Filament A Challenging Puzzle Game With Rich Backstory - Review
I'm always on the look out for new indie games, particularly when they let me branch out from the typical management/tycoon bubble I often find myself in. Released on April 23rd 2020 by Beard Envy and published by Kasedo Games and Maple Whispering Limited (who have brought a great range of indie games to us), the game has been in my library for a while and on my wishlist for even longer. Filament is a story-driven puzzler set on board the research vessel Alabaster. With the ship locked down and the crew missing, it's your job to regain control of the ship and discover what happened to the crew.
The game starts with a cutscene of your arrival at the Alabaster. As you
walk from your small ship toward the larger one, you get your first 'puzzle'
which introduces the core mechanic at the base level. To solve each of
the puzzles you have to make your way to the door of a room. Sounds
simple, however you are dragging a lit wire, or filament if you will, along
with you. You will need to wind this around the room creating
connections with a number of white blocks to create a connection and open the
door.
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The first 'puzzle' where you simply wrap your wire to unlock the door |
After completing the first few puzzles you will find out that there is one
entity on the ship, Juniper, however they are stranded in the cockpit.
They will introduce you to Anchors. These are large structures located
in the ship which control various things such as doors in the ship and allow
you to unlock new areas to explore or power up additional anchors. Each
anchor will require you to solve 5 puzzles in order to reset it, although you
can return to the ship after any of these and your progress with be
saved.
Whilst completing the puzzles the game does give you a couple of useful things
to help out. Whilst these aren't hints, there are walkthroughs and
solutions available online if you wish, they will help you out. In
addition to Return To Ship which allows you to back out of the puzzles, these
tools are Rewind, Restart Level and Focus Level. The first of these
allows you to backtrack through the puzzle if you have gone wrong somewhere
without having to start the level from scratch. This is extremely useful
in some of the larger levels where you may only want to go back two or three
points in the puzzle. The second, unsurprisingly, allows you to reset
the level and try again and the last one allows you to zoom into a top down
view of the room to see the various walls, connection points and obstacles in
the room.
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Using the Focus Level tool to get an overview of the room |
As I mentioned, to solve puzzles you must trail a wire round the room,
connecting with white blocks around the room. You need to think ahead
slightly as once you have passed along a route, you will be unable to cross
that again due to the wire. This can lead to utter frustration when you
think you have solved a level to suddenly realise you have blocked off your
access to the door, or worse that there isn't enough space between a wall and
the wire for you to walk. In some of the Anchors, the puzzles will be of
this basic setup, however in others you will have to contend with purple
blocks which will break the connection through your wire, blocks which need to
be connected in a specific order or puzzles with different coloured blocks,
which will change the colour of your light, you can then only connect this to
another block of the same colour to return it to white and many other
variations to discover.
Whilst the meat of the game is solving the puzzles, a lot of the fun comes
from the various hidden items and story. After completing each Anchor,
Juniper will share a brief insight into the back story of the Alabaster.
You will also discover computer passwords which allow you to log in to
computers in the ship to piece together the events of the ship, from weekly
games nights to the ships cat having kittens, you will learn about the crew
and the events which led to where you are now.
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Accessing Vermillion's computer account the read their messages |
Filament A Challenging Puzzle Game With Rich Backstory - Review
Reviewed by Parcival
on
September 25, 2020
Rating:

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