I’ve logged 170 hours on steam (although a chunk of that was idling I think - call it 100 at the absolute minimum)
If you don’t enjoy the choice of rooms, the game doesn’t work, no matter how good it is. If that’s tedious, nothing will redeem it. But for me that was enough of a tactical choice that it worked.
After that point, you need to have a flexible approach to enjoy it: for most of the game you will never have a run where you don’t accomplish something, be that seeing a new room, solving a new puzzle, or just testing a theory and eliminating a possibility. But if you go in with a singular goal, “I want to solve the puzzle in X room” you will get annoyed fast.
The story is really good, and the way it’s gradually revealed as you solve puzzles, the way your understanding of the situation changes wholesale, is really fantastic.
As long as the drafting is entertaining and you stay flexible, the minor issues with the game are less than negligible. Those issues are: a few mechanics should be communicated properly (most egregiously, the axe), getting around is too slow, and by the time you’re on day 100 and solving end game puzzles you need a more reliable way to reduce the rng. You end up with quite a lot of mitigation, but you need more. A once per day ability to pick a room, and a way to keep a chosen item that isn’t dependent on coat check, that you unlock after solving a mid-late game puzzle, would do the trick.
Regarding hints, I think the best way to get hints is to find someone who’s played already so they can give you the smallest nudges possible. I regret going online for hints at times and getting a bigger one than I wanted. When I got hints from friends I was occasionally able to get… almost nothing and yet it was enough to get unstuck, which is really ideal! They’d tell me for example, “you have the right idea” and that’d just be enough for me to persist a bit more. But in general, the end game puzzles are not really designed to be solved by a single brain. Getting hints likely won’t reduce your enjoyment, because you’ll still be getting the satisfaction of solving other bits.
I’ve logged 170 hours on steam (although a chunk of that was idling I think - call it 100 at the absolute minimum)
If you don’t enjoy the choice of rooms, the game doesn’t work, no matter how good it is. If that’s tedious, nothing will redeem it. But for me that was enough of a tactical choice that it worked.
After that point, you need to have a flexible approach to enjoy it: for most of the game you will never have a run where you don’t accomplish something, be that seeing a new room, solving a new puzzle, or just testing a theory and eliminating a possibility. But if you go in with a singular goal, “I want to solve the puzzle in X room” you will get annoyed fast.
The story is really good, and the way it’s gradually revealed as you solve puzzles, the way your understanding of the situation changes wholesale, is really fantastic.
As long as the drafting is entertaining and you stay flexible, the minor issues with the game are less than negligible. Those issues are: a few mechanics should be communicated properly (most egregiously, the axe), getting around is too slow, and by the time you’re on day 100 and solving end game puzzles you need a more reliable way to reduce the rng. You end up with quite a lot of mitigation, but you need more. A once per day ability to pick a room, and a way to keep a chosen item that isn’t dependent on coat check, that you unlock after solving a mid-late game puzzle, would do the trick.
Regarding hints, I think the best way to get hints is to find someone who’s played already so they can give you the smallest nudges possible. I regret going online for hints at times and getting a bigger one than I wanted. When I got hints from friends I was occasionally able to get… almost nothing and yet it was enough to get unstuck, which is really ideal! They’d tell me for example, “you have the right idea” and that’d just be enough for me to persist a bit more. But in general, the end game puzzles are not really designed to be solved by a single brain. Getting hints likely won’t reduce your enjoyment, because you’ll still be getting the satisfaction of solving other bits.