The Tunic post might come later, but for now I'll try to put together some sort of takeaways that don't spoil stuff:

• The definition I'm working with for metapuzzle is a puzzle that brings together information or resources across a broader scope than a single puzzle.
• In a puzzlehunt, information usually takes the form of puzzle answers, which can be combined either on their own or with some additional information (a shell).
  • In a puzzle game, the information can take many different forms (codes, rules knowledge, lore/story knowledge...), so there needs to be a way to determine what's even part of the metapuzzle.
• In a puzzlehunt, resources are usually more abstract like a count of puzzles solved, or something other than the answer that you're given as you solve each puzzle.
  • In a puzzle game, that can be something like an object in the puzzle's rule system like "you get a block in the overworld when you solve a puzzle", or a more complex way to affect the metapuzzle's state.
• Puzzlehunt metas are usually solvable without solving all of the puzzles that feed into them, but the more you have the easier they get.
• Looking for commonalities is a common skill in puzzlehunt puzzles, and doing so in a puzzle game can be a first step in its own metapuzzle.
• Breaking the abstraction layer and having the meta more deeply interact with individual puzzles makes design a lot more complex, but oftne makes the experience more cool and memorable.

Thanks for reading!

Here are some weird things puzzlehunts do with metas that I haven't been able to fit somewhere else. The one thing I'll be spoiling is the Hell, MI round from the 2024 Mystery Hunt.

It was harder to find a specific example of an information-based meta that wasn’t a huge spoiler, so I'll be kind of vague and handwavy there. I'll use Myst as kind of an example, but the spoilers are again pretty vague and early-game.

At the start of this I defined metapuzzles as being about collecting information or resources, but as I bring it around to actually talking about puzzle games I'll flip the order and talk about resources first.

This'll have some extremely minor early spoilers for Talos Principle 1 and Bonfire Peaks, and significant spoilers for the Hall of Innovation and Factory Floor rounds from the 2023 MIT Mystery Hunt.

Offline project stuff was the big progress this month. The main thing I can share publicly is the metapuzzle blog post series. I'll probably post about that more broadly once I've done part 3, so if you're keeping up with this blog you've been getting a free preview. :)

I've had "try doing something in PICO-8" in the back of my mind for a while, but seeing Adam Saltsman's games lately have reawakened that itch. Maybe I'll give that a shot next time I have some gamedev cycles?

On the gameplay side, King Hesper's still looming large. I'm approaching the end of chapter 7, but the levels have gotten very difficult. I could maybe do a post about Nextfest demos too- the short version is Gentoo Rescue and Art of Reflection were puzzle highlights, and Angeline Era was intriguing even though I haven't played the games that inspired it.