2015 Jul 2, 9:53 2012 May 7, 3:30
I'm done playing Fez. The style is atmospheric retro nastalgia and on the surface the gameplay is standard 2D platformer with one
interesting Flatland style game mechanic but dig deeper to find Myst style puzzles. Despite the following I thoroughly enjoyed the game and would recommend it to anyone intrigued by the previous.
Five eighths through the game I ran into one of the game's infamous Fez save game breaking issues, but I enjoyed the game enough that I
started over before any patches were released and had no further issues.
While playing the game I created some tools to help keep track of my Fez notes (spoilers) including a Pixelated Image Creator that makes it easy to generate data URIs for large, black and white pixelated images, and
(spoilers) a Fez Transliteration Tool to help me translate the in-game writing system.
video-game fez game xbox 2010 Feb 22, 3:23This doesn't seem real but its still funny. If Feynman answered the 'why are manholes round' question: "... Interviewer: But just considering the round ones, why are they round? Feynman: If we are
just considering the round ones, then they are round by definition. That statement is a tautology. ..."
humor feynman microsoft puzzle interview 2010 Jan 8, 2:08Flickr dev talks image metadata the various forms which to prefer and how to guess at their character encodings.
unicode charset flickr photo image exif programming reference xmp technical 2009 Jan 27, 4:00"I'm very sorry to have kept you waiting so long. I've just finished New GROW !"
game flash cool puzzle 2008 Oct 15, 10:47The artist Harriet Russell encodes the destination postal address of her letters with anagrams, crosswords, and other puzzles: "Despite fears of a Royal Mail backlash, Russell found the system more
than willing to play her game. The crossword edition was returned completed with the comment "Solved by the Glasgow Mail Centre". Only 10 of the 130 letters posted lost their way through the system,
some held particularly testing anagrams, others were without a postal code."
humor puzzle crossword art mail postal-system harriet-russell book 2008 Sep 5, 1:56This is the game from the same person I linked to previously who has a son named Link: "I'm very excited to finally announce our first game, Liight, for WiiWare! So... what is it? Liight is a puzzle
solving game where the pieces are colored lights and the goal is to make cool music! Anyone can play! Just illuminate all the targets in each puzzle with light of the matching color... but it's not
always so easy! You'll have to mix colors, cast shadows and make the most of your limited resources to solve these brain teasers. Solve 100 challenging puzzles! Create your own puzzles, and Share
them with your friends via WiiConnect24. Host a Contest to see who can solve your puzzle the fastest. If you're ready, take on Nonstop mode, a whole new way to play where arcade-style scoring meets
split-second strategy!"
liight game videogame nintendo wii wiiware 2008 Aug 14, 9:38
I recently finished Braid, the Xbox Live game, and a comparison with Portal is helpful. From a screen shot Braid
looks like a normal 2D platformer, but that's like looking at a screen shot of Portal and saying its a first person shooter. While the scaffolding of the game-play may sort of fall into that
category, the games are actually about exploring the character's ability and solving puzzles. In Portal the ability is bending space and in Braid its bending time. However, whereas in Portal there
is one space bending mechanism, the portal gun, Braid's protagonist explores several different time bending techniques including, most prominently, reversing time, but also time dilation, multiple
time-lines, and other odd things.
Similar to the difference in game-play, while Portal has a strict simplicity to its visual style, Braid is much more ornate, like you're playing in an oil painting. Without seeing video of the game, or playing the demo (which is available for free on Xbox Live) its difficult to convey, but it is quite lovely and the
animation adds quite a bit. Both games too are rather short leaving you just a bit hungry for more and have an interesting plot and an ending that I'd hate to spoil although Braid replaces Portal's
humor with melancholy. If you enjoyed Portal and Twelve Monkeys then I'd recommend Braid.
braid game videogame portal nontechnical 2008 Apr 2, 6:21Recommended by PA guys: "Crayon Physics Deluxe is a 2D physics puzzle game, in which you get to experience what it would be like if your drawings would be magically transformed into real physical
objects. Solve puzzles with your artistic vision and creati
penny-arcade crayon crayon-physics game games physics drawing