I tried with this game. I really did. But I think Jonathan Blow may have really stretched my patience with this one.

The game boasts over 500 puzzles, but fails to tell you that they are all variations of a screen with lines.

Some variations of the puzzles are interesting. The sun and reflection-based puzzles, shadow puzzles and sound puzzles are excellent.

On the other hand, if I see another star puzzle, Tetris puzzle or color-based puzzle again, I'm gonna rip my hair out.

Story? Yeah, good question, I'm trying to find it too. Instead, you'll find pretentious and preachy lectures and information nodes on the concepts of knowledge, culture and inquiry that wouldn't be out of place in a first year University Art course.

The game looks good, and that's keeping this from being a truly infuriating experience.

The first time I played this I thought it was fine. Not as good as braid but not bad. A few years later I went back to it because I liked the puzzles enough to go for seconds and discovered the second half of the game. Then I thought it was great and people underrated it. I've now played through it for the third time, completed the challenge, and am working on cleaning up the last of the puzzles, and I think this is one of the best games ever made. This game seems pretentious but it's exactly as smart as it claims to be and I'm glad that the narrative surrounding the game is shifting from "shitty maze game for art majors" into "actually really cool puzzle game". It takes a while to chew on, but I love this game. I don't really consider this a rating for this year, so I'm not putting this on any lists, but this recent playthrough solidified to me just how much of a 10/10 this game is.