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Counterpoint on Human Fall Flat — Reading Through the Negative Reviews
Komugi rated Human Fall Flat 7.0/10. I read Steam's negative reviews and examined five claims: the dropped Linux support, solo-play tedium, control frustration, camera-induced motion sickness, and how quickly the novelty fades. Where I agree, where I push back.
Measuring "Fun to Cooperate" Instead of "Satisfying to Solve" — Big Walk's New Yardstick for Puzzles
One piece today. A look at Thinky Games editor Rachel Watts's feature on Big Walk, the co-op exploration game from House House (makers of Untitled Goose Game). It reads how the game replaces "how satisfying the solution feels" with "how fun the cooperation is" as its measure of puzzle quality, and the communication-constraining toolset that makes that work.
Related reviews
Trine 2: Complete Story
A side-scrolling physics puzzle-platformer in which you switch between a knight, a thief and a wizard, conjuring boxes and planks to get past each obstacle. Made by Finland's Frozenbyte, the Complete Story edition bundles the main campaign with the Goblin Menace expansion and an extra level.
puzzle-platformerphysicsco-opHuman Fall Flat
A physics puzzle platformer about Bob, a wobbly figure you steer by grabbing, climbing and dragging your way through buildings that float in a dreamscape. Each arm is controlled separately, and no puzzle has a single fixed solution. Made by Lithuania's No Brakes Games, with online co-op for up to eight players.
puzzle-platformerphysicsco-opKeep Talking and Nobody Explodes
One player sits in front of a bomb; everyone else reads the defusal manual. The reader cannot see the bomb and the person seeing it has no manual. You hand conditional instructions across by voice and cut the wire before the clock runs out. A game-jam-born co-op puzzle from Steel Crate Games, with VR support.
puzzleco-oppartyPortal Reloaded
A free community mod built on Portal 2: alongside the familiar blue and orange spatial portals you fire a third, green time portal linking the present to the same facility twenty years on, and solve twenty-five test chambers by moving between them. Released in 2021 by the solo developer PORTANIS, with twenty cooperative puzzles added in 2023.
puzzlefirst-personphysicsEscape Simulator
A first-person escape-room puzzler where you move the furniture, smash the pots and pick up nearly everything you see. Solve 28 rooms designed with real-life escape room operators, alone or in online co-op, then keep going into thousands of community rooms built with the bundled editor. From Pine Studio.
puzzleescape-roomfirst-personWe Were Here Forever
A co-op-only first-person puzzle adventure in which two prisoners, held in separate parts of Castle Rock, escape by describing to each other what only one of them can see or hear. Explaining yourself over a walkie-talkie - and being misunderstood - is the mechanic. The fourth entry in Total Mayhem Games' We Were Here series.
puzzleescape-roomco-opThe Past Within
A point-and-click adventure playable only by two people at once: one stands in the Past, the other in the Future, and every puzzle is solved by describing aloud what only your own screen shows. The past is drawn in 2D, the future in 3D. Rusty Lake's first co-op-only game.
puzzleco-opescape-roomEscape Academy
A first-person escape-room puzzle for one or two players, made by designers who build real-life escape rooms. Search each themed room, combine the scattered clues and enter the code to get out — from defusing bombs to hacking servers — wrapped in a light story about the faculty of a puzzle academy. Coin Crew Games' welcoming door into the genre.
puzzleescape-roommystery
