Taiji

released on Sep 09, 2022

Explore a mysterious and detailed world full of puzzles. It is important to think hard and to pay close attention, as vital clues are sometimes hidden in plain sight.


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cool I never have to use the witness as an example of good puzzle design anymore cuz this exists and does the same thing except isn't made by a right winged asshole

I think if you threw someone into Taiji who had never in their life played The Witness or heard of it, they would find it frustrating and boring. Conversely, if you have played The Witness, you'll spend your entire playtime wishing it was a better game.
The difference is where The Witness had very simple rules to all its puzzles, it held both a deceptively hidden secret game under its hood and layered its puzzles together for its more complex puzzles. It's not a spoiler to say that stars work by grouping two together in The Witness. Taiji, on the other hand, is only challenging in that figuring out the esoteric rules of its puzzle symbols is mind numbingly frustrating. Every puzzle type in Taiji has like 2 or 3 different rulesets that can change on a dime and you're just expected to interpret without any explanation. There were entire segments that I completed without knowing entirely how the puzzles actually worked. The entire art museum section is half reasonable and fun puzzles and half nonsense that, even after finding the solution, left me completely dumbfounded.
I think there are a lot more ways to criticize Taiji but worst thing it does is that it gives Johnathan Blow credit by comparison.

Neat PS1 demake of The Witness. Lacking an identity of its own but still serves up a few stunning puzzles. I especially liked the gallery and the normal ending.

Enjoyed it to start with but the 'teach as you solve' didn't quite play out thanks to jumps in logic within puzzle sets and a few too many cases of overly complex rules.

I appreciate it trying to evoke The Witness (a great game with a shitty creator) but it being top down meant that the open area didn't live up to its potential, as you're unable to be guided by natural landmarks or structures to the best place to solve/learn the mechanics.

On the positive side, I did like the mansion location which acts as an exam of the rules you've learned combined with art pieces and the environment, and the art style itself never felt like a hindrance to legibility. It also sounds silly but the water sounds were really relaxing when you're standing next to a waterfall trying to work out how flowers or diamonds are meant to work.

Ended up completing 6 of the main sections with some optional puzzles - I might come back to this in the future but my attention span waned pretty fast.

A stupid need to follow playthroughs had me watching the entirety of this game before thinking whether I would've liked to play it myself.

Demasiado caótico tal vez, pero ayuda con ese huequito que deja The Witness.

Jonathan Blow eres un tonto.