Developer David Shaw has now released The Long Gate, a thoroughly mysterious puzzle game full of quantum physics and circuits set up as puzzles.
With puzzles that can be completed in whatever order you find them, Shaw worked with a quantum computing science company called D-Wave Systems to build them and make sure the quantum theory used is factual and achievable. The result is a puzzle game with a very interesting idea - if you can grasp the mechanics and if you love tinkering with wires.
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The Long Gate could have possibly sat along side the likes of Portal and The Talos Principle, if it did a bit more world-building instead of abruptly dumping you into it. It's not enough to have good intricate puzzles, you need some sort of attachment to it that I wish I had here because the setup is initially quite exciting. Walking through these huge chambers with lots of moving pieces, with a couple quite beautiful scenes, I wanted to know so much more.
Mystery like this only really works where it's carefully guided. The learning curve here certainly didn't help and there's absolutely no setup to help you out. There's a few initial starting puzzles of course that are easy enough but the difficulty just spikes so suddenly and harshly. It assumes far too much existing knowledge on part of the player, and that's a big problem. The difference in other first-person puzzle games, is that their mechanics are trickled in and start with the basics. Here, there's not really any of that. The result, is a game of frustration.
Feature Highlight:
- Challenging puzzles - cryptic puzzles built around digital, analog and quantum circuits
- Open exploration - players can explore the caverns and complete puzzles in almost any order they choose
- Underground Oasis - The caverns of The Long Gate are full of wonder and nature, providing a contrasting setting to the machine-based circuit puzzles
- Stunning soundtrack - The Long Gate features a beautiful original soundtrack by musician Nicholas Newman
If you do have an open and keen mind for challenging puzzles and you have ample patience, The Long Gate could be good. Not a game made for everyone, that's for absolute certain.
You can buy The Long Gate now on Steam.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
I'll stick it on my watchlist and I might end up buying it as an afternoon's distraction, even if I don't come anywhere near completing it.
I can't remember the reason, but I didn't like the demo at all. Waiting for reviews to tell me why. :D
At least demo had bit rough start as it doesn't really tell you what to do. Once you figure out how to get into places there's just plenty of odd devices.
Things get easier once you start trying to interact with everything that looks like it maybe could be interacted with. Demo had several puzzle types, some of them harder to figure out than the rest, but all nerdy. Audio ones were the hardest as first problem was figuring out what the game wants you to do. Logic gates on the other hand were...logical.
I was just commenting recently on another thread that The Witness was a similarly disappointing game that just dumps you onto an island full of incredibly repetitive puzzles with similarly bizarre spikes of difficulty. The Long Gate looks even prettier and appears to have more variety in the puzzle elements, but I completely agree - without some motivation or world building, it's really hard to keep momentum with these games.
I'll stick it on my watchlist and I might end up buying it as an afternoon's distraction, even if I don't come anywhere near completing it.
The Witness certainly worked for me, but I think that's because it does use, ahem, gating to teach its mechanics.
You can stumble on something you don't understand early on, but you do get gradual progressions close to the beginning of dedicated areas, and I can see a lot of thought and play-testing went into it.
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