LTTP: the turing test

[kitler53]

no idea what LTTP means in this context but i've seen people use it on era and i think i'm using it right.


@Legend asked me a bit ago what i thought about this game.   i can't remember which thread he asked in though so new thread it is.   this thread is basically for you legend.  i could PM you but i don't know what PM means either...


its was fine.  it wasn't bad.  it wasn't great either.   a few thoughts on:

I both love and hate dance movies...
wait for it,.. this will make sense in a minute.    dancing is my jam.  i love to dance and i love to go to the ballet and i even love dancing movies.    ...but god dang why does there have to be only 2 plot ever in any dance movie ever made.   

plot 1 - "dirty dancing":  a classically trained dancer can't possibly dance well until they meet a "street" dancer which ignites a passion (and love affair) that causes them to suddenly be able to dance well.

plot 2 - "step up": in a city run by gangs of dancing outcasts living in squalor,.. they bring "truth to power" by highlighting the diversity in their group in a series of ever escalating underground match-ups or public flash mobs...

why oh why does every dance movie have to fit into this very narrow mold of plots?!?!?

which brings me back to the turing test...  while not quite as bad as dance movies there seem to be just a few puzzle games genres:
- "myst"
- "portal"
- "tetris"
- "bejeweled"

the turing test definitely lost points with me for being such a derivative "portal" game.  yes the puzzle mechanics were not quite identical but at every turn you could just feel the "we ripped off portal but didn't even do it as well" experience.   i mean, i love portal and i like the turing test.   it just didn't justify itself as it's own thing.

A dearth of puzzles
there was 76 puzzles in the game including the side puzzles.   ...but i'm not giving the game credit for all 76.  the entire 1st chapter was a tutorial.  also chapters 2 - 7 all had at least 1 additional tutorial puzzle introducing a new puzzle mechanic.    so basically 55 puzzles.   ...but worse yet of those 55 puzzles most of them were just remixing an "idea" presented in a previous puzzle.  

compare that to the witness.  that came had 523 puzzles.   it was be close to the truth to say each an every one of them too the basic concept of the puzzle mechanic and found a new and interesting way to take the mechanics and find a unique solution.

not so for the turning test.  the first 5 chapters could, imo, basically be reduced to just remixes of 1 puzzle per chapter + a side  quest puzzle.  it was only in chapters 6 and 7 that they got complex enough to feel like the solution was any more than getting the orbs into the right spot in the correct order.   so i "feel" like the number of puzzles in the game was really like 15.

...and you can really see that in my playthough time.  i beat it in 2 sittings for around 4-5 hours of gameplay.   of those hours a healthy chunk of that was audio logs and reading memos.  i'd estimate the average time to beat a puzzle for me was about 3 minutes with at least half of that time spent on "execution" and not "understanding".


also i'd like to take time to specifically complain about the binary logic puzzle.  as a guy that took some electrical engineering courses in the past it wasn't even a fudgy puzzle,.. it was a homework assignment.  read the logic operator and answer the question.  like quite literally i had homework/exams in college that looked exactly like those questions as the game even used the same notation for AND, OR, XOR, NOR...  and for people that don't have that background i feel like it was basically just an unfair puzzle that i imagine most people cheesed.  No game should have a puzzle that is so strictly tied to having an educational background.  The concepts should be explained via the game mechanics or its BS.

Load Times
just a side note but i hit loading screens between pretty much every puzzle in the game.   the game wasn't, imo, pretty or complex enough that it wouldn't be possible to load the next puzzle in the background.   it was jarring how many times that load  screen was hit and how poorly it was presented to me.  i don't want to say the developer was "lazy" but i think a non-indie development team could have easily cleaned that up with some better technical implementation.

So in Summary
I liked it well enough.  i've said here before i'm a puzzle game fanatic and i basically play all puzzle games (even the bad ones).  i would recommend the game to a person like myself that is a fanatic for puzzle games but to a "typical gamer" i would not.   i'd direct them to portal or the talos principle instead.



oh,.. and while the game didn't have a platinum trophy i did 100% it.   that's 4 games in a row now.  i'm getting freaked out kind of.

[the-pi-guy]

LTTP: late to the party. Something you experience years after original release.  

RTTP: return to the party: something you return to.  

I have nothing to say about anything else here.  

[kitler53]

LTTP: late to the party. Something you experience years after original release.  

RTTP: return to the party: something you return to.  

I have nothing to say about anything else here.  

apparently legend doesn't have anything to say either.  i figured he'd be the only one to reply to this thread.  xD

[Legend]

Thanks for the thread!

I have 5.6 hours logged on steam for comparison, and that was with me taking dev notes while playing. I wouldn't say it was too short but they definitely used up their puzzle creativity pretty quickly. Switching over to Tom's perspective was a great breath of fresh air.


LOAD TIMES
Just the worst. I built an entire theory about the game being a simulation because of them. The part in space was a real memory and then the parts inside the facility were a robot/simulation that thought it was Ava Turing. I dropped this theory by the time the real twist came about so it didn't ruin that at least.

STORY
I liked having a choice at the end. "I killed those idiots" as I wrote in my notes lol. Lots of dates seemingly didn't match up though and I think this game suffered from bad sci fi. The story about the alien microbe was essentially just a macguffin. Would have been nicer imo if like Portal or Talos Principle it was more focused on the mystery that actually mattered, although maybe that would have given away the twist.

PUZZLES
Had no clue what the binary logic notation meant but figuring it out was ok. Just needed to randomly guess enough till I noticed the pattern. Someone without any knowledge about logical operators would have been screwed.

Yeah most of the puzzles were pretty straightforward and not stimulating. I wish they had side rooms or secrets for solving them in more efficient ways. 'Twas a shame that they copied Portal where anything extra after a puzzle was deleted.

Only achievement I didn't get was the very first optional puzzle, the one that is just a big grid awaiting a specific combination. It highlights imo a common problem in this game. As the player the true puzzle is figuring out the developer's intentions. Solving a puzzle in a creative/alternative way feels like you're doing something wrong.

GENRES
The twist near the end helped it branch out from Portal imo, but only just a bit. I also got really tired of having the story/lore dump level at the end of every chapter. It was just way too structured. Smoother level transitions would have done a lot but the structure would have still been a low point imo.

I get what you're saying with your categories but that seems like a pretty poor list. Where would FEZ, The Witness, and The Unfinished Swan fit in? Hapax way back in the 2013 days was pretty heavily inspired by The Unfinished Swan actually.

Nowadays Hapax is closer in puzzle design to Her Story and Return of the Obra Dinn. The player is encouraged to use their understanding of the real world when solving puzzles and creative solutions are the default. No prior knowledge is critical though so these games avoid problems like Turing Test's binary puzzle. I'd consider this something like "honest puzzles hidden within logical real world situations."

[kitler53]

STORY
I liked having a choice at the end. "I killed those idiots" as I wrote in my notes lol. Lots of dates seemingly didn't match up though and I think this game suffered from bad sci fi. The story about the alien microbe was essentially just a macguffin. Would have been nicer imo if like Portal or Talos Principle it was more focused on the mystery that actually mattered, although maybe that would have given away the twist.

i got annoyed by the chapter 7 dialog.  all 10 levels essencially boiled down to "would you kill all of humanity to save a few?"  ..."but tom murder is bad".  the story essentially climaxed at the first puzzle of chapter 7 and then it was like "oh fudge,.. i've got nine more rooms of dialog to write.."

PUZZLES
Had no clue what the binary logic notation meant but figuring it out was ok. Just needed to randomly guess enough till I noticed the pattern. Someone without any knowledge about logical operators would have been screwed.

Yeah most of the puzzles were pretty straightforward and not stimulating. I wish they had side rooms or secrets for solving them in more efficient ways. 'Twas a shame that they copied Portal where anything extra after a puzzle was deleted.

Only achievement I didn't get was the very first optional puzzle, the one that is just a big grid awaiting a specific combination. It highlights imo a common problem in this game. As the player the true puzzle is figuring out the developer's intentions. Solving a puzzle in a creative/alternative way feels like you're doing something wrong.

i got into that room but honestly i brute forced it.  i couldn't figure out the logic in the puzzle room.   afterwards i looked it up and apparently the answer was just written down if you picked up a polaroid in one of the later chapters.    ...not the kind of puzzle design i enjoy.  

GENRES
The twist near the end helped it branch out from Portal imo, but only just a bit. I also got really tired of having the story/lore dump level at the end of every chapter. It was just way too structured. Smoother level transitions would have done a lot but the structure would have still been a low point imo.

I get what you're saying with your categories but that seems like a pretty poor list. Where would FEZ, The Witness, and The Unfinished Swan fit in? Hapax way back in the 2013 days was pretty heavily inspired by The Unfinished Swan actually.

Nowadays Hapax is closer in puzzle design to Her Story and Return of the Obra Dinn. The player is encouraged to use their understanding of the real world when solving puzzles and creative solutions are the default. No prior knowledge is critical though so these games avoid problems like Turing Test's binary puzzle. I'd consider this something like "honest puzzles hidden within logical real world situations."

fez is a puzzle platformer.  fez can headline that genre as it is best in class.

the witness was created as an ode to myst.  it is defiantly a gated puzzle island game akin to myst.

i wouldn't call unfinished swan a puzzle game.  it's an art game with more in common with flower than a puzzle game.  


i haven't played her story or obra dinn.   i remember you talking about her story and how easily you cheesed the puzzle mechanic.  obra dinn has been on my watch list for a while.   i imagine i'll play it eventually but it's still a bit more expensive than i want to pay.

[Legend]

i got annoyed by the chapter 7 dialog.  all 10 levels essencially boiled down to "would you kill all of humanity to save a few?"  ..."but tom murder is bad".  the story essentially climaxed at the first puzzle of chapter 7 and then it was like "oh fudge,.. i've got nine more rooms of dialog to write.."

That's one of the things that made me love Soma soma(ch). It starts with a seemingly simple philosophical debate, but then it actually has meaningful things to say. Can't think of many games that can directly talk about their themes without sounding stupid.

fez is a puzzle platformer.  fez can headline that genre as it is best in class.

the witness was created as an ode to myst.  it is defiantly a gated puzzle island game akin to myst.

i wouldn't call unfinished swan a puzzle game.  it's an art game with more in common with flower than a puzzle game.  


i haven't played her story or obra dinn.   i remember you talking about her story and how easily you cheesed the puzzle mechanic.  obra dinn has been on my watch list for a while.   i imagine i'll play it eventually but it's still a bit more expensive than i want to pay.

FEZ is open world unlike most puzzle platformers, and most of its better puzzles don't include platforming. Maybe I'm splitting hairs but I'd consider it significantly different than stuff like Braid or Limbo. The Witness may be an ode to Myst but from a puzzle perspective do they have anything in common?

Unfinished Swan is a puzzle game. Take that back! Haha it's all arbitrary and there's so much overlap. My only point is that while I agree Turing Test is pretty similar to Portal, I disagree that most puzzle games are as easy to define.



Obra Dinn is worth $20. I picked it up a few months ago cause I was going crazy with Hapax. Totally different gameplay but it helped me feel confident my approach wasn't too stupid. That game is a lot more structured though.