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Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

arstechnica.com

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Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#461

Post by hbn »

pdpi wrote: post #63

If you count names and causes of death as separate puzzles, Return of the Obra Dinn is around 100 puzzles long. The two Portal games are less than 100 puzzles put together. Blue Prince is what? 50ish elaborate, intricate puzzles? (darts and parlour notwithstanding). Chants of Senaar, Opus Magnum, Space Chem are all in that same ballpark too. Puzzle games with a lot of levels, like Patrick's Parabox or Baba Is You, cl…

It's not trying to be Portal. It's a Sokoban game. If you like playing Sokoban games, here's a package of ~1400 hand-crafted puzzles, probably with a handful of interesting gimmicks/rule alterations to spice things up.

> At one puzzle a minute, that's 24 hours of gameplay.

Unfortunately we're not all as smart as you but in TFA he estimates it'll take 400-500 hours to complete all of them.

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#462

Post by 12_throw_away »

mjr00 wrote: post #408
dmonitor wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Looker is quite possibly the greatest parody ever executed in a video game. It creates the same kind of "ahah" moment that games like The Witness do, but in a way that really pokes fun at the level of pretentiousness those games tend to indulge themselves in.

It's the gaming version of Galaxy Quest: a parody that is not only great when it stands by itself, but is satirical in a way that shows they are genuinely big fans of the source material. (Though perhaps unsurprisingly, Blow has only once mentioned The Looker, saying he hates how it devalues his art, and now refuses to talk about it ever.)

> Blow has only once mentioned The Looker, saying he hates how it devalues his art, and now refuses to talk about it ever

This is so fascinating to me, because when I really get a piece of creative art, like I thought I did with both Braid and The Witness, I usually feel like I get some insight and empathy with the person who created it. Yet every time I read or hear from Jonathan Blow ... I do not feel that. So, I guess I've been challenged by art again, hooray!

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#463

Post by _bent »

0xdeadbeefbabe wrote: post #258
EvilTrout wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blow and Muratori gained a following of engineers by bashing existing popular languages and engines, claiming they were all garbage. They both started this after the Witness came out, 10 years ago. Since then, guess how many games Muratori has shipped? 0. (He cancelled his announced game.) Guess how many Blow has shipped? 0 so far, but it sounds close now. These engineers spent their time ragging on other developers…

The clean code guy hasn't shipped any game either.

Untrue, there is a game (however it's not very good): http://cleancoder.com/space-war

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#464

Post by psyopsy »

IAmBroom wrote: post #175
jabbywocker wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Reddit link didn’t load for some reason and the other day be didn’t include anything racist, homophobic or transphobic. What it did cover is definitely a simplistic view ignoring the cultural nuances that might lower women’s participation in stem, but I’m not sure I’d classify it as sexist.

He suggests women are biologically less capable than men in STEM. But I note you didn't include misogyny as a problematic belief.

[flagged]

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#465

Post by sunrunner »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #440
sunrunner wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a fan of Alan Hazelden and Draknek’s work but stating upfront that he a) wasn’t involved with the work directly but b) agreed for it to be used years ago, while then going on to write what seems to read as a light hit-piece for Blow himself, and then using that to launch into a point about how his politics and Blow’s don’t align (not relevant for puzzle game progeny) feels like more like him using the trailer for…

>Meanwhile the various accusations about Blow’s politics beliefs are mysteriously missing He sort of went mask off during COVID, so I believe it. I also believe Blow is a smart dude and would try to erase that history right before a PR rally for his game. I'm not even on Twitter but I hear about such events in the gamedev scene for years.

Also not on Twitter and try hard to avoid the easy source-less Internet drama, though I recall some comments about the vaccines being rushed out and not going through the standard trial processes and periods.

It doesn’t seem untrue, though given the environment at the time justified, but that comment was extrapolated to “He’s a hard-right anti vaxxer”. No citations of my own though, so this is just memory.

Either way, this is why I try to stay off Twitter.

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#466

Post by KittenInABox »

CupricTea wrote: post #443
KittenInABox wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The subredditdrama post in question does in fact contain a link to the full tweet, which you objected to as bad faith. So I'm asking what is a good faith way to link to this tweet.

It could have been linked here directly instead of presented through the lens of a toxic smear community. Presenting it through a community called "SubredditDrama" is poisoning the well[1]. I am not going to entertain that smear tactic. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well

Why link you to the handful of individual links directly when you clearly can identify and sort through the source yourself? The poisoning the well clearly wouldn't work on you. Well, here the links are:

"This is true, the gaming press is super left-wing, but on the other hand they have almost no impact now. I would say that the social pressure keeping "indies" in line mostly comes from them being socially fearful in the normal way. (It doesn't help that all males currently under the age of 40 were raised to be supercucks.)" https://x.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/1854708962462982465

(Feb 2025 for context)"Are you kidding? He is the best President we have had in my entire life, by far. It's a miracle. I just hope it doesn't abruptly go bad." https://x.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/1887599339037663629

"Interest is not the same as ability. I believe it is likely that the sexes have different interests on average, and that biological factors play a large part in this. This is *NOT REMOTELY* a controversial opinion except on Weird Far Left Twitter 2017." https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DRT4vNEUIAEJgP3.jpg

"There's a weird disconnect in this vaccine mandate debate: many are still pretending that Covid-19 is of natural origin, which gives such mandates a different feel than they otherwise have." https://x.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/1447601578123296769

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#467

Post by marknefedov »

bena wrote: post #227
NathanaelRea wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kind of a rediculous assessment. "How many games have you shipped in the last 10 years" is the standard for how good your advice is. John has made two games + one soon in the last 17 years. Braid started off the indie boom, and the witness was a blockbuster hit. Casey works on game engines and optimization, and has an entire video series about writing a game from scratch. I agree that some authors don't ship a…

To be fair, I had not heard of the Witness until well after it came out. Braid came out the same time XBox Indie Games. I will say, I do not find a lot of their rhetoric convincing. Especially for people who have never attempted to write the software they are criticizing. Blow only writes single player games that do not persist significant data to the machine. Nothing bad happens if your save file is corrupted. Nothi…

> Especially for people who have never attempted to write the software they are criticizing.

Casey was criticizing new Windows Terminal got into an argument with Microsoft's project manager that said that it was impossible to implement optimizations that Casey talked about. Well, Casey reimplemented terminal, it was not that hard.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38650254

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#468

Post by rufo »

socalgal2 wrote: post #433
rufo wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://x.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/1939982295936782396 > Trump was my preferred President in the last election cycle but nothing will make me hate him faster than this banana republic shit. (replying to a post complaining on the direction of government contracts/subsidies under the Trump administration)

That particular tweet only says that he preferred Trump to Kamala which IMO is a reasonable opinion. It does not say that he likes Trump. Given the choice between a douche and a turd sandwich you pick one. Maybe post some other tweet?

https://x.com/jonathan_blow/status/1887599339037663629?s=46&...

> Are you kidding? He is the best President we have had in my entire life, by far. It's a miracle. I just hope it doesn't abruptly go bad.

(In reply to a post ruing Trump’s “showmanship” and wishing that the Republican Party had produced a “legit” candidate.)

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#469

Post by aidenn0 »

calmbonsai wrote: post #268
magicalhippo wrote: post #225

A side note, if you've played The Witness but not yet The Looker[1], you probably have been missing out. I quite enjoyed The Witness but The Looker was just great. [1]: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1985690/The_Looker/

I played The Witness and didn't find it remotely fun. I've enjoyed all of Blow's other titles. I suppose I was coming in with expectations of a modern Myst and/or Riven, but it was not that. There was not enough active narrative to keep me engaged with the puzzles and there wasn't enough "reward" in completing them.

> I suppose I was coming in with expectations of a modern Myst and/or Riven, but it was not that.

I loathed Myst, so had avoided The Witness for the same reason you played it; I'll maybe give it a try now.

Re: Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

#470

Post by CupricTea »

KittenInABox wrote: post #466
CupricTea wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could have been linked here directly instead of presented through the lens of a toxic smear community. Presenting it through a community called "SubredditDrama" is poisoning the well[1]. I am not going to entertain that smear tactic. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well

Why link you to the handful of individual links directly when you clearly can identify and sort through the source yourself? The poisoning the well clearly wouldn't work on you. Well, here the links are: "This is true, the gaming press is super left-wing, but on the other hand they have almost no impact now. I would say that the social pressure keeping "indies" in line mostly comes from them being socially fearful in…

Alright, I don't agree with half of what he said here, but really? Is that supposed to make him look like some irredeemably bad person?

Are we seriously going to pretend that men and women—on average—do not differ in their general interests, and furthermore get mad at people for pointing that out?

And I'm not fond of the current administration, but it's a bit extreme to write someone off as a person for liking who is president. You would be writing off literally half of the entire country, and no, that's not something to feel virtuous about, that's just nonsense.

Frankly I think I would rather have a conversation with someone like him instead of someone who would get disproportionately upset at those points.

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