I have complicated feelings toward Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. When I finish games, I am usually eager to write, feeling as if the game sets up a conversation between its creators and me. KCD2 did not elicit this response in me, sadly. There were aspects of it that really intrigued me, but on the whole, I find it hard to say much about the game. It is full of content, but void of meaning. It is a massive game, but its core thesis is incredibly weak.

Does that make it a bad game? Absolutely not. It's fun and expansive. It’s the kind of game people love to get lost in. It shares much of its DNA with Bethesda Game Studios games in its openness and quirkiness, with NPCs pretending to live daily lives. That said, in these articles, I am not interested in telling people whether a game is good or bad. When I write about a game, I look for an interpretation of what it says about our world through story, mechanics, and art. Sadly, my takeaway was that Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 does not say much of interest.

TIS-100 by Zachtronics is one of the most challenging and intrinsically rewarding games I have played. It has a cool, vibey feel and is packed with brain teasers that will keep you staring at your computer screen for hours. It will have you pulling out paper, sketching flow charts, and working through simple programming puzzles. It’s a programming and logic puzzle game with a light story that never really takes center stage; instead, the game is all about challenging you as you focus for hours on end. The puzzles are very similar to exercises you might find in a beginner coding course, which means this game appeals to a small niche of people. I'm glad it exists, but I’m also surprised someone took the time to develop it at all!

As someone who enjoys coding, I found the game extremely addictive. The puzzles were challenging and reminded me why I wanted to pursue computer science back when I went to university (before realizing I couldn't pass the math courses). I always felt a great sense of satisfaction whenever I finally found the solution and saw the puzzle completion screen. It made me feel like I was a genius!

The puzzles themselves are a 10 / 10 affair. However, the story side of things is where the game is weakest. Accessibility is also one of this game's downfalls. Ironically, programming in TIS-100 is more difficult than any real-life example most people will work on. The game is also uninterested in helping you solve the puzzles. While the difficulty increases gradually and introduces new concepts over time, I would not say the game ever teaches you anything. It expects you to bring a lot of programming knowledge to the table, and it assumes you have done similar puzzles before. It wants you to see this as an interesting twist on problems that are very familiar to anyone who has dabbled in basic computer science concepts.

All this makes TIS-100 unapproachable, which is unfortunate for such a brilliant game.

Opening Vibe

When you launch the game, your screen turns into a 1970s terminal with all the humming and noise of that bygone era. You will feel immediately out of your element. It invokes an overwhelming feeling, familiar to anyone who rarely opens the CMD terminal on their Mac or PC, or has tried to use Linux for the first time. A recognition that, despite the simplicity of this text-only interface, there is a great deal of power and complexity lying below the surface. Far more than the hand-holding visual interfaces we are mostly familiar with.

At this point, the game does something truly novel: it gives you a user manual! This, for me, is the game's true brilliance. There is an attempt to fully emulate the experience of using these ancient computers, with paper manuals and hand-scribbled notes. This simple tool brought a level of immersion that I was not expecting. And elevated the game in that moment.

You will quickly scroll through the manual and be overwhelmed again. There are some descriptions of how the TIS-100 computer system works and the simple commands at your disposal. Text highlighted by the protagonist's uncle Randy when he first found this computer hints towards solutions for future puzzles. The vibe at the start of the game is perfection. Which is critical. It solves a key issue this game has: how do you tell a story through computer coding, without ever breaking the illusion that you are using a 50-year-old computer? Through this manual and some very short snippets of dialogue hidden throughout the game, a mystery starts to open up. Why does this computer exist? What secret lurks behind that black and white text? What does solving these puzzles achieve?

You will, of course, discover some of these mysteries, but ultimately, I found the story to be rather weak. It never moved passed being set dressing for the puzzles. A bit of salt to make the gameplay more palpable. The game ultimately fails to live up to the opening vibe. Any hints to what may be lurking below the surface of the interface are red herrings. I would have liked to see more depth, perhaps finding more ARG elements sprinkled in; things like finding more PDFs or any sort of secrets.

While there are a few easter eggs, there is no real secret lurking beneath the TIS-100. Instead, there is just a feeling and vibe. While I enjoyed this experience, it feels to me like a missed opportunity. It would elevate this game from merely a coding puzzle game to indie-gaming greatness. The kind of creativity and novel storytelling that only pops up occasionally.

Gameplay

As I have mentioned, the puzzles take the form of simple programming exercises. Mostly, number sorting. The screen consists of a grid of boxes. One of these boxes is the input, and a number will appear in this box. You have a handful of commands to move and manipulate this number across the grid to an output box. Your goal is to move the numbers towards the output box in the correct order.

Simple enough! Using the commands you have, you can move numbers around, create loops, add or subtract, and do very simple true or false tests. Each box has a set number of lines of code, and you can only work with 1 number per box.

Already, I've probably lost most of you! But the game is quite simple. There is no deep knowledge necessary. This game could have been simplified to be more visual-based than text-based and have lost none of its complexity. Something along the lines of Baba is you, or other logic puzzle games.

The difficulty of the puzzles will vary from person to person. If you bring a lot of experience to this game, you may find it very easy. If you are a complete novice, you will have to do some studying to complete the puzzles. Personally, I found most of the puzzles solvable in about 30 minutes to an hour. Most of that time was spent debugging my code, trying to correctly write the solution I had already discovered 20 minutes previously. Which, I might point out, is a weakness of asking players to write these simple programs. Finding errors in your code can be frustrating and time-consuming, and I am not certain makes for a good game. Anyone who does this kind of work for a living can tell you, debugging is one of the worst parts of the job.

I found myself frustrated after spending time trying to understand why my code wouldn't run correctly, only to discover a typo on my part. I wonder if many would simply not tolerate this experience. I also wonder if there was a missed opportunity to bring quality of life elements or debugging tools. Perhaps, even a simpler and forgiving programming language could have gone a long way towards making this less like work and more like a game.

While most puzzles I could solve rather quickly, others really took some time to ponder and think. I was sometimes driven mad, knowing I could solve the puzzle if I only had 1 more line of code in a box. It was an enjoyable experience and forced me to think in a very specific way, which only programming does.

Which, at this point, you might be asking: why is he both being so negative, but keeps saying he loved the game? That is the joy of programming! Problem-solving contrasted against the art of debugging. Moving your solution from thoughts to reality. When you write computer programs, you feel like a digital wizard engaged in a numerical alchemy. You are giving the computer a mind of its own! Creating processes and thought where initially there is only inert metal.

This is where the fun of this game comes from. It creates a space for you to solve problems using this computer wizardry and rewards you with a score based on how good your solution is. For those with the prerequisite skill, this game is addictive and fun. It uses a part of your brain that is often only used for work or hobbies, and applies it to a game.

I find this so enjoyable, and this game so well executed, that I wish it could be shared with a wider audience. I feel, had the developers decided to, it could have been given more of an on-ramp, so more people could enjoy this game.

Accessibility Problems

For example, the game has no true hint system. The PDF teaches you the commands you need and gives some examples of how the code works, but this is a technical document. It's difficult to read and cryptic. The PDF manual is a puzzle in itself, and is necessary because you cannot even begin to solve the puzzles without it. However, I think it could go a bit further to actually teach some concepts. If you have never taken a computer science course, the PDF may be completely useless. It assumes you know what a loop is. Right now, some of you may be reading that word loop and be completely ignorant of its importance to programming. Without a thorough understanding of this basic concept of programming, this game is unbeatable.

With true or false statements of the game, there is an assumption that everyone will understand how to employ these. While these concepts are all very foundational to programming, to people who have never touched these concepts, this is quite a leap in thinking. Computer logic is not the default way people think. I know most people are capable of completing this game, but they need an on-ramp and explanation of these foundational concepts in programming.

If the game were to be more widely accessible, I believe there would need to be an attempt to introduce these concepts to the player. I don't knock the developers for wanting to focus on the puzzles and not teaching computer science, but it is still a missed opportunity and deeply affects how I might recommend this game. I full heartedly recommend this game to the minority of people who already have some knowledge of these concepts. But I would not recommend this game to anyone who has never touched these ideas before.

Final Thoughts

TIS-100 is a fun puzzle game. It is a programming sandbox that gives you freedom to find your own solutions to the problems it presents. It has the perfect vibe, which elevates this above being rote logic puzzles. It has just enough ARG fun to make you feel like you're not just doing someone's computer science homework. I might even suggest coding 101 classes assign this game to their students, as a fun and simple way to learn some very core concepts in programming.

As much as I loved it, TIS-100 falls short of its potential. The ideas are all there, and at times they sync up perfectly to create a novel experience. But it feels like the developers either did not recognize potential or simply did not want to pursue it. The story is shallow, hinting towards something deeper, but it does not deliver. The game is unapproachable by a majority of people; perhaps the developers felt it was necessary to challenge people in the know. In both cases, I do not fault the developers for wanting to focus on the core of making a great puzzle-solving game. But I do lament the untapped potential.

I would love to be able to share this game with more people. The puzzles are a delight. I think people would get a kick out of trying this. But there isn't anything to propel the masses to push forward, other than enjoying the puzzles for what they are. They teased something deeper and more complex, but never fully lived up to it. If you work for hours on a puzzle, hoping for a payoff other than a screen saying congratulations, you will be sorely disappointed.

I would recommend you play this game if you feel you have the necessary knowledge! You may enjoy the puzzles for the brain teasers they are. Worst case, you quit before the end. But, if you're looking for more in terms of story or onboarding to programming, this is not the game for you.

Overview

At its core, Outer Wilds is a roguelike detective game. Its roguelike elements come from the 22 minute timer ticking away in the background. Once you reach the end of the run, the sun goes supernova, destroying everything, and the run resets. However, unlike in other roguelikes, where you unlock new mechanics and tiny stat increases between runs, Outer Wilds rewards you with information.

This is where you take on the role of a detective, trying to solve the mystery of why you are stuck in this time loop. This role includes a camera and a sonic magnifying glass, which finds strange signals floating about. It also has you filling out a pin board, with images and clues, linked together by through-lines. As you run through loops, there is immense satisfaction in seeing this board fill out and new links made.

The central gameplay loop is like this: explore, solve a puzzle, be rewarded with clues hinting towards the next puzzle, 22 minute timer ends the run, repeat. Once you have discovered this gameplay loop, the game is completely engrossing. I found myself going through my day thinking about Outer Wilds and experiments I would like to try; thoughts on clues I hadn't quite solved. It was an incredibly fun experience.

Early Issues

All that said, the game did not immediately hold my attention. The game holds all of its cards close to its chest, and the opening hour or so presents itself as much more formulaic adventure game. It presents you with optional tutorials, introducing very basic game mechanics, but it simply reiterates the idea that your mission is to explore. If you go into the game blind, as I did, I believe you will be very underwhelmed. It's not until you've invested a significant amount of time does the game open up to you.

Looking back, I see the slow start as having added to the overall experience. You are put in your character’s shoes, unwittingly thrown into the time loop without context. Still, new players might quit before finishing that first loop, since the 22-minute timer doesn’t begin until after the opening scenes and you’re given permission to launch into space. This means the early pace is particularly slow during the tutorial and initial exploration phase.

Perhaps I am more ADHD prone than the average gamer and thus felt the excruciating need to stand up and leave my desk after 30 minutes of wandering the tutorial village. The game lacks a traditional save system, and this caused me to simply quit the game several times over my first few attempts to begin playing. It felt very daunting, with a fear of what progress would actually be saved.

It was only by hearing other reviewers describe this game that I realized I hadn't stuck around long enough to see what was so special that I was missing. The game doesn't try to grab your attention, and instead gives a very sleepy and cozy opening. For better or worse, the game throws away the AAA playbook of presenting the core loop in the first 30 minutes or so.

Do I feel the opening is bad? No, but I do think I needed a little more to chew on in that first hour. Without the video essays telling me to play the game, I would not have had the motivation to stick around long enough to see that first loop occur. I believe the game developers should have spent a little more time on those opening scenes, guiding a new player, and motivating them towards this completely unique experience.

All that said, once I was sold on the game, I was completely sold.

Gameplay

The gameplay itself is satisfactory. You are going to be flying a ship a lot. The physics are fairly realistic, and you will be crashing into planets, the sun, black holes, and all other manner of dangers. Even still, the game is very forgiving. You have to really want to explode in order to do so. This encourages you to ride the line, flying fast and dangerously while you explore and race that 22-minute timer.

The puzzles themselves are very well constructed. The game gives you plenty of clues, and typically, it is easy enough to understand what the clues are asking you to do. However, with a puzzle game based on reading comprehension, your mileage may vary. I believe there was really only 1 or 2 situations where I had to search Reddit for a hint as to what to do next, because I did not understand the clues.

Most of the puzzles take the form of a scavenger hunt. You know that your next clue lies at some unexplored location, and you've been given a couple of hints on how to reach that location. Using your ship, jet pack, and some forgiving platforming, you must find your way forward.

At times, this can become very frustrating. Sometimes, you're just not able to execute your plan very well, leading to what feels like a wasted half hour of your life. This is most prevalent on a planet called the Dark Bramble, where a simple mistake results in a monster eating you and ending your run. While difficulty like this isn't bad, it stands in stark contrast to the rest of the game, which is so forgiving.

Story

Overall, though, the gameplay serves the story well. It leads you through the unfolding saga of an alien civilization, long lost to time. And this story always takes center stage. It truly is an introspective game. Even as you are barreling through the stars, your mind is always focused on what is waiting for you at your next destination. It is a game that excels at igniting curiosity in ways most games do not even attempt.

This is Outer Wilds' greatest strength. The curiosity it ignites will propel you forward. I hope this studio creates more games like it. Investigation and learning are rare treats in gaming. I encourage everyone to try it and see if it grips you as it did me.