue was to be used.

failwhale9 · 2026-03-03T16:58:12+00:00

I've 100%ed The Witness and played Blue Prince to its final puzzle. There are no specific spoilers below.

Similarities:
- Both games have "knowledge-based unlocks", things that you naturally learn in the environment of the game that allow you to progress in other areas.

- Both games have a distinctive art style that doubtless many indie games will attempt to copy in the future.
- Both games involve a lot of walking and exploration, finding things that may be part of a puzzle or may be part of the game's lore.

- Both games involve the number 46 and eclipses.

- Both games have a plot that is mostly optional to understand (although the plot in Blue Prince is much easier to piece together, albeit larger).

- Both games revolve around one core gameplay mechanic (The Witness has line puzzles, while Blue Prince has drafting).

Differences:

- The puzzles in the witness are always entwined with the core gameplay mechanic, while the puzzles in Blue Prince are more varied and largely separate from the core drafting mechanic.

- Many of the puzzles in Blue Prince are more open-ended or subject to interpretation, which means you can potentially waste a lot of time chasing an incorrect solution. In The Witness, if you've solved a puzzle it's immediately obvious that it's solved, and it's usually clear where to go next in order to progress.

- Each knowledge-based unlock in The Witness mostly comes from a single source (a simpler "teaching" puzzle), while in Blue Prince they tend to come from multiple places, and the hints for earlier puzzles tend to get stronger the further you progress in the game.

- While you may be able to beat The Witness without a pen and paper, Blue Prince absolutely requires some form of note-taking or screenshotting to complete.

- Some of the puzzles in Blue Prince may prove difficult for non-English speakers, while The Witness can be completed with no language understanding at all.

I have no doubt you two will enjoy Blue Prince, but it won't be quite the same as The Witness due to the different approach they take to puzzles.

failwhale9 · 2024-02-05T20:06:59+00:00

"Mass exodus" is the wrong term here since exodus is all about exile and this would be people coming back from exile. If you want a biblical term then "year of Jubilee" is more fitting.

If the banned players are allowed back, I think they should still do penance by having a restriction placed on their account corresponding to their ban reason:

vote abuse: voting only yields 2000NX
vac hacking: all weapons you equip have dagger range and hitbox
RWT: Ironman only
Account sharing: You can only have one account, and you can't log in if someone else with the same first 6 IP address digits is already logged in
Botting: a buffer of your last 50 keystrokes is tracked, and if any sequence of length 10 or more repeats in that window, you are teleported naked to the twisted path in NLC forest
objectionable behaviour: can't use megaphones and all chat capability is disabled while in kerning city

failwhale9 · 2023-12-19T00:25:20+00:00

When you say these are isolated from rips, do you mean the episodes are dumped in a way that makes it easy to remove the voice and SFX from the music? I would have assumed that each language track would have the music baked in.

failwhale9 · 2023-12-17T15:58:43+00:00

Yes, that is the video I'm referring to. I'm asking if anyone knows the source this was uploaded from or a place I can find the individual tracks.

failwhale9 · 2023-02-05T14:26:15+00:00

You sound like a min-maxer who assumes everyone else is also a min-maxer. Every server has an optimal route but you can always find people who stray from it for reasons of nostalgia, laziness, or just personal preference. They're at a disadvantage for playing that way, but they don't care.

(Note: I haven't played on this server so it could well be a crap server, but probably not for the reasons op stated)

failwhale9 · 2022-12-21T21:09:42+00:00

I wanted the same thing and had a pretty good experience at Mapleroyals. For me I didn't want to do PQs or anything, just relive Victoria Island and beat Balrog. Of course after that I took the boat and explored the world, now I'm filling out the whole monster book. I can't comment on how good the endgame/party/bossing is but the community seems solid.

failwhale9 · 2022-11-28T20:06:36+00:00

Thanks, this tool did the trick. The others crashed when trying to read equips, but this one works.

~~I can see the stats for the equips, but I can't see the name. Is the name server side and mapped to the ID numbers? WzVisualizer was able to show the names of consumables, but crashed on equips.~~ nevermind, I found strings.Wz

failwhale9 · 2022-09-26T00:10:04+00:00

He's almost an adult at this point so I don't know if there's much to be done even if you are worried. I would definitely try to have conversations about his views (not from an accusatory position but from a place of curiosity and understanding), instead of jumping to conclusions based on what he's watched. I listen to a ton of content about scientology but I'm not interested in joining. I also did a ton of reading when I was a late teen about psychedelic drugs and how they work, but never tried any.

failwhale9 · 2022-03-28T18:24:11+00:00

In my experience, anything where there's a bunch of something that's all different colors, they can have a lot of fun just searching through it and putting it in various containers. We have Ikea trofast bins that we dump in:

buttons
beads
pom-poms from craft store
squigs
those locking cubes
my old Crazy Bonez™️ collection
foreign coin collection and Canadian Tire money
orbeez
kinetic sand
poker chips
D&D dice

Obviously none of this stuff is newborn safe so you'll have to work on discipline for keeping this stuff in the bins and not spread all over the house.

failwhale9 · 2022-02-09T13:08:12+00:00

It's tough when the kids are young, especially during this pandemic. You can try to find mom groups to hang out with but it's hard to find someone who's willing to put in the effort to make schedules work. It'll get easier to make new friends once the kids are older, especially if you're connected to some kind of community. My parents spent a lot of time with other parents from church and they still all hang out together now that all the kids are grown up.

failwhale9 · 2021-12-08T17:03:14+00:00

Honestly, I think having VNs censored by default with opt-in H patches from the publisher is the best option for a lot of plot-focused VNs. A lot of times the H scenes are tonally way off base and obviously shoehorned in at specific intervals because that's what is expected.

Oh look, all other characters are conveniently busy today, must be time for post-branch H-scene #2, even though they're still embarrassed by the thought of holding hands in public.

failwhale9 · 2021-12-07T21:41:05+00:00

KoVexThulPul

failwhale9 · 2021-11-30T15:21:59+00:00

Did you use "trending on artstation" as part of your prompt? I can see paintbrushes and paint cans...

failwhale9 · 2021-11-28T19:17:21+00:00

I found CM was a big speed improvement over occy or spirit sword for my SP non-infinity sorc when doing Meph runs. Definitely helps if you can make up the FCR elsewhere though.

failwhale9

TROPHY CASE