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S2 Ep87: Superliminal and Antichamber
76 Plays6 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they question the very nature of reality itself is this week's double feature!
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Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
Episode Introduction and Dinner Banter
00:00:24
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going, Dave? Uh, we're getting there. Yeah. How was dinner?
00:00:36
Speaker
Dinner was delicious. It was actually really good. Yeah. We hit up Smash Burger, which is, uh, I don't care what they say. It's a fast food place. Did they not? Did they say it's not? Is it like, uh, Oh, no, no, no. Uh, God forbid you mentioned that to that manager. She's a very chatty lady. Yeah. She'd kill you right there on the spot. How's the utensils?
00:01:00
Speaker
Oh, has utensils. Like you said, how are the utensils? I'm like, fine. Like anywhere else. I'm just making small talk. Granted, there are those steak knives at some restaurants where it's just like a giant hunk of metal.
Food Habits and Humor
00:01:12
Speaker
Yeah. And then it isn't sharp or serrated. And I'm like, what are we doing here? Well, first you carve out a knife. Yeah, no, it was pretty good. It's pretty good. Um, as an American, you know, sometimes I like to eat a burger.
00:01:27
Speaker
That's it really kind of puts Taco Bell in a bad light. But uh, yeah, I mean I had Taco Bell for lunch So I can't be too upset, you know, like they still have not letting you pick food next time I'm gonna decide for you. I mean Taco Bell's This is because I had Taco Bell and the burger it is. What was your breakfast?
00:01:57
Speaker
It might've been a soil. I don't know if I had breakfast actually. It might've talked about it might've been the first. Like I can't do that. I can't get through the morning and be like, food? Nah, we'll wait on that. Yeah. If it is something like I'm at home for the start of the day or something, it'll be like a soil and just gonna, some of that chocolate, but, um, never just that 400 calories doesn't do it. No.
00:02:23
Speaker
My go-to is like a Luna bar for breakfast or something else. It's like roughly 200 calories Interesting. Yeah, that's the thing and then I'm like hungry at 1130. I'm like why though? Okay circles back around but you're like I have the 180 Luna bar at the start. Oh, yeah, it's that lunch comes around and I'm like not not for me. It's just my
00:02:45
Speaker
Oh, I won't have like a huge breakfast and then I'll like have lunch and I'll be fine. Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to, I'll try and lose weight, Jake. That's fair. I'm a very hefty boy. That's not true. Especially in comparison to me.
Game Mechanics of Superliminal
00:03:02
Speaker
I'm fat. So today's episode is actually about a game called Super Liminal and maybe another game, depending on time.
00:03:14
Speaker
I was gonna say the transition should have been like, or if you had given me a second like rebuttal, rebut, is it rebut? Well, no, no, butthole's not it, so. No, it's not a butthole. No. I was gonna say, oh Jake, that's all a matter of perspective. And then we can hop into superliminal. Oh, that would have been good. All right, let's go back. It is a, all right, roll it back. All right, so anyways, food and calories, breakfast and stuff. But I mean, I feel like I'm fat.
00:03:45
Speaker
So anyway, so yeah, it's like a, it's a puzzle game, I guess. Yeah. 100% puzzle game. Uh, but it's a nice shift on puzzle games because it's not just straight hair mechanics. Do your thing. Uh, it's closer to.
00:04:06
Speaker
I don't want to say the witness because the witnesses overly. Yeah, it is. It is a perspective. This is a perspective based game. So a lot of things might be like, Oh, I need to rotate or that thing I think is in the background. I can move into the foreground and it's, you can like, uh, grow and shrink objects based on.
00:04:29
Speaker
where they are in relation to your view. Yeah. So if you pick up an object closer and then you kind of just drop it and walk back, it's still going to be at the same size you had it like in front of your face. Right. But if you kind of like
00:04:44
Speaker
picked it up and held it out in front of you like it was in the corner of the room and then dropped it you could walk up to it and it would be at the distance it was yeah it's tiny it's kind of weird to describe because it's like it's like the pixel perspective that was the thing that took
00:05:00
Speaker
Like it took me a while to wrap my mind around it the cause and effect I actually learned like relatively quickly like if you like Throw stuff up at the air if you're looking up at stuff and then drop it. It'll get bigger That's the reliable way to make things bigger
00:05:16
Speaker
Look at them in the air and then drop it because you're looking up at it and it's gigantic But I didn't cuz you know when you look up at things you're like dear god Yeah, I mean that's literally how I think you're saying that yeah Yeah, cuz Jake saying if you hold it above your head, it'll be whatever fix size to start. Yes, but then As you let go and gravity takes effect, it'll move closer to your face Therefore you can't see as much of anything else. You see more of just the object, right?
00:05:46
Speaker
So your brain perceives it as it's now bigger. That was the way to make objects bigger, but I remembered. And then dropping stuff near a wall, so there was a backdrop to it, reduces the size. You're like, OK, so I'll just put things in a corner or whatever. And that's the way I just intuitively learned how to grow or shrink objects in Superliminal.
00:06:13
Speaker
but it was still like mind bending for a while. Um, cause it's just, it's just, it's really weird from a physics like simulation perspective. It's also just really weird. Yeah.
00:06:32
Speaker
It's like usually like we've played games and we expect props to be the same pretty much whenever we interact with them. Um, and then your perception of the prop doesn't change the prop itself and super liminal. That's no longer true. Literally what you're looking at becomes reality.
00:06:50
Speaker
Yeah. But I think we should point out it's just limited to specific objects. It's not like you walk into a room and it's like, don't blink the wrong way, otherwise you'll undo reality. Yeah. It is very much like, hey, here's one or two items you have to interact with. And excuse me.
00:07:11
Speaker
To start off, they make it kind of obvious like, hey, there's a door up there and you have this angular piece of cheese. What are you going to do? You're like, if that were bigger, that'd be a ramp. And you use and reuse those types of tools for a little bit.
00:07:27
Speaker
Actually, I like it for, like we've talked about puzzle games a bit, and I like when games can reduce the problem set or reduce the scope of the variables for how you're interacting with a problem.
00:07:44
Speaker
Most games do this for tutorial purposes. It's just like, hey, you have to figure this thing out to literally proceed. There's nothing else you can do. Figure this one thing out and once you've done it, we'll trust that you know it. You know a mechanic you may proceed. Exactly. So it's like when literally it's just escape door cheese, you're like, alright, probably cheese somehow.
00:08:04
Speaker
and then you'll figure the rest out. I've eaten the cheese. Right now. Now about that door. Just type out eat cheese. Use cheese on door. Throw cheese at that door. But yeah, it takes something that's spatially really kind of confusing and helps you build the skill set necessary to actually manipulate it.
00:08:31
Speaker
Which I think is, is interesting for a game like this. So I have a question. Um, how do you think that this style of game, how do you think people who aren't really gamers or have played a lot of puzzle games, first-person games, how do you think they would interact with it? Like, would they just lose their minds or would it be easier for them? Um, I would probably say the former. Yeah. Cause if I'm showing somebody a game who's not familiar in
00:09:02
Speaker
gaming verse, even mechanically just moving around and doing basic stuff is kind of a hurdle because they're not used to that interface, right? So then you're like, okay, so this is a game out perspective. So they're just going to go around and they're not going to understand what to do or what to look at because for them, the whole world is new.
00:09:26
Speaker
And it's not like an existing world. It's like, Hey, we've tweaked something. What is it? Whereas we, if we've done it a lot, we can look at it and say like, Oh, that thing's a skew. And I can probably move back here to look at a certain angle. Okay. That looks like a, an actual shape. Gotcha. And I can then pluck that physical object out.
00:09:45
Speaker
So it's kind of like it's one more degree separated from reality. Whereas if you're operating in a 3d space in a game, you're not super familiar with that. You want to first associate that with reality. Understand it in the same way you understand reality. A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It was interesting. It was something I thought about like while going through here. I was like,
00:10:07
Speaker
This is, this is some very novel gameplay. It's clearly propped up by this one. I say propped up. That's a negative kind of connotation, but it's driven by this one feature. Yeah. But, so like for me, when I was going through, I didn't really get stuck on many things.
00:10:25
Speaker
Because I was like, oh, there's this mechanic. OK, I'll use that mechanic to do the thing. And I go to a room and be like, probably this. And then I would go. And it didn't really feel like I was held up unless it was something, at least to me at that point in time, very innocuous. Did you feel the same way? I did for a lot of it. There was a couple of puzzles. For the most part, they don't introduce a lot of variables in the puzzles. They have some visual.
00:10:53
Speaker
like I guess clutter or things like eventually you have populated rooms like lamps and Stands and flowers and chairs and things like that and they have nothing to do with the puzzle But it's clear that they don't have anything to do with the puzzle But eventually that goes back to that game sense
00:11:08
Speaker
Yeah. Because like you and I know this is some background shit and it's not an interactable thing. Yeah. But for somebody else who's just being dropped in that space or like there's 37 things in this room. Yeah. What do I do? Right. So trying to turn over chairs and stuff. Can't interact with the chair. Can't interact with that chair. Can't interact with that chair. So where we learn you can't interact with chairs. There's a specific hallway at a point.
00:11:32
Speaker
And the eventual solution is there's nothing you can interact with in the room. Yeah. But if you look out one window, you see like, oh, a moon or a star in the distance. It's the moon. Yeah. You can pick up the moon and kind of draw that closer into your field of view to make it bigger. And then you can grab like a door or a key or something on the other side of it. This is the door sitting on the phone. Yeah. But that took me a little bit because I didn't see where it
Challenges and Strategies in Superliminal
00:11:58
Speaker
was. Yeah. And what I was looking for.
00:12:01
Speaker
But that's one of those things where it helps if you already know, here are my things I can play with and interact with. Yeah. You know, the space. Yeah. You can separate the scope of interactable versus not. Exactly. And I did have like, to answer your question, I did have some examples of times where I kind of got stumped and it was.
00:12:23
Speaker
It was due to Mina understanding exactly how certain mechanics worked There at one point they introduce so usually you can you can pick up objects you can hold them in front of you And then just depending on your perspective. That's the size. That's the basic mechanic Make things small make things large and then eventually they introduce a mechanic where you can't hold items but when you click an item as though you were going to hold it and
00:12:49
Speaker
It just creates a copy of that item at its perspective size, just slightly smaller in front of the item. And they show this by having a door at the end of a hallway, and you can click the door and it makes a smaller door in front of it.
00:13:07
Speaker
and click the door again, it makes a smaller door in front of it. And I'm just like, oh, okay, just mash mouse and make a bunch of tiny doors, right? Of increasingly tiny doors. And you actually make a ramp out of doors, which to like climb over.
00:13:22
Speaker
which I actually think is awesome. Just the idea that the solution was a ramp of doors, I thought was ironically hilarious. But unfortunately, I didn't learn the mechanic and the mechanic really works. It doesn't create a small version of the item in front of the original, creates a small version of the item according to your perspective in front of you.
00:13:55
Speaker
And that mattered for one puzzle. That statement is 100% correct. Yeah. Are you talking about the fan? It was the fan. I wasted so much time there. Just filling the room with tomatoes. Yeah. So a good puzzle, I think, I think it's an example of a good puzzle. Because basically the setup is you have a tomato and you need to drop it on like a pressure plate on the other side of the room. It's like an upper ramp.
00:14:14
Speaker
Yeah, but
00:14:24
Speaker
Yeah, it's like pretty obvious, you're like, oh, from here to there, I just gotta do the thing, right? Pretty simple. But for the section you're in, you can't pick up objects, you're just making these copies.
00:14:38
Speaker
So next to the tomato, there's kind of like a cross hallway where there's a fan blowing fairly heavily. So anytime that you are cloning objects, it will kind of push it all into the corner. Now me being smart, I went to the top of the ramp and I was like, I'm just going to flood the whole fucking thing with tomatoes. Yeah, that's literally what I did.
00:15:00
Speaker
And eventually it will be forced, forced to go up the ramp. In which case I can maybe just kind of kick a tomato onto there, activate the pressure plate and we'll be on our merry way. It is, it is very difficult. I'm not sure if it's actually possible to do. I definitely did not accomplish it. Yeah.
00:15:19
Speaker
But at a point, I realized what the actual mechanic was that Jake was talking about of I saw at the top of the ramp, I moved back a little bit and I made a copy of the tomato. So it'd be in front of me. Yeah. At the top of the ramp. Yeah, exactly. So they throw in this great red herring of, Hey, here's this obstacle, the fan. Yeah. Uh-huh.
00:15:40
Speaker
has nothing to do with it. But you're automatically in that mindset because your brain makes these connections and assumptions because that's how your brain works. It's like, hey, I'm walking into this building. You immediately see a hallway. You have assumptions about the hallway and the doors and where they go based off of spatial reasoning
00:16:03
Speaker
and other things. Your brain makes these connections to get you through day-to-day stuff based off of other information you've already acquired. So when you see this hurdle of the fan, you're like, gotta get around the fan. Yeah, exactly.
00:16:18
Speaker
and it's so good it the thing is like it's it's only so good if you understand the mechanic though so like if you don't actually know how the perspective rule for making copies functions then it's just super frustrating because you're not operating
00:16:36
Speaker
The game is giving you a puzzle and the variables you're working with aren't the same thing as what the game expects you to have because you're dumb in my case. The funny thing about that though is also there was a little light switch near the actual exit to the room which is closed and you can click on it to clone it to make like a smaller light switch.
00:17:01
Speaker
Can't be and I just start like clicking it and I said like two minutes clicking this little light switch making an increasingly tiny light switches and like someone who understands how diminishing returns works would understand that like this the distance I was getting stacking these light switch clones was Less and less and less and less and less and so then I was finally like clicking like 50 times and the light switch is barely moving any closer to the the actual button to hold it down. I'm like, I feel like
00:17:30
Speaker
Maybe I'm dumb. As it turns out, that was the answer. I was dumb.
00:17:36
Speaker
It's like an asymptotic relationship of like, maybe if I have this pile of glitter, I can have it way down this thing. I'll just move each individual grain. But like the game plays with obviously perspective a ton. I remember pretty early in, like you're dealing with a pawn, like a chess pawn. You can like, it's one of the common objects you can manipulate in Apple or things like that.
00:18:01
Speaker
but you see like a hallway with a pawn at the end of it and you're like okay it's like a piece you can't interact with it and if you move forward it becomes obvious that it's actually just paint like that's just been elongated basically like painted long wise to look like a pawn
00:18:19
Speaker
Yeah, it was just when you're standing at the beginning of the hallway, you're like, oh, a pawn. Uh-huh. But as you walk up to it, you see it from like a stretch out. It's like when you see like the street paintings. Yes, exactly. It's meant from like a very specific spot because if you're like five feet to the left, you're like, that looks way off. Yeah, exactly.
00:18:42
Speaker
And the game continues to do that to kind of subvert your expectations. There was another perspective puzzle where you had to line up specifically, like find a spot to look at paint on like a wall and like a pillar or something like that to make a cube show up. So like make the cube
00:19:07
Speaker
Aligned properly all of the paints aligned to show the cube perfectly and then you can click the cube But it becomes a real and you can use it to solve the puzzle. I love that that I like I Think the reason I like it is because it has a single solution and It's something you can intuitively start to like figure out You're like, oh this doesn't look right. There's paint on the wall. What's the next piece? Okay, it's not lined up
00:19:35
Speaker
now let me find the right spot. So there's just literally a single solution is standing on this X, looking in this direction and clicking.
00:19:44
Speaker
Whereas some of the other puzzles were like, you could have like lossy solutions where you could find a way to just like climb over a wall, but you had to grow an object some amount before you did that. And then like keep dropping the object to try to like get it to make a ramp or something. I think like an exit sign is a guilty party in this.
00:20:11
Speaker
Um, but you might drop it and it just doesn't fall in such a way that it makes a ramp. So you're like, okay, we'll try this again. And then you accidentally make it too big or too small because you drop it at a weird angle. Like perspective wise, I had issues with that. I mean, I understand how it's difficult mechanically because it's not.
00:20:28
Speaker
It's not clean, doesn't snap in, but I kind of like it to a degree for that reason because I feel like I'm cheating the system in a way. Gotcha. Even though the game's like, I want to design these rules and mechanics, you will work with those stipulations and find a solution. Like one was you're in a big room and you have these two doorways.
00:20:53
Speaker
If you go in one you become smaller and everything else becomes bigger. Yeah perspective And vice versa if you go in the other door everything becomes smaller and you need to go out. There's like a door Up on the wall somewhere. Yeah, it's way above you But in your when you're in these different
00:21:15
Speaker
Sized rooms quote air quotes. Yeah, you can still grow and shrink those doorways. Yes, so I ended up Making it so I went into one doorway and I stacked the other doorway on top of it So I'd go out of it and change size at the same time and just kept running through
00:21:31
Speaker
It was some weird Alice in Wonderland bullshit, but it took me like a good five to seven minutes like stack everything Yeah, appropriately, but it just felt cool once I got him like I Don't know if that was right, but I did it. Yeah, the the the answer alright the solution I had to that one was actually Become small enough so to describe the mechanic
00:21:53
Speaker
When you go through one of these doorways, you are being either shrunk or grown to reflect how large the world seems when you look through. Which matters so that for the actual doorway itself, you need to fit through. Exactly. And the solution I had for that is if you shrink enough, you can actually pick up one of the doorways and then use perspective to just drop it on the window seal.
00:22:21
Speaker
Oh, you actually dropped the doorway in the exit. At the exit, I just ran through. Oh, I'm smart, man. There was another one that was a similar puzzle. It was, the first time you introduced changing your size, really, in perspective to this, is a house. And I love that one. That one's really cool.
00:22:42
Speaker
The first part is like it's just a house on a table and you're like, all right, where's the puzzle in the room? You can kind of look in the house and be like, okay, I can interact with it. Pick up the house, lift it up above you so it's gigantic. Drop it. Drop the house. Yeah, drop it like his house. Raise the roof and then let go.
00:23:01
Speaker
And the doorway into the house is now slightly larger. Do it a couple times, and now you can run in. But then there's like a ledge on the inside. And if you make the house too big, you actually can't climb over the ledge. Yep. So you have to make it just the right size. What's that children's story?
00:23:21
Speaker
Goldilocks. Goldilocks, thank you very much. I was going to say Little Bo Peep and I was like, hmm, that sounds wrong. Climb up there and then there's another exit to the house, another door. So now that you've accomplished this first goal, you can go out a different doorway, continue to manipulate your own size now, get real freaking small, go back in the house, jump over a bunch of like parkour stack things and finally leave.
00:23:52
Speaker
but it's so awesome that the game lets you do that yeah it's i feel like i undersell the game because it wasn't super long game and it was straightforward to me as far as puzzle mechanics right but again 200 iq hardly but there is like a certain novelty and joy because it's it's playing off of
00:24:18
Speaker
When you're dicking around with your imagination as a kid, wouldn't it be cool if I could like shrink and like go run around with like ants and see the world from that scale? Yeah. Or to become a giant and be like, how would things look? How would I interact with stuff? Um, and like flying around and other things like that. And it's just like a nice thought experiment to tap into, I think. And do you remember the, the bouncy castle?
00:24:46
Speaker
Yeah, that was like instant for me. I'm like, I know what to do. Okay. Yeah. That was, that was, you pass the IQ test. I was struggling with that one for quite a while because I was like, I sometimes try to solve incorrectly and I'll try to brute force a solution incorrectly where the actual solution is actually.
00:25:06
Speaker
In this case, really weird, but also more straightforward. So can you describe the setup for that one? So you have a bouncy castle that's in the center of like an empty pool and you're in, I guess, like this small pool room. Yeah, just a pool room.
00:25:25
Speaker
Trying to think what that was called, but I guess like the, just like a gym pool. Yeah. It's like a square. So you see that's the interactable thing. You blow it up, you go inside and then you have an exit at some point after you go down a hallway where you're looking back at the gym pool room, but like from an air vent. Yeah. It's way above it. Like a circular vent.
00:25:46
Speaker
And you see the door you need to go out of, which is higher up. You're like, how do I get there? So I was like, oh, I'll pick up the Balancing Castle and face it at the door and then leave. Yeah, you solved it immediately then. This took me a while. But to be fair, when you were describing the solution for the adjusting your own size two doorways thing, you did the exact same solution and I struggled there. Yeah. Similar things do come up, but it's not.
00:26:16
Speaker
for whatever reason.
00:26:19
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's something like once you actually get the mechanic that helps you a lot any other time it comes up But you have to have that base understanding of how it works. Yes The thing that like I don't know if we've adequately represented so far or not is That when you go through the door in the bouncy castle this area above the pool overlooking the pool is in the bouncy castle so when Dave picked it up out of the pool and set it up on the diving board near the exit and
00:26:47
Speaker
i was constantly puking from motion blur and like the game doesn't like literally shake your world actually in one case it does um not here i'll describe the level next okay but uh there's it's this inception nonsense where you're manipulating the space you're in um so you can walk back out the door somewhere it's like it's crazy i don't know
00:27:13
Speaker
Blew my mind. The area I remember was it was like a soundproof room. And I think it was the space between dreams because technically there's a story. This is supposed to be like dream therapy or something.
00:27:26
Speaker
The biggest of air quotes will I be providing here? Yeah. For audio listeners? It's Sumnesculpt is the name of the company. I wrote it down. Sumnesculpt Dream Therapy. That's the only reason I know what it is. But you're in this like world between dreams where things are like a bit weird and you can find, you yourself are in a room and then you can find like a house or something and pick it up and drop it.
00:27:54
Speaker
and every time you drop it, everything shakes, like dust falls from the ceiling and you're like, oh snap, I'm dropping the room that I'm in. Great distances. And it was really cool. The solution to that one was like, which also took me a while actually. How quickly did you figure that out? Do you remember this puzzle? I'm not remembering that specific one. Cause you have to cause a paradox to fix it.
00:28:23
Speaker
really quick. Yeah. Okay. Again, that's what it took me a while. I was like, what are you talking about? Again, not to my own credit. It was just for me in that instant, I'm like, it's, I have this thing and I have this thing. Yeah. There's nothing else I can do. So I kind of like smushed the doors together. Yeah. Oh, so it would create a loop.
00:28:46
Speaker
yeah it's not intuitive in that moment so you have like the house the room that you're in you can carry that room um or you could like go through a door which like takes you back you know back there but if you carry the room itself the one you can drop and make everything shake through the exit to the room
00:29:08
Speaker
you've screwed everything up and, uh, paradox production is not an effect, apparently. And it sets you back. Like it puts you back out of the dream. Um, it's got like a lot of inception, nonsense-y things going on. Um, not the same, but like similar in some ways. I never saw inception. You never, you never, you've never seen the movie inception. Correct.
00:29:37
Speaker
That was like a big movie. Even I saw Inception. Did you see that one movie that I saw in like, that I thought people should see? Well, the thing was like, it's like, I felt like it was a pretty big cultural touchstone for a while. Like the Inception horn and Hans Zimmer and everything. I heard blondes at high school. It just, it's one of those, like I missed that initial boat and then I never went back and saw it. It's a good boat.
00:30:08
Speaker
I hear. Yeah, it's pretty good. I think it's actually on Netflix now. Yeah, I could just literally check it out. We'll have inception episode coming up. But yeah, it's something that just like expand your mind level stuff. Also, you wrote the note for this, but it's Stanley Parable, like in the style of how there's always a voice talking to you. Yeah, I definitely did get some of those vibes. Mm hmm.
00:30:37
Speaker
Cause a lot of times you'd go back to like the therapy center
Humor and Bias in Superliminal
00:30:40
Speaker
in between dreams, which I'm not sure we're like level stop points. They had like loading screens in between them. Um, but yeah, it was just kind of trying to subvert some things. One of my favorite examples of that, and I was.
00:30:59
Speaker
angry but pissed. I think this could be the buts also happen. Enraged. I fucked up my initial sentence. There's a perspective piece where you have to pick up a queen which you're like oh I've now picked this up and it literally removes part of the wall and you can go forward and continue. Right. On the left hand side though there is a doorway.
00:31:23
Speaker
Did you ever go through that doorway? I don't think so. I don't, I don't remember getting stuck on this at least. I think I just literally went through this area. It's not for progress. It's just like a side room and it's like up. So you have like a, a six sided die and you have this queen piece and I was like, okay, I'm definitely going to finagle away.
00:31:43
Speaker
Yeah. Cause you actually have to set the thing down in a way and then put the queen piece on top of it. So gravity will kind of lean it over and you jump up. It took me too long to do, but when I finally got up there, it was a dead end. There was literally fucking nothing. They just put like a little hallway and I was like, Hmm, damn it. Got me again.
00:32:08
Speaker
But it felt cool to like explore a little bit, but also tangencing back in an indirect way. There's a point later on when you're in this fairly empty room and I didn't know what to do for like a good 15, 20 minutes until I just was like walking into the walls.
00:32:27
Speaker
Okay, and I actually went through the wall because it wasn't actually a wall. It was just dark. Yes It was dark and I assumed that because the other parts of the wall that were black and like oh, that's a wall Yeah, my brain made that assumption. Yeah, but it's a perspective thing. We're just like hey, this is blacked out You can't see it. This is a black and white filing cabinet room. Yep. It's a shadow actually It's a shadow of one of the filing cabinets
00:32:53
Speaker
It's just that dark and matches the rest of the wall. You're like, it's the wall.
00:32:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's freaking crazy. They do that like perspective games sometimes like one of the ones I remember they do that a couple times where you need to like step out into darkness and like just find the exit. But one I remember was there is a room. It was when things were falling apart, falling, falling apart near the end of the game. And there's like
00:33:28
Speaker
groove hidden on the right side of the room and there's no like Nothing to solve in the room. You're just like when the world is going on here But if you just like back up you'll just fall you just straight up fall down into the next puzzle. Yeah, it's pretty funny
00:33:45
Speaker
They love to mess around with stuff like that. There's also like kind of I think approaching the end There's a parking lot and it's just like an infinite parking lot with just like lights. That's it just Yeah, streetlights, you know basically and if you Find if you walk in a direction and it'll create a wall where that stops being infinite and it becomes like a painting and
00:34:14
Speaker
It's like the classic road runner situation. You're like, oh, let me like run through this tunnel. And it's just like, there you go. 2D cardboard cutout. And this is one I actually did. It's not actually a puzzle to solve, so I figured it out. And followed the edge of the wall around until it just created the next wall, next wall, next wall. And I was like, okay, I've solved it, turned back, and it had changed the center. And you could progress, but
00:34:42
Speaker
Just like a lot of messing around with stuff like that. The game also has like a, I wouldn't say twisted sense of humor, but there's like a almost murder plot or like horror section around the middle where there's like presumably blood like streaks across the floor. And this is where a lot of that darkness, like dark shadows and things like that are coming into play.
00:35:09
Speaker
Um, the thing I loved was you're walking down a hallway and on the opposite side, there's like two doors, um, like a school hallway, you know, whatever. And, uh, in the window of one of them, you see what looks like a humanoid figure behind the door. Like there's silhouette and you're like, ah, snap. I didn't realize this is one of those games. This is one of like the, the steam tag should have told me, right? And you walk around and it's just like a pawn, I think with a mop.
00:35:37
Speaker
Or something like that just standing on a chair. Yeah, and that's literally all it is. It's just there to screw with you and Like I even looked back. I went back and I looked at the silhouette and like yeah, I kind of see the They let you they let you see what you want to see Yeah, it's really good at challenging your preconceived notions. Hmm
00:36:02
Speaker
Which is why, after I play this game, I'm no longer racist. There you go. Fixed him. Solved it. Good job, Superliminal. What Camp could not accomplish. Superliminal wins. No, Camp made me stop being gay. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's the difference.
00:36:18
Speaker
One of my favorite, one of my favorite puzzles though was actually, I was trash talking the exit sign before, but I think the first time you see it, it's in a room where there's two doors you have to open, like a chamber beyond. So there's a door that leads into a chamber and there's another exit with another exit door. And there's two buttons in the first room and there's like nothing to manipulate except literally the exit sign above the first door. I was like,
00:36:48
Speaker
Wait. They just started dragging it up into the sky repeatedly, like making it gigantic. And you make the exit sign so big that it can span these like 10 feet or whatever and hit both buttons at once. I'm like, I am a genius. Yeah, that one felt pretty cool. And then I felt really dumb for most of the puzzles after that point, but that was, uh, that was super liminal.
00:37:13
Speaker
I think it like, it doesn't overstay its welcome is one of the things I could say that's best about it. Yeah. It's, it's a good, fun thought experiment. But yeah, it's not a, this is a weekend game. Yeah. It's like a two hour game.
00:37:32
Speaker
Which is, as it turns out, the amount of time I want to put into public games. Yeah, but it's a nice like, Hey, let me just go in type thing. It actually reminds me of original portal in a lot of ways. Whoa. Do, do not do not let me equate. Let me explain why it reminds me of that. It's because they took one mechanic and they're like, this is interesting. This is novel. Let's make a short game based off of it.
00:38:00
Speaker
It's like five times longer than the original Portal at like two and a half hours, but it's a similar deal. They never throw too much more at you. Yeah, I don't think it would do well as a longer game. No, no. Definitely not.
00:38:17
Speaker
It's hard to pull that off, like Talos principle. Basically you have to have complexity around that level to have a lengthy puzzle game. Yeah. But they also have like a story in there and other stuff. And then they have little hidden hints of things for going outside of, Hey, here's the game area. Here's some other stuff you can maybe use the tools that you've learned. If you look in like these hidden places to do X, Y, and Z. Yeah.
00:38:45
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's definitely worth the playthrough, especially if you can pick it up on sale. But it's a pretty short game, so go into it expecting, if you played Stanley Parable through three times, maybe four times, expect comparable gameplay to that, you know? And none of the endings requires you to sit there for like seven hours, like tapping a button or something like that.
00:39:15
Speaker
Um, but yeah, I mean it gets my recommendation and it's a puzzle game. So that's automatically actually high praise Four four out of
00:39:29
Speaker
10. Strong, strong phrase. Um, another good little puzzle game, which remember way back in
Exploration and Mechanics in Antichamber
00:39:40
Speaker
the day and played a little bit again was anti-chamber. Do you remember that? Oh yeah. Do you remember that thing that we talked about talking about? Um, I vaguely, vaguely remember this anti-chamber. I think it was initially a humble bundle game. Yeah, I think so. It was published by humble bundle actually, which is crazy.
00:39:58
Speaker
Is there a few in far between? That's a little bit weird. But this is like a pickup for like five bucks. Uh, and it was very hyped by everybody who I knew knew who played it. Uh, and rightly so, cause it does have a lot of content in it. It's very fun and unique, but going back and you kind of mirrored my sentiments on this. Fuck that game.
00:40:23
Speaker
Cause it's not like a typical puzzle game where it's like, hey, hear the mechanics and do yada yada. It's like, hey, um, we don't really have rules. Go. Yeah. You know, it means something when humble bundles, like getting so desperate, they're like, we'll sell our own kids. Whatever they normally do. Um.
00:40:44
Speaker
I have to temper my, uh, my feedback for anti-chamber. Cause I was still, I was trying to quickly make progress through it, which is the worst way to play that game. No, it's again, that goes back to like the very first play through. It was completely exploratory and that part of it was fun. Yeah. Because like when you made progress, again, Eric, what's the fuck does that mean in that game? Uh, it felt really good.
00:41:13
Speaker
But when you're just initially exploring, you're trying to like rush through, you're like, uh, just, just give me the, just give me the, let me, let me through the door. Let me do the thing. And it doesn't facilitate that at all. I think I can go and I feel like I can break this down just a little bit. Like.
00:41:31
Speaker
some of the criticism is because the game drops you in a room where your menu is up on the wall which is cool you know i like i like those i like when i like when they're like hey you have no escape menu if you accidentally press escape it actually just takes you back to the start room sorry you know whatever hold escape to quit literally it's a bug it became a feature um i think it was hold escape to go back to the room but yeah it was um
00:41:56
Speaker
as you're making progress like through all these different rooms it's got very high contrast literally just black white and then a couple colors some neons yeah um but uh you are guaranteed not to
00:42:14
Speaker
Not to make it through each section that you reach, you'll find side passages. And then when you first actually go back to the main room, it'll be populating this large map that looks like it was an auto-generated roguelike, actually sort of more than anything else. It's just like a bunch of squares and hallways. And you can tell which rooms you haven't solved, and you can tell which room you came from, because they marked that on the map.
00:42:40
Speaker
Uh, we need to return, but usually, so all those nice things we were talking about for subliminal are super liminal. Um, where it's like, it doesn't allow you to progress until you've figured out what's going on. Uh,
00:42:58
Speaker
Anti-Chamber does none of that. You can like just supersonic speed hedgehog yourself through like vast swathes of the map with like no unlocks, nothing like that. Skipping past almost all of the puzzles.
00:43:15
Speaker
uh in ways that doesn't force you to learn anything but then spatially makes no sense like it doesn't help you map anything out it doesn't help you acclimate yourself with what it's doing yeah you can skip past like because you never have or sat down and been like hey these are how this is how the game works
00:43:40
Speaker
So I don't think it really ever does that at a point from my recent experience and then compounded with my, uh, ever decaying memory of things.
00:43:52
Speaker
Because I feel like it's a very weird map. Certain things are straightforward and do connect. But it also plays around with a lot of those, hey, if you go down this hallway and turn around, that wasn't where you came from. Yeah. It's like psychedelic more than anything. Yeah. It will kind of portal you to different places and stuff. Oh.
00:44:11
Speaker
And it's consistent with what it does, but if you're just going through, you're like, gee, this is confusing. Right. But as you were going through the game, you unlock these guns. Each gun is a different color and then each color you get allows you to do like an additional function. Um, but I feel like the game specializes in saying like, Hey, here's this weird thing. You might have to come back to it.
00:44:35
Speaker
But what tools can you use and abuse to get through it? Yeah. It's like the first thing you get is the blue gun, where you can right click pixels. There's like specific blue colored pixels. Give them a suck. Give them a suck. And it puts it into your gun, and then you can shoot them out of left click. So you can place things. Yeah. That's cool. So you can use that as an obstruction for something, or you can make a pathway.
00:45:04
Speaker
Or you can like put it on yourself and make like a little tower and elevate yourself. Yeah. Get yourself up out of it. Right. But it's cool. Oh, what are the applications of this thing? Yes. So you might go back to an area and you're like, okay, I can now make like a little shitty tower or that door is going to close and I need like some key component for it. But now I can keep that door open. Exactly. Keep it, block it up, right? Yeah.
00:45:31
Speaker
So stuff like that is really cool. But then there are pieces along the way, like where you get gated by, hey, you need the next level of gun to do something. I actually, I missed the tell for that too. Like one thing I didn't realize until afterwards, you're talking about needing the next level of gun.
00:45:53
Speaker
If something has a blue pixel, and you can suck it up, it's supposed to be accomplishable with the blue gun. Accomplishable with the blue gun. If it has a green pixel, you should need the green gun. And if it's the yellow pixel, you should need the yellow gun. A red pixel needs a red gun.
00:46:09
Speaker
And I literally never put that together. So I just spent time fluffing about, trying to like... And here's the problem. You can waste a lot of time doing that, but a lot of puzzles and anti-chamber also have multiple solutions.
00:46:26
Speaker
Yeah, so you can actually like sequence break like a lot of stuff towards the end of the game like just rush guns using color pixels that would indicate you need advanced guns that you actually don't need.
00:46:45
Speaker
And it just It's the opposite right it's so open-ended. It's so like try to figure it out And I like that in an exploration game, but not necessarily a puzzle game. No no not at all. This is not Subnautica
00:47:04
Speaker
It's not like a super solid in that regard. It feels good though when you're getting these guns and being able to go back. But at the same time certain things, it's hard for me to tell if I'm making a really cheesy solution that's going to be effective or
00:47:25
Speaker
So there's a room specifically where if you're inside of the room, there's like a bottomless pit under it. Um, you're like, why would you go into that room? Yeah. But there's also a force field that will destroy any blocks that you place and will also remove any blocks from your gun. Yeah.
00:47:42
Speaker
But the reason I say that there's like a pit under it is you can actually build a pathway up. Yeah. Using just a blue gun and placing some blocks. Yeah. So that's like a possible solution. Is that the right one? Probably not. But it's what I did at the time.
00:48:02
Speaker
But then it took me to a room that was just like, hey, here's some stuff about how we made the game. And I'm like, I spent 20 minutes doing this, you piece of shit. So that was a little frustrating because I thought it was supposed to be progress, but it was just side content that I didn't really want to opt into. Yeah. Yeah, I know.
00:48:24
Speaker
It's, it's hard for me to really, really hate on anti-chamber in a general sense, but in the way that I played it, I definitely don't think it was ideal. I don't want to spend a bunch of time on one puzzle. I want to know if I have all the tools for a puzzle quickly. And it has a couple of cheap shots, like, um.
00:48:44
Speaker
Like fake walls sometimes where it's just like, Oh, it's, it's literally like back to doom, where it's just press activate on every wall. You don't have to activate, you just walk near it or walk into it, but.
00:48:59
Speaker
That's not, I don't, I don't know what that gets me, right? It's just like, it's trial and error. If the solution to your problem is trial and error, then you've designed a problem. So you've designed a puzzle that I will use that approach to solve and then like a good job on you for that, but it's not, it's not the way to do it.
00:49:17
Speaker
I don't think King's quest should be called a puzzle game. You know what I'm saying? I don't want to like, can I mix these two things together? Okay. Can I give this thing to this guy? No. Okay. They also, they kind of pride themselves on not telling you anything basically. Like there's, there's some things you can figure out, but, um, one instance of this is once you have an advanced gun, I'm not sure if it was green or yellow. Um, I think green has super suck, right? Like you can just suck faster.
00:49:47
Speaker
So Jake's I can't recall exactly
00:49:56
Speaker
I think green does improve how fast you can collect blocks to a degree. But the main thing with green is if you, let's say, have nine blocks, right? Yeah. Let's say eight. And you make a little square. It will fill in any space with blocks. Yeah, OK. So that was. So you can then take those blocks back. You now have net more blocks. It grows. You can technically grow. Make a little farm.
00:50:24
Speaker
So like that becomes like a useful mechanic and you try and use and abuse that to get forward. You just have a minimum and then you basically have infinite.
00:50:33
Speaker
But if you take out a load-bearing piece, it will be like, oh, I have to disintegrate everything back to the source. And that's a really weird interaction. But when you figure it out later, that's actually one of the solutions to open a series of doors because you grow out these tendrils from the doors. And then you're like, hey, yeah.
00:51:01
Speaker
And then things just all start opening in order. It becomes like a timing sequence thing. Yeah, it feels cool when you pull it off. But yeah, anytime you add timing into it, you're like, well, I'm a really smart person at puzzle mechanics, but.
00:51:17
Speaker
I just don't have the legs for it. That kind of sucks. Because the puzzle I think the one you're talking about is the one where you like form a plus basically in the center. There's a top connection, left, right, bottom. And you have to determine through timing either just big brain smarts or trial and error which pieces to remove from each of the sides.
00:51:40
Speaker
To make those tendrils reach back at the same time to open the doors in front of you before they regrow Essentially, it's like it's cool. It's mechanically cool but again They're adding variants to I just want stick and I want Flint and then I get fire That's all I want to just stick Flint fire. There you go Jake burn down the door I
00:52:07
Speaker
It's it's unfortunate because the game has like a bunch of Really cool ideas and it is mind-blowing in a lot of ways like
00:52:17
Speaker
where superliminal messes with perception, anti-chamber just messes with reality. It's just like, oh, here's an, you know, you've got your infinite turning hallway or also a door into darkness, right? There's like a hidden path. You just have to run into a dark wall basically, but it's not a wall. It's just a dark path. Um,
00:52:40
Speaker
You don't remember that one. Why I'm being so quiet and giving you a stare. Yeah. It's like, it's a, it's a right turn and like there's a color walls color on the walls. And then there's like, um, a splotch of dark in front of you. And if you just run straight, it's an unlit hallway, but because every other part of the hallway is lit, you don't see it as a hallway.
00:53:05
Speaker
That's gonna be the description, I don't think we're getting there. And then one of the other guides I have for it is they give you convenience upgrades on some of the other tools that just make the game less obnoxious. Like a tool that can quickly place or pick up pixels.
00:53:23
Speaker
instead of having to tap 100,000 times. Like, yeah, it feels good that you get it, but it feels good because that you deprived me of it earlier, right? Yeah, it's kind of unfortunate.
Debating Antichamber's Experience
00:53:43
Speaker
But
00:53:43
Speaker
It's just one of those like it feels good as an exploratory game does not always necessarily necessarily feel good as a puzzle game for those reasons Because you get gated by certain stuff and you don't know What the tools are? Yeah, and where you need to go right? It's very open-ended But for that reason when you get gun upgrades to do more cool pixely shit, it feels really good. Yeah But
00:54:14
Speaker
The gun that really sucks is good. Like I think it's, I think it's, I think it's the red one, but you can basically vacuum up pixels and it'll pull them in from the sides and into the gun. Well, the thing with, I think red is the final one. Yeah. But that will suck the pixel and anything adjacent. Yeah. But then when you shoot it out, it also works the same way. You can spray it. So it will fill a space. Like it just.
00:54:40
Speaker
continually adds thing. So you can literally make like a tower under you or completely fill a floor if you so deemed and like make a horizontal surface. Whereas green allows you to grow things and generate more pixels and yellow allows you to take pixels that are there and move them. Right. You can command them like, yeah.
00:55:09
Speaker
So like one of the things that had like a big pit, I actually said like, hey, let's go over here. So I dragged it and then as I think of it like snake. Yes. It's not modifying the number of pixels, just their position. So it's, it was sliding across and I would just jump along it because the floor under me was moving. So I needed to stay on top of it. Yeah. But I use that to like navigate one or two things.
00:55:35
Speaker
The actual puzzle solving and what the tools can do are pretty much always cool. It's always good, and I like, maybe not always good, but most of the time good, and I like the way that they're used, the mechanics. The thing that kills me is just not knowing what mechanics are at play, whether I'm short, a few crayons, what's going on.
00:56:00
Speaker
But I don't know. It's like you said, it's, it's much better if you have a lot of time you can dump into it, or if you're just going to be in a locked room with like some snacks for a weekend or something. I could see that being perfect for anti-chamber. Just grow immersed in it and lose your mind.
00:56:19
Speaker
Like one of the benefits of saw is he said, let's play a game. And he gave the guy a saw that guy immediately knew what his objective was and what his, his available tools were. Simple as that. Yeah, exactly. So anyways, next week, reviewing the saw game.
00:56:37
Speaker
That would definitely be like a PS1 title. I don't know why, but I imagine it's like the worst polygonal graphics. Yeah. I don't even, I assume it is a game. I don't even actually know. I don't think they've ever made games. I think it's have eight movies now. Manhunt. I know that's a game. I think I was, I think I got banned. Pretty sure that one got banned. Um.
00:57:02
Speaker
Was that a PlayStation? I think it was PC. It was back when it's like you could release anything. Because there was no, yes. The splash art is like a guy who's in a wooden chair like for electrocution, right? It was something like that. Yeah, I'm hearing about that. Yeah, I'm probably not going to cover that one though. We had a cover, what was it, Outlast first. That's the modern remake. I am too much of a big baby boy to ever touch that remotely. Yeah.
00:57:30
Speaker
same So anyways, these are puzzle games I'd say Dave probably can he can withstand the the brunt of intellectual stress more than I can I'm just like, where's the gun? Where's the fire? Where's the Flint? Like I have fire and I have Flint. How do I get stick? Which is weird because
00:57:51
Speaker
For how we've approached many other games that are more RPG based, I'm very much the, hey, uh, give me the Flint fire stick scenario. I'm very brute force murder hobo. Whereas you always get into magic, arcana, potions, and you know, trying to game certain stuff in a way to like optimize. I'm just like, fuck that shit up.
00:58:19
Speaker
So maybe that adds to my exploratory abilities? I don't know. People are complicated. But I'm oddly patient in that way for some puzzle games, yes. It's true. Jack's out. You think you know people and then they surprise you. You don't know me. You don't know Jack. Next week on Soapstop. I think that's also a game. I'm pretty sure that one is. Yeah, that's one of the Jackbox games.
00:58:47
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense. Should we write that down? Probably not. Probably not next week. Anything else you want to say about puzzles? Do you like puzzles in your life? If someone traps you into death game, what would you be prepared to work your way out of it?
00:59:09
Speaker
I don't know. Nah, me either. Um, so I know we've mentioned this before about puzzle games, but I think a lot of it comes down to what you like. Cause I don't think there's like a perfect example of this game knocked out of the park. There's no issues with it. Cause every game seems to have some, I want to call them aha moments, but same time it's like you son of a bitch moments. Take on me. Yeah.
00:59:37
Speaker
But like moments where you get frustrated with something, you're stuck by it, and then you figure it out, it's like, you might either be the person to be like, oh, I see now, or it's the, that was a dumb fucking trick you played on me. Yeah. It comes down to fairness. I think that's a hundred percent it. It's like when you solve the puzzle, is it because the game hid the solution from you or because it kind of just flaunted it in front of you and you're just like, I don't, I don't get it. I don't like, what are you talking about?
01:00:04
Speaker
And then you see it and you're like, right, my eyes just don't work so good. I think there needs to be like a degree of like hinting what the player is trying to do. Yeah. Like maybe some earlier stuff for The Witness, you might like say, hey, here's a partially done one. And kind of like the wink, wink, nudge, nudge, here's roughly what you need to do.
01:00:34
Speaker
Okay, that's kind of cool. Yeah, and then you work with it another time. It's just like go and you're like what game we play in there Go oh I don't see a board the boards in your mind move snap
01:00:50
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. There's a, there's a lot in place, but each one's different and unique, I think, but I'm curious to hear what ones people like in that space. Yeah. I feel like, uh, usually we agree with many of our listeners opinions because we just strive for approval. Um, but I feel like we probably have, uh, some listeners that really like empty, anti-chamber and, uh, that's absolutely fine. You know, that's just because we're,
01:01:18
Speaker
Different doesn't necessarily mean anything's wrong with you. Can't work for me. No, I'm just kidding. It's a, it's a different type of game, but you know, you, you have to be in the mood for it and you've got to have an appreciation for puzzle games or you're going to have a bad time.
01:01:38
Speaker
Yeah. If you have no desire to discover or be challenged in those moments, it sucks. It really sucks. I thought you were just going to say, like, if you have no desire to discover or be challenged, then you're Jake, you know?
01:01:57
Speaker
I mean, I'm oftentimes not in that space. So there are a lot of times I'll hop into like a puzzle thing and be like, nope. Yeah. But when you sit down, nobody else is online. You're just like, Hey, I'm just gonna check out this thing for two hours. You're like willing to accept
01:02:16
Speaker
You're a very accepting state and you're like, hey, let's just see what it is. Those moments are probably the best for puzzle games like this. Exactly. You're willing to be in that space.
Listener Engagement and Closing Remarks
01:02:25
Speaker
You can play the, you can do the, uh, the crossword puzzle, but sometimes I don't want to do a crossword puzzle. Stick, flint, fire.
01:02:36
Speaker
Those are actually the answers to my crossword thank you. As always, thank you guys for tuning in for another episode of Soapstone. If you would like to send in your feedback regarding this episode and suggest puzzle games that we will never play, you can do so at soapstonepodcast.gmail.com or you can join the discussion where people will be railing against us for my opinions on anti-chamber at soapstonepodcast at notthatfacebook.com slash soapstonepodcast.
01:03:05
Speaker
The full thing. The full thing. Take the entire sentence and that's the URL. Don't forget the whole thing. The whole thing. The whole thing. The whole thing. Thanks again for listening. And if you've gotten this far, I would like to apologize for not posting an episode last week.
01:03:26
Speaker
I was dying. Yeah. I felt very sick and we did not end up doing anything. We just, Jake came to visit my sick ass and we played smash. So, sorry. Oh, that's, it happens sometimes. I mean, we had a pretty good run, so we'll see if we can reestablish the, the streak. We've got like a whiteboard up there. It's like weeks without missing a podcast. We're just like, I race it and go back to one. That's fine.
01:03:57
Speaker
As always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good one.