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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

#541

Post by 0x1ceb00da »

jsheard wrote: post #18
dwroberts wrote: post #9

Interested to play this but I think the trailer does it a huge disservice. Just a barrage of voice clips and no real structure to it. I think it would help the game a lot if they replace that trailer ASAP

Yeah it's a real step backwards from how The Witness was presented: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul7kNFD6noU This looks to be the first of Jon Blows games to put writing front and center, so I wonder if the clunkiness goes beyond the trailer. That's not really his forte.

I think release trailers and announcement trailers are different things. This is what came up when I searched for announcement trailer of witness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amR6LmU6bzg

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

#542

Post by 0x1ceb00da »

tzcnt wrote: post #398
blarg1 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did you think of the puzzles?

I found them quite boring since they are all repetitions on the same theme - just drawing lines on a square. It could have been a mobile game. The world doesn't feel connected to the puzzles, and the exploration aspect of it could have been a completely separate game. It feels like two games glued together, which is IMO not a good design. It's also not a game that's very demanding from a technical performance perspec…

> I found them quite boring since they are all repetitions on the same theme - just drawing lines on a square.

And programming is just pressing buttons on a keyboard.

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

#544

Post by CyberDildonics »

nurettin wrote: post #536
CyberDildonics wrote: post #487

He also spent some of that time yelling at viewers, talking about how much smarter than everyone he is and talking about his language that he'll never release.

I didn't see him brag that much, but he says things like don't start with being a web dev, JavaScript kills your prospects of becoming a better programmer, etc. He probably thinks that formal education and books that teach people how a computer works and how to code in different paradigms don't exist, that everyone is a wannabe who only learns on hand at a job like he did. His job recommendation: "there are so many t…

He mostly says it from the angle that everyone else is dumb instead of himself being smart.

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

#545

Post by spiralcoaster »

ex-aws-dude wrote: post #337
iamwil wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn't need to finish it in order for it to have an impact. Makers of FilePilot and Animal Well both attribute Handmade as being big inspirations for them to go the way they did. They said, they got the most value from the first 50 eps or so. You'll hear lots of them on the Wookash podcast.

Still, its completely ridiculous to rag on other programmers practices so much while you can't even finish your own project Its like everything these guys rant about you could add on the tagline "...yet the world keeps spinning and we all keep shipping things"

So for your opinion to carry any weight, please enlighten us as to the games you have shipped that qualify you to comment on their take on programming practices.

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

#546

Post by eudamoniac »

nurettin wrote: post #540
eudamoniac wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Portal is trivial and Talos Principle is good but a bit contrived. I have never played a puzzle game that I considered a chore. The puzzles are the game. You don't need a story or a point in them. I also play chess and there is certainly no immersion or physics in that. The Witness also has the sublime revelation in it that makes it more memorable than most games. I don't even remember the god's name in TP, but I can…

> You don't need a story or a point in them. Well, that was pretentious.

I guess crosswords, chess, sudoku, solitaire, and competitive programming need to add plots and narratives to their next editions, lest they be thought to have pretensions! (Of what?)

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

#547

Post by nurettin »

eudamoniac wrote: post #546
nurettin wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't need a story or a point in them. Well, that was pretentious.

I guess crosswords, chess, sudoku, solitaire, and competitive programming need to add plots and narratives to their next editions, lest they be thought to have pretensions! (Of what?)

I enjoy all of the above and not the bland, droning, tasteless, pointless "learn the next mechanic" JB games. YMMV.

BTW the talos principle AI referred to itself as yahweh, if you ever read the bible.

Edit: and chess is uniquely lore-heavy. Even the openings have openings and everything is tied to history. I'm surprised it is even brought up in comparison at all.

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

#548

Post by meheleventyone »

incrudible wrote: post #515
wahnfrieden wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slavery is not only legal in 2025 USA, it is in greater numbers than back then. There are 40-50 million enslaved worldwide today.

All I can say to you is that the nonchalance with which you throw around words like slavery or fascism is gonna do nothing but get your bozo bit flipped. It is not going to help any cause you may care about, valid and righteous as it may be.

Isn’t this just telling on yourself though? If you’ll flip the “bozo bit” over mere aesthetics of word choice you’re probably not a serious person to begin with.

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

#549

Post by meheleventyone »

Barrin92 wrote: post #474
NeutralCrane wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are missing their point. They are saying they start with relatively benign views, and the intense overreaction to those views drives them to support much more extreme views, like what you are describing, that they otherwise might not have. I can't speak for Blow, but that definitely seems to accurately describe the arc Rowling has taken over the last 7-8 years.

>that they otherwise might not have. I think this is letting people off the hook. We're talking about adults in their 40s and 50s here. When people like that 'suddenly' endorse extreme views it's because they had held them back and feel enabled to say them now, an adult isn't going to become an extremist because someone was mean to them online. I'm 20 years younger than Blow and even at my age I can tell I'm settled…

Thank you for saying this. In particular people are often already on a journey of self radicalisation so blaming people reacting to their views for radicalising them further is seeking to soft soap that. On top of which the people reacting are often framed as “going too far” and thus becoming more radical is the only natural reaction. It removes all agency and generally I think is mostly deployed by people that agree already with the radical views but are too scared to say so.

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

#550

Post by meheleventyone »

eudamoniac wrote: post #537
mariusor wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you support political leaders that push fascist discourse where regular people that happen to have more empathy for their fellow man are presented as the enemy - in Hegseth's book the call to arms against them is literally in the first paragraph - I think it stops being about not far enough left, but about being way too far right.

Even if Trump were quite literally a Nazi, he is the elected President. Democracy is important. I don't know how one can simultaneously believe in democracy and believe that everyone who voted for the winning candidate is objectively incorrect. If most voters want to gas the Jews, that is just the will of the people, and that's terrible, but you need to pick in that scenario between a democracy and some other form of…

Tell me what happened to democracy when Hitler took power? And how democratic was the overall process? So was the decision to commit mass murder of millions of people really the democratic will of the people?

It’s like people haven’t even touched a history book sometimes.

You can also look at the parallels to Trump and his continued assault on the democratic norms in the US government. For example assuming powers that are those of Congress, trying to control what states can do via executive order, a thankfully rebuffed attempt at gerrymandering even the Republicans shied away from and so on.

If one believes democracy is important one must also believe that we need checks and balances within government such that democracy is maintained in the face of bad actors. Trump is not the only elected person in government after all and democracy requires free and fair elections to continue when his presidency ends.

Also nothing about a democratic result means that any side needs to be happy about it or that anyone is or should be protected from criticism.

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