However, impressive aesthetics and weighty mental gymnastics aren't enough to compensate for puzzle design that becomes a slog before long. It's a shame because Pneuma boldly asks questions about player agency, but in ways that are bogged down in tedium.
Breath of Life is a remarkable contribution to this highly select field. Its strength is that it looks at the same predicaments as Portal and Bioshock from a compelling angle, unburdened by lore, but it doesn't quite have the spark to be breathtaking.
Pneuma: Breath Of Life is a game that I urge you to experience. Its not perfect, but in a way that fits entirely with its own outlook, and its effectiveness as a story is both thought-provoking and surprising. Pre-conceptions aside, it is certainly an intriguing and unique title that explores elements of philosophy and life often left untouched by gaming.
Yeah, despite the really short length I'm still interested in the game. I'm holding out to see if Greenman gaming will sell it soon, have a coupon there that could make it an easier purchase.
This is out today on PS4, although I'm a little surprised at how little attention it's got here on the forum. I was interested in it - it's kind of like a first person mystery puzzle adventure, isn't it?
Bought it yesterday, with 20% off so it was £9.60. Only played about 30 minutes so far, but early impressions are really positive - it's achingly gorgeous, the puzzles are fun and I like the Thomas Was Alone style irreverent voice acting.
I liked it a lot. It lasted me about 140 minutes and most of the puzzles are good. There were 2 or 3 I found pretty obnoxious, but the visuals were amazing, performance was generally fine for me and the game's theme (which only really became apparent for me at the very end) is an interesting one.
I like it enough that it was a large part of the reason I bought Ethan Carter, as I want more of the same.
I was intrigued by this game as I found out the development studio is only down the road from where I live.
I also applied for a testing job there but I never heard anything back
I was intrigued by this game as I found out the development studio is only down the road from where I live.
I also applied for a testing job there but I never heard anything back
Shiiiit! Off-topic somewhat but my work-in-progress boardgame is (was going to be, heh) called 'Gneuma', combining pneuma (as a philosophy term) with gnomes (as in pneuma being used to infuse sentience in garden gnomes). Kinda feel like the name has been bagsied now.
More on-topic, game looks very interesting and is toootally up my alley in terms of genre. Definitely put on the List.
Shiiiit! Off-topic somewhat but my work-in-progress boardgame is (was going to be, heh) called 'Gneuma', combining pneuma (as a philosophy term) with gnomes (as in pneuma being used to infuse sentience in garden gnomes). Kinda feel like the name has been bagsied now.
More on-topic, game looks very interesting and is toootally up my alley in terms of genre. Definitely put on the List.
I'm going to have to respectfully disagree. I just finished the game today, and found some puzzles pretty difficult. Then again, I don't normally play puzzle games and suck at them.
I find them boring, and found this one kind of boring.
I ended up needing to use a guide from chapter 4 to chapter 6, but only for the floor puzzle in chapter 5. Some of the puzzles were really obtuse.
Like the totem pole one. I had it right, but didn't know
I had to back up through the door
. Then that damned floor puzzle.
I never use guides, and hadn't in a long time, but I wanted to beat it. Then I deleted it.
In wanting to play through a few short games before my gaming gets heavily disrupted over Christmas, I played this through. I think I liked what it was doing in story terms, but I think the story didn't really feel like it fit the game all that much; it was just something that was being narrated through mostly independently of the players' own actions. Other than a vague theme of 'progression towards the end', the actual gameplay challenges and even the environments you go through are all somewhat abstract when compared to the context of the story.
You may argue that the eventual reveal - that it is 'all just a game' - goes some way towards justifying that; I can see that argument. I don't personally agree with it, but it's a point of view
That said, I did like the subtle nod in one level
where you notice that the doors backwards had an alpha on them, and the doors forward have an omega - you are heading towards an inevitable ending)
. That's a nice thematic thing, one of the few times the events of the game felt in-sync with the story - I wanted a lot more of that. To be fair, maybe there was a lot more of that that I simply didn't spot? I don't know, I like to think I'm usually on the ball with allegory.
I'm going to have to respectfully disagree. I just finished the game today, and found some puzzles pretty difficult. Then again, I don't normally play puzzle games and suck at them.
I find them boring, and found this one kind of boring.
I adore puzzles and adventures - I've written about them extensively in the past - but I think I agree with your criticisms in many cases; I think they're valid in a way beyond "the gameplay isn't to my taste"
I ended up needing to use a guide from chapter 4 to chapter 6, but only for the floor puzzle in chapter 5. Some of the puzzles were really obtuse.
One thing that I think is a cardinal sin in a puzzle is an unclear goal. With a clear objective the puzzle becomes 'how can I manipulate the objects at my disposal in order to achieve the goal'. With an unclear objective the puzzle is instead 'try likely suspects until you discover the solution the game decrees to be correct'. The former is a problem that can be solved - in theory, if you took all the information away from the computer, you could still derive a valid solution. The latter, however, requires constant feedback; you're not solving the puzzle, you're just flailing through the solution space until the game goes 'yep, that'll do'. There are places where there's leeway, of course; there's nothing inherently wrong with the idea of having to fiddle with something a bit first to deduce the goal rather than having it spelled out to you, but without a defined objective, the player can't solve the puzzle. They might stumble on the solution, but that's not the same thing, and from a player's perspective, it's much, much less rewarding.
The floor puzzle you mention - assuming it's the one (
Blank tiles or laurel wreaths?
) I had difficulty with, almost - in my eyes - got it right. One major flaw, I felt, was that the movement required was a bit too fiddly; it's hard to understand exactly how the tiles are behaving unless you start making moves precise enough to make it clear that how they're changing is not random, and even after you do the precision is still an issue when you are heading towards a solution.
The second major flaw - a common problem in puzzles of this nature, I think - is that there are two obvious solutions to it - mark all the tiles, or blank all the tiles. Both could concievably be valid solutions, both demonstrate sufficeint mastery of the mechanics to judge the player as having solved the puzzle - but only one of them works. Fortunately it's not hard to get from the wrong solution to the right one, but without something more clearly indicating which was correct, the game really ought to have accepted either; both require demonstrations of the same basic skills to achieve the logical solution, the only real issue is whether the player makes the correct 50/50 guess at the start or not.
I'd also mention a bit of a pacing issue here, because immediately after this fiddly and flawed but ultimately logical puzzle comes a puzzle that is insultingly simple.
There's an earlier puzzle that I had a problem with, and it's an issue along similar lines; one with two panels of five buttons at opposite ends of a pond. This suffers from the fact that there is an obvious solution (which is ultimately the correct solution) - but the key mechanic in that section serves to throw problems in your way. And once again, there's a 50/50 choice, both of which might appear to be vaild, as to what the correct solution to those problems are.
I, of course, plumped for the wrong one; since everything currently had been relating to what you could see, I thought you could carefully use the pillars to manipulate the panels one square at a time and in doing so form a pattern that had some meaning - I was going for lighting all the squares.
In other words, long before the floor puzzle mentioned above, I was trying to use the same principle as a logical solution to a puzzle. But this time, it wasn't the correct basis - but, crucially, the puzzles looked fundamentally the same when broken down to the base elements
.
One other risk with puzzles is lack of feedback. In this instance, I really needed a touch more feedback to make it clear when I was on the right track to a solution. As an example, it could have made a heck of a lot of difference if they simply added a light on each panel which was lit when the panel was configured correctly - but immediately and visibly went out the moment one wasn't; set up enough information that the user can pinpoint when the problem arises, and they can start on the solution.
(As an aside, while I think this is a matter of personal taste, I'm not overjoyed that there's an RNG component to the puzzle - or rather, an RNG component to the way the puzzle goes wrong. Many players will try to ascribe a pattern to that and think that the solution may be behind deducing how the pattern works out. Another way I'd modify the puzzle is that I'd take out the RNG, and instead make the puzzle 'go wrong' in a way that is consistently the exact opposite from the player's goal. That should reduce the risk of the player looking for patterns, because it behaves consistently from the same start state - and, from a malicious point of view, will probably feel more like the game is mocking you!
Like the totem pole one. I had it right, but didn't know
The totem pole was a bizarre puzzle, because the actual solvable puzzle was, I'd argue, insultingly simple. The premise of "Here are a number of switchable objects with three states. Get them all to state 0, Certain objects will in turn influence others" is a common and valid puzzle type, and one I have no objection to - but it doesn't work as a puzzle when only two of the objects have any knock-on effect on any others, with the other three all being entirely independent of one another. Here's something I mentioned a little while ago:
One of the things that's bothered me for a while is how *bad* many game designers of mainstream games are at making puzzles. It's like... they've looked at them, they know what a puzzle *should* look like, but they don't learn much about the tricks and methodology to make one good.
(I talk more about general puzzle subjects using the context of text adventure mazes, before concluding
All-too-often, then, people have designed text adventures using this puzzle directly because they've seen it and know it works, without realising that any well-read gamer will have encountered the problem before. For those gamers, it's a dull bit of busywork with no actual interest. The designer has seen a maze, and without understanding why it was originally interesting, ripped it out and placed it directly in their product - but without any distinguishing features, it's just more tedium.
The totem puzzle, for me, feels like the designer had seen a puzzle of the aforementioned form, and without understanding why it was originally interesting, ripped it out and placed it directly in their product. Unlike the maze example where the puzzle was dropped in verbatim, though, the lack of understanding was at a level that extended to actually stripping out the elements that make it an interesting puzzle!
And then, once you've reached the logical solution state, you hit on the problem you mentioned. I don't think the whole 'backing up through the door' part is unreasonable - by now the player should have picked up on the basic premise of keeping eye motifs in sight in order to trigger effects, so watching the eyes while retreating through the doorway makes a lot of sense. Where I do take issue, though, is the fact that you have to keep all the eyes in sight to cause the door to begin to open, which is a mechanic only (IIRC) used at one point earlier in the game, and in a format where it's very easy to stumble through without registering that both the eye-pillars are key to it.
Again, feedback with an eye lighting up when it was both correct and in sight would probably have given more guidance towards the correct answer. There are some other puzzles elsewhere in the game where a panel of light tells you the current state of the various switches (the clocks puzzle springs to mind); giving the player a clear information panel with five lights on it would have made all the difference with this problem.
You may be surprised after all these criticisms, but I do have to add that when the puzzles were good, I thought they were very good. That doesn't necessarily mean difficult; there's a fairly simple puzzle taking as its premise rearranging parts of a three-dimensional maze, and that's not particularly difficult - but it's got a clear objective, the internal mechanisms make a lot of sense, and it's a puzzle that can be solved. The sundial problem was a similar type of problem to the one I detailed earlier, but the consistent nature of the feedback made it easier to deduce the intention of the puzzle. Oh, and there's one other puzzle I had difficulty with - the two rooms of 4x4 tiles - but I will accept that the correct solution (not either of the onese that I assumed at first!) was adequately clued (and very nicely, too,
with the corners being subtly different between the mural on the wall and the tiles on the floor of the room
); I simply missed them. That's when the puzzle genuinely beat me, and I didn't feel in any way 'cheated' by the fact.
I think that's fair; I was more pre-inclined to like it given it's a genre I do favour. The good puzzles were satisfying. Indeed, I think a big difference was that I enjoyed the game much more in the latter chapters (where the puzzles were designed setpiece affairs, rather than rejigging an established concept repeatedly).
I might go so far to suggest that I think the later chapters were designed first, and the earlier ones were more rushed in trying to put together a progression of content.
I think that's fair; I was more pre-inclined to like it given it's a genre I do favour. The good puzzles were satisfying. Indeed, I think a big difference was that I enjoyed the game much more in the latter chapters (where the puzzles were designed setpiece affairs, rather than rejigging an established concept repeatedly).
I might go so far to suggest that I think the later chapters were designed first, and the earlier ones were more rushed in trying to put together a progression of content.
I'd actually say that I found things more obtuse early on!
I suspect that difference might come down to me recognising the basic structure of the puzzles that appeared in the later chapters from having seen them elsewhere, though. The earlier puzzles were more unique, but that came with risks of design; when the designer was in more familiar puzzling territory, I think they were more successful at realising them - which made things work better for me, but then didn't work for you.
Pneuma is 85% off for the steam sale and only $3 so I finally got around to buying it.
Was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the puzzles. Some of the later ones felt really good.
The glass spheres that turned red with a light behind them were probably my favorite.
The narration was fine but I didn't feel invested in it. I really wish the story focused more on
the world itself. I found the eyes in paintings and was expecting that to be a part of the big reveal. I did love the ending transitioning into the start menu.
For $3, it's a definite buy for the puzzles alone.
Just played this game after getting it gwg months ago. Game is terrible in my opinion and i usually enjoy short puzzle games. Figured i would enjoy this at the very least for the easy achievments but cant say thats the case. Half the puzzles are more just search hunts and the other half just dont feel rewarding. I can think of two particular instances where im not exactly sure if i legitimately solved the puzzles or if i just got lucky and they completed themselves (one invloved pegs on a wall and the other involved tiles on the floor). I guess i cant complain for it being a free game (for me any how) but i guess i just expected more. The game looks beautiful and has great narration but falls flat on everything else.
