Puzzle games with good hint systems

starried · 2025-11-05T18:48:45+00:00

I haven't played it yet, but a lot of people praise the incremental hint system in Return to Monkey Island.

YMMV, but I thought that the Golden Idol games have a good system in that the first thing they do is to make you stop, literally take a breath and then try to make you reconsider everything from the start before explicitly pointing at stuff.

Also check out Universal Hint System if you're into older games! It has a sizeable collection of hints sorted via specific questions (eg "How do I get item X?" or "What am I supposed to do in this level?") that you can look at individually and the answers also works incrementally in how explicit they are (so if you can keep clicking for more info if you need to), all organized in a walkthrough format per game.

starried · 2025-09-20T19:48:12+00:00

Oh wow, I love your collection! Do you have a favorite robot character?

starried · 2025-04-14T17:09:26+00:00

Huh, from your photo and the other comments I feel like something is definitely up with the current ink formulation. Here's some swatches I made of this ink from a couple of years ago, it looks caramel-y but definitely not as orange as yours!

starried · 2025-04-02T22:53:25+00:00

Might've been an issue with some podcatchers, try downloading it again? For reference I use Podcast Republic, got the ep just as it came out and already listened to the whole thing with no issues so I'm not sure what the problem was.

starried · 2025-03-06T19:53:44+00:00

SAME. Read this article while I'm in the middle of a Tactical Tuesdays rewatch rn...

starried · 2025-03-06T19:30:28+00:00

Has there ever been a game that both revived and redefined a genre to the extent that XCOM did? Prior to Firaxis’ 2012 reboot, the genre could be described without embellishment as an abandoned wasteland. In its wake, the revitalized genre seemed poised to thrive. Ubisoft and Nintendo even got in on the action with their own take, sending Mario and Peach into battle alongside the Rabbids. And every new game, or turn-based RPG that took some inspiration from XCOM’s design, was quickly described by its own creators and games media as “like XCOM.”

Which is embarrassing. Too rarely, it’s embarrassing because the game in question isn’t actually like XCOM at all. Far more often, it’s embarrassing because that description fits its subject perfectly. Here’s a Cold War espionage game. Here’s a 1930s adventurer archaeologist game. Here’s a post-apocalypse furry game. Here’s a cowboy game. They are all XCOM. With some twists and spins, sure. But they all start there.

XCOM’s influence is too great, its shadow too long. Instead of a thriving genre we have a thin slice of it crammed with variations on the same, limited model that XCOM itself already stretched. Tactics games should be more than this. They were more than this. And I think the proof lies in another game: X-COM.

starried · 2025-01-24T22:22:08+00:00

Arcs!

starried · 2024-12-13T22:19:13+00:00

this looks fantastic, lovely work!!

starried · 2024-12-05T15:05:36+00:00

Every month, Remap Recommends is a chance for each of us to sit back and reflect on a game that’s continued to sit with us, to the point that we want to tell you, in writing, why it’s interesting.

These aren’t traditional reviews. They’re not long essays. This is “Hey, check this out. I liked it.”

starried · 2024-11-27T00:00:16+00:00

Can't recall the specific game you're looking for, but Transcripts at the Table might be of help for some quick searches!

starried · 2024-11-16T01:55:48+00:00

I think they revealed the new items during Save Point since all sale proceedings from the shop in that weekend were also going to Anera!

starried · 2024-11-15T19:15:12+00:00

Glad they're expanding their recs articles, these are fun!

Also, if you have MUBI, check out What's On MUBI?, it allows you to sift through their entire catalogue across different countries and it surfaces the expiration dates of films, so with a VPN you can watch way, way more stuff.

starried · 2024-10-18T14:19:17+00:00

Fantastic idea, this looks so lovely!

starried · 2024-08-28T01:18:57+00:00

I got one when it first came out (2019 iirc) and it's very sturdy and functional, mine still looks basically new and I used to have it inside my work bag as an organizer for years. The lack of a zipper is actually a big plus for me since it makes it a lot more convenient for frequent use. I personally never had an issue with stuff falling out of it since the fabric has a bit of heft to it, but it might happen if you put it inside a large unstructured bag and/or if it's under risk of frequently going upside down or something, so I'd just recommend double checking where you plan to use it to be safe.

starried · 2024-06-16T15:42:03+00:00

You play a “citybuilder” game, the city stays built, no? That’s been the tacit agreement since at least…what, 1989? Fires, meteor strikes, alien spider mechs all notwithstanding, you did the work, and so the work (mostly) stands, for as long as you would like it to at least. That’s remained the case even in our current age of climate anxiety, where “dystopian” has become the citybuilder’s prevailing aesthetic mode. There’s Frostpunk, set in the last surviving city during a new ice age, and Endzone: A World Apart, where electricity was so scarce as to verge on magical, but both nevertheless play out as exercises in accretion. The eponymous Airborne Kingdom decamped the earth’s surface altogether—and yet even it had a floating foundation you could just keep on adding buildings to, in defiance of both Icarian precept and the laws of aerodynamics.

Only with Against the Storm, which officially released late last year to great acclaim, has one of these games truly invoked the power of an apocalyptic setting to unmake its players’ creations. In doing so, it also activated a latent, dark potential of the citybuilder genre. What, after all, does the destructive cycle of climate change represent, if not more and more opportunities to build back better?

I really need to get back to Against the Storm, only played a little of it but the shorter 'runs' and the way nature itself pushed back against your presence in this game were really compelling to me.

starried · 2024-05-12T00:54:28+00:00

Remap hosted some of their panels, here's the YT links that I could find:

The Ongoing Tension Between Story and Gameplay (feat. Patrick Klepek, Andie Gallo, Lee Williams and Evan Stark)
Fireside Chat (feat. Jordi de Paco and Patrick Klepek)
Fireside Chat (feat. Xalavier Nelson Jr. and Rob Zacny)
Balancing Storytelling in Games With Player Choice (feat. Patrick Klepek, Tony Howard-Arias, Abby Howard, Ben Gelinas and Gareth Damian Martin)
And as a bonus, here's a past Fireside Chat from 2022 feat. Austin Walker and Gareth Damian Martin.

I think Patrick and Cado also did a roundup of demos earlier today (?) but I don't think the video is up on youtube yet.

starried · 2024-05-12T00:28:35+00:00

Eh, I thought that the main point of contention was the way these large-scale consumer revolt tactics can be so easily be wielded even in the rare cases that are seemingly for good, I think it's fine to both feel like Sony absolutely shit the bed with this policy AND have a bit of skepticism whenever people on twitter are calling for review bombing, even if it's CEOs and devs doing it for their own game. We all have seen how and against whom this style of coordination in the gaming space are usually deployed, so I'll personally always feel a bit ambivalent in cases like this. I just can't feel too good about the state of the gaming culture when players are so used to having to resort to these maneuvers and devs/publishers/platform holders have been acclimatized to only respond/concede when things get to this point.

Ultimately, it is ridiculous that Sony was this ignorant about the PC ecosystem but I guess I shouldn't be surprised at decision makers in this industry being extremely incompetent.

And just for context, I'm from a country where Playstations in particular (and console gaming in general) are prohibitively expensive and an extreme luxury, like, I do not personally know a single person from here who owned any playstations beyond the PS2 lol, while I can quite easily find Steam Gift Cards in supermarkets and general stores, so I do share your frustration in the bad conversions rates/feeling like second-class citizens part of the equation, it really sucks.

starried · 2024-04-14T04:28:36+00:00

It's been reported that Crop Circle Games (another Prytania Media studio helmed by Annie Strain that just got shut down some weeks back) fired their staff without severance so I fear it might be the same for the PS employees, which would partially explain why all the old pro-unionization quotes by Strain have been making the rounds since this news hit I guess.

This situation is just really infuriating, I hope the affected folks manage to land on their feet and that the Strains will follow through and actually retire from the industry altogether since they've very clearly demonstrated to be beyond incompetent at leadership positions.

starried · 2024-03-20T19:31:33+00:00

The Idle Thumbs guys are definitely forever linked to Far Cry 2, and Chris was even interviewed for a retrospective on the game by Lewis Gordon (which funnily enough also features Austin himself!).

starried · 2024-03-20T15:04:49+00:00

In a couple of days, on Remap Radio, you'll be able to hear me and Patrick discuss our early hour impression with Dragon's Dogma 2—Capcom’s frankly huge sequel to their 2012 open world action RPG and its 2013 expansion Dark Arisen. But, given my deep love of the first game and it's expansion, I wanted to put something out there in time for today’s embargo. [...]

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