Monthly Update: May 2025 (Plus Cerebral Puzzle Showcase demos)

Between Blue Prince, and some chatter about other games, I really got the craving to work on Sorcerous Stacks. I've got a rough design sketched out for an alpha/demo with a few puzzles that I could do, but I do need to pick somewhere in it to actually start making. All I actually did in the Godot project this month was add some silly references:

Screenshot of a pixel art prototype. A grey-robed figure looks at a bookshelf. A text box below reads "You pull a random book from the shelf: 'Maize: Grow the World's Toughest Vegetable.' It doesn't look useful, so you put it back."

Anyway, the Cerebral Puzzle Showcase event just started, and while I won't have time for most of the event, I played a couple of demos between the first day and ones that put up their demo early. A few highlights:

  • Trifoil: A "line-'em-up" path drawing puzzle with weird symbols to understand the rules of. Having a little guy to draw your line is cute, and the last couple puzzles were tricky enough to make me break out some notes.
  • The Button Effect: First person exploration/rules discovery game about pushing buttons. Quite a few surprises in the short demo, so I'm looking forward to how much more there is.
  • Öoo: Puzzle platformer about bomb jumping. By the dev of Elechead, so I'm expecting another solid one.
  • Memory's Reach: It really feels like they wanted to make Metroid Prime, but with puzzles instead of combat. It's a strange combination but it feels like it works.
  • Puzzle Spy International: Yup, that sure is a Puzzled Pint puzzle. Hard to say how the full game will be since it's only one puzzle and they have to target it towards people who haven't seen these before, but I'm keeping an eye on it.
  • City of Voices: Yup, that sure is a Golden Idol-like. I liked the "I'm Confident" button to discourage shuffling the last few blanks around until something clicks.

You should also read:

Musings on metapuzzles, part 3: Resource metas in puzzle games

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.

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Monthly update: February 2025

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.

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Musings on metapuzzles, part 2: Puzzlehunt metapuzzles

If you're familiar with puzzlehunts, this one might be a little redundant. If you aren't, here's a pretty detailed post with an introduction to the sorts of puzzles you see there.

I'll be spoiling an old puzzle of mine: Wario, from the 2021 Microsoft Puzzlehunt. If you want to try solving it yourself, you can check the final answer here, or the individual minipuzzles at 9-Volt, Ashley, Dribble & Spitz, Jimmy T, Mona, Orbulon. There's a full solution here.

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