Sept. 12, 2025, 10:53 p.m.   (Last edited: 14 hours ago)

...masqueraded as a standard Thief level with guards and other expendables inherent to this particular engine. Question is, whether this puzzle on puzzle and if in doubt throw in more puzzle doesn't create a self-contained non-euclidean inverted space that is about to devour itself in a poof of non-calculable negative singularity (the end of which is so cruelly and abruptly cut short), and we never learn about the final fate of those little crying polytriplopentaphonic diplodecahedrons and Rehmannian equations in the cold Trottelreiner's polybinomial universe.

Anyway, I think this is the author's best mission so far with moments of both inspired awe (the architecture of the place and how it is structured) and true poetry - and not least the core innovative "recall" puzzles and how the player is gradually guided in their use up to zen level (I would even go as far as throwing out or at least radically clearing all but the essential and innovative ones and especially the whole navel-gazing strings of them towards the end, too much is simply too much) although it still fails to grasp the environment-driven, -narrated and interactive nature of this particular format as is*. They come from worlds and lands far, far away for that - for better or worse.


*To illustrate, let me give you two examples:
- there is an oft-used gimmick of locked rooms or areas but accessible via some kind of detour - with keys (or opening levers) always found inside, hardly ever contributing to traversing the map and with nothing of essential value there to complete the mission, which the author apparently only entrusts to hard (as in proper) puzzles and never deems environmental means adequate for that - I call this "fake (freedom of) exploration", or not properly implemented one, aside from the obvious logical worldbuilding problem as to who could (aside from the mission designer) possibly leave the only in-game means to open a locked area inside - see?
- I very much liked the floor stairs gag but it also demonstrates how much different the author's approach/thinking is - it surely is funny (even funnier would be a whole YT video with players' real-time reactions to it) but overall in gameplay terms it only works once and can never be used or exploited for any kind of variable gameplay approach - it's a mathematical party joke come into (virtual) flesh and that's it

- also on an unrelated note, some readables with hints on puzzles tend to be at times more confusing (and unhelpful in the sense of negative(=misleading) information being worse than none) than the actual physical puzzles taken by themselves