PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath

[AutotelicBrown]

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath

Haven't really played Psychopath but this a cool game, done all puzzles up to Respite V for now. Looking forward to the harder ones!

I agree that the breakthrough wording is pretty poor and took me a while to actually check it out because I thought it was some form o hints system.

Not having a "step back" button and having to restart the entire level each time I misclick or try to sketch out a solution is pretty annoying, especially when most levels are laid out as a sequence of independent sub-problems. I'm guessing it's to give less incentive to brute-force but I don't feel it's worth the annoyance.

[hi19hi19]

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath

Whoa, KingOreO, long time no see.

Wish I had known about the development of this game!
I'll definitely give it a look once exams are done!

[Brett]

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath

@Reach glad to see you playing! Surprised at all the Honeycomb comments so far -- some thought it was too much of a jump in difficulty.

@AutotelicBrown awesome you like it, not having played pp and all! -- and that's precisely the conflict we had when thinking of putting in a 'rewind' function, but we just decided it would undermine some of the decision making.

@hi19hi19 hey man I'm pretty sure I played all your custom pp1 levels. I dunno why we kept dev under wraps, wasn't really the greatest marketing idea ._.

So the current road map is to introduce the level editor and Steam workshop support sometime in February as a free update. Was thinking of gathering the best user-made levels and adding another world or two to the main game in the future as well.

[Reach]

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath

Yeah, wish I had known of the game earlier.

Loving the game so far. Very hard as of world 6. Some of the new mechanics are brutal.

Honeycomb is quite hard for world 3, but fun. Personally the most brutal difficulty spike so far was Bad Directions in w5. Holy crap that level man.

Achievement question: The clear all levels in a particular world achievements don't work.

Edit: And I spoke too soon. World 7 was brutal. Soundtrack is fantastic and makes the struggle so much better though KEEP the definite highlight of W7, favorite level so far.

Edit 2: W7 Short Circuit - Without spoiling the solution, isn't the solution to that level inconsistent with the logic? Probably the first solution I don't personally like.

Edit 3: Officially 2 off on 9 stages. Fuck. me.

[Brett]

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath

Oh hell, didn't see the edits.

Makes me so happy, Keep was probably my favorite. Everybody hated Short Circuit -- thought I'd try a "one off" level like One Plus One but alas

[Reach]

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath

Yeah Keep was amazing tbh.

Would like to play further, haven't had much time so I'm stuck on world 8 or 9 2 off on a ton of stages. My biggest 'issue' with the puzzle design I think is that the difficulty curve for some of the new mechanics is extremely harsh. I'm not sure if I'm just bad at some of the new stuff I've never seen (particularly the ice blocks) but some of those are so open ended I'm sitting there just guessing randomly and not even sure why the shortcuts that work are working.

Would have helped me build up to those with some more easier levels using those mechanics. Not sure what others think of it though.

[DarkManticoreX2]

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath

Aye I need to work through the game to set records on the final levels before reach gets there


Eeeeeee

[hi19hi19]

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath

Yeah Keep was amazing tbh.

Would like to play further, haven't had much time so I'm stuck on world 8 or 9 2 off on a ton of stages. My biggest 'issue' with the puzzle design I think is that the difficulty curve for some of the new mechanics is extremely harsh. I'm not sure if I'm just bad at some of the new stuff I've never seen (particularly the ice blocks) but some of those are so open ended I'm sitting there just guessing randomly and not even sure why the shortcuts that work are working.

Would have helped me build up to those with some more easier levels using those mechanics. Not sure what others think of it though.

I remember having a LONG design discussion with stargroup about difficulty curve, when he was making his own Psychopath clone with idk someone else

One of the many conclusions we both came to is that most levels have way too much visual complexity. For example a 15x15 board is 225 disparate things your eyes and brain needs to process, it's a huge visual shock just when you load the level, or if you're not playing and you lean over and start spectating a friend playing the game. That initial shock alone turns a lot of people off puzzle games like this.

We wound up agreeing that anything but the absolutely most advanced levels can fit on like 8x8 or less. I remember stargroup had picked like 50 or so levels for his prototype that were mostly like 5x6 or 7x9 boards that were still relatively difficult.

Plus, even from a relatively experienced puzzle gamer's point of view I found that size more fun. Restarts were less punishing, solutions were usually limited to just 1 or 2 tricks and getting them was immediately rewarding; moving on to the next level is a much better feeling than going from 8 off to 6 off, for example. It felt like a more flowing and elegant game experience.

In short, this kind of game calls for way more smaller and easier levels than most tend to think. Part of the quality of the original Psychopath was just how easy it was before Link to the Past, which was usually everyone's first wall. Helped build familiarity and ease people into the game (and build exploitable bad habits! heh) Obviously there eventually needs to be harder levels and longer levels for variety, plus the fact larger boards opens the chance for many more false paths, but... I remember how fucking fiendishly difficult my custom level called Psycho was and that was only 15x15. (In fact I could never find the last 2-off trick someone else had found...)

Anyway rip stargroup


Hopefully this game lives up to my design expectations I'm pretty hyped to play it.
Maybe once finals finish (next week ;_ I can... start making custom levels again! hehe

[AutotelicBrown]

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath

Filtering the excess of information in a large grid is like an orthogonal skill to being able to devise an actual solution. I think it's perfectly fine if the "catch" to solve the puzzle is easier compared to another small grid puzzle in the same point of progression. I feel the problem arises when the designer underestimates/ignores that form of difficulty due to not being able to experience it firsthand in their own puzzles.

I actually thought Short Circuit was cool although I'm a bit biased due to not being a stranger to parity problems. Keep was interesting but there is so little you can do that the solution becomes a bit too obvious. My favorite so far is Fool's Goal.

Currently sitting on entire world VIII cleared while missing Recall from VI and Stasis, China Shop, Musical Chairs, and Impact from VII. I personally found world VIII considerably easier than VII (even considering the puzzles I already solved).

On another note, is this supposed to happen (spoiler for Buddy System solution):

[DarkManticoreX2]

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath

That would likely mean you found a shortcut I didnt find in testing.

[Reach]

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath

I'm like 50 moves off on that level. I can't understand these blocks at all.

I'll see if I can reverse engineer a solution now. lol


Re: Hi19

Yeah, with the original psychopath design, huge levels aren't really a problem per se because the logical deduction is relatively constrained. Even the longest, most enigmatic labyrinths can be reduced to logical blocks that can be solved.

The added elements add a significant amount of complexity because many of them allow for much larger branching possibilities than the traditional block design. There's one level with the red circles where I can solve the puzzle 2 off in like 8 different ways and the logic between all of those solutions and the perfect solution is virtually identical.

I don't have a problem with this per se, just that the difficulty curve for this game seems far harsher for many of the new mechanics for this reason. At least to me. Others might feel differently. For the record, I never really played psychopath2 either so my imbalance with respect to certain mechanics could stem from that.

I also haven't really sunk many hours into this game yet so I've got to sit down and play it some more 8)

[AutotelicBrown]

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath

Damn, world IX really picks up in difficulty.

That would likely mean you found a shortcut I didnt find in testing.

Alright then, I was afraid it could be related to the breakthroughs as I haven't worked on those yet. Found a couple more sub-optimal requirements:

Spoiler for China shop solution:

Spoiler for Baby steps solution:

Spoiler for Passcode solution:

[Reach]

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath

Yeah, working on world 9 myself. It's tricky.

Sick optimizations btw. I just finished many of those levels myself today @ the step count the game recommended. They were fairly difficult as is. I wonder if their ordering is appropriate with the revised step count.

edit: Waka in World 9 is so random lol I solved it in 202 but surely there is a more optimal solution.

[AutotelicBrown]

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath

Alright, finished the main story and I'm a bit confused with what I'm supposed to do at Cruel Chamber in the Coping world. Up to that point I'm still missing: Musical chairs (world VII), Wiggle room, Cascade (world IX), Playrooms, Lockmess monster, Trash Heap and Bonefish (world X). Lockmess monster in particular is the first one I feel like I've already exhausted my options and got stuck with off by 2 solutions.

Waka really gives the impression that there's a better solution but after experimenting a bit it seems very few choices actually matter in the final move count.

Also got a couple more optimizations along the way.
Spoiler for Frigid Engine solution:

Spoiler for Jar of Nothing solution:

Spoiler for Six Bits solution:

Spoiler for Tetric solution:

I'm actually curious what the listed move count solution looks like for most of those because I'm finding those optimized ones as my first solution.

[Reach]

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath

I'll give those a try today and let you know if I find original solutions.

Musical Chairs is infuriating. The solution is quite good, but the level is much much harder than where it's placed. Such a sigh of relief when I beat that thing.

edit: Here's buddy system as intended:

Six Bits intended:

(IMO even with the optimization this level could be moved down, it wasn't very hard)