A game that seems to be plagued by a curse of AA & some key choices that don't work in their favor. To start, I think the artstyle chosen for this (while it makes sense to fit in with the themes) does not complement the budget or online aspect very well. I think the landscapes look excellent, and it's a neat trick that they seem to all be fully rendered at all points in the game, but the character models are pretty busted & clash with the overall look of the thing. Had they gone for a more minimalist or cartoonish style I think it might have worked better, but the Talos Principle influence rings too strong.
The online aspect leaves me with very mixed feelings. On one hand, for some of the puzzles I was able to learn through natural observation of other players how to get through some of them (the glass maze & some of the ring puzzles) which is a really cool way to do collaborative multiplayer. However, I think the budget of this game again constricts it so that load times are pretty busted, and there's just the slight whiff of jank that stops me from investing a lot of time into it. I wish there was also more accessibility options, as I was able to jerry-rig controller support but this game was obviously not designed for it. I fully intend on coming back to this if it stays up for a decent amount of time, but in some ways it feels like the first attempt at something that could be really well-refined over time.
The online aspect leaves me with very mixed feelings. On one hand, for some of the puzzles I was able to learn through natural observation of other players how to get through some of them (the glass maze & some of the ring puzzles) which is a really cool way to do collaborative multiplayer. However, I think the budget of this game again constricts it so that load times are pretty busted, and there's just the slight whiff of jank that stops me from investing a lot of time into it. I wish there was also more accessibility options, as I was able to jerry-rig controller support but this game was obviously not designed for it. I fully intend on coming back to this if it stays up for a decent amount of time, but in some ways it feels like the first attempt at something that could be really well-refined over time.
As a big fan of puzzle games, I was eagerly anticipating the release of Islands of Insight, but my initial excitement turned to disappointment as I delved into the game. While I initially found myself immersed in solving puzzles for hours on end, my enthusiasm waned when I discovered that puzzles were respawning. This revelation shattered my perception of progress and completion within the game, leaving me feeling betrayed, because I was tackling a lot of stupid and mundane puzzles thinking I was progressing.
However, once I shifted my focus to the core puzzles within the enclaves and quests I found a renewed sense of enjoyment. These puzzles were meticulously crafted and provided a satisfying challenge, unlike the repetitive fillers scattered throughout the game.
Unlike games like The Witness, which strategically unlock late-game puzzles based on player knowledge, Islands of Insight simply gates puzzles behind enclave completion. While this approach is not inherently flawed, I can't help but feel it represents a missed opportunity and a lackluster implementation. Even more, the so-called knowledge 'unlocked' throughout the game often felt superficial, rehashing concepts already encountered in earlier puzzles. While occasionally beneficial, it seldom provided significant depth to the gameplay experience.
Unfortunately, the storytelling fell flat for me. The cryptic narrative, delivered through obscure dialogues with a seemingly random entity, failed to engage me. I found myself skipping through these interactions, feeling disconnected from the narrative experience.
One significant frustration was the amount of time spent searching for puzzles rather than solving them, particularly when attempting to complete challenges. The lack of clear puzzle locations, compounded by the game's sprawling open world, often detracted from the gameplay experience.
Speaking of the open world, it failed to leave a lasting impression. Despite featuring distinct themed islands, they all blurred together into a forgettable landscape. The minimal interaction between puzzles and the world further diminished the impact of exploration.
The multiplayer component also missed the mark. Lacking meaningful interaction or tools for collaboration, it felt like a tacked-on feature that added little value to the experience.
As for the puzzle types themselves:
Wandering Echo: Similar to the seelie form in Genshin Impact, this puzzle involves touching floating balls that move to different locations. While it occasionally presents interesting applications, it often disrupts the flow of gameplay and adds little depth.
Matchboxes: Players must find two boxes of opposite colors with matching patterns in the environment. While some instances offer engaging challenges, others devolve into frustrating searches due to lack of distinct patterns.
Hidden Archway, Hidden Ring: These puzzles simply involve locating invisible objects, offering little in terms of depth or challenge.
Armillary Rings: A perspective puzzle where players must find a straight line across all yellow rings without crossing blue rings. While initially engaging, it becomes repetitive due to overuse.
Grids: The main puzzle type, offering a wide variety of challenges and creativity. Subtypes include Pattern, Environment, Viewport Numbers, Memory, Music puzzles, etc. each offering its own unique challenge.
Hidden Cube: Players must find hidden cubes scattered throughout the world, which becomes more interesting when players realize they emit a sound.
Hidden Pendant: Involves finding hidden pieces in a spherical area, often leading to frustrating experiences.
Sentinel Stones: Another perspective puzzle that requires finding a location where all pillars are visible at once, lacking in significant challenge.
Skydrop: Players must form a circle with giant balls in the sky, offering minimal depth beyond basic spatial reasoning.
Crystal Labyrinth: A labyrinth with nearly invisible walls, providing little in terms of challenge or engagement.
Morphic Fractal: Generally uninteresting, requiring players to move the mouse around until the puzzle is solved.
Shifting Mosaic: Offers nothing new or innovative, resembling typical sliding block puzzles.
Flow Orbs: Players must run through all orbs within a set time limit, occasionally offering strategic challenges.
Glide Rings: Involves gliding through all rings, providing minimal engagement.
Match Three: Similar to Candy Crush (or any of the other billion match three games), offering occasional moments of interest but lacking depth.
Rolling Block: Resembles Bloxorz, offering challenging and engaging puzzles.
Phasic Dial: Requires syncing clocks spinning at different rates using different buttons, providing a significant challenge.
Sightseer: Players must find where a picture was taken, offering enjoyable moments outside the overworld.
Shy Aura: Involves determining how to interact with an aura, offering minimal depth or challenge.
Light Motif: Players must find patterns drawn in the environment, but often lacks interesting variations.
Ultimately, while Islands of Insight offers moments of enjoyment, particularly within its core puzzle enclaves, it falls short in several key areas. The repetitive nature of puzzles, lackluster storytelling, and disjointed open world detract from what could have been a more immersive experience.
However, once I shifted my focus to the core puzzles within the enclaves and quests I found a renewed sense of enjoyment. These puzzles were meticulously crafted and provided a satisfying challenge, unlike the repetitive fillers scattered throughout the game.
Unlike games like The Witness, which strategically unlock late-game puzzles based on player knowledge, Islands of Insight simply gates puzzles behind enclave completion. While this approach is not inherently flawed, I can't help but feel it represents a missed opportunity and a lackluster implementation. Even more, the so-called knowledge 'unlocked' throughout the game often felt superficial, rehashing concepts already encountered in earlier puzzles. While occasionally beneficial, it seldom provided significant depth to the gameplay experience.
Unfortunately, the storytelling fell flat for me. The cryptic narrative, delivered through obscure dialogues with a seemingly random entity, failed to engage me. I found myself skipping through these interactions, feeling disconnected from the narrative experience.
One significant frustration was the amount of time spent searching for puzzles rather than solving them, particularly when attempting to complete challenges. The lack of clear puzzle locations, compounded by the game's sprawling open world, often detracted from the gameplay experience.
Speaking of the open world, it failed to leave a lasting impression. Despite featuring distinct themed islands, they all blurred together into a forgettable landscape. The minimal interaction between puzzles and the world further diminished the impact of exploration.
The multiplayer component also missed the mark. Lacking meaningful interaction or tools for collaboration, it felt like a tacked-on feature that added little value to the experience.
As for the puzzle types themselves:
Wandering Echo: Similar to the seelie form in Genshin Impact, this puzzle involves touching floating balls that move to different locations. While it occasionally presents interesting applications, it often disrupts the flow of gameplay and adds little depth.
Matchboxes: Players must find two boxes of opposite colors with matching patterns in the environment. While some instances offer engaging challenges, others devolve into frustrating searches due to lack of distinct patterns.
Hidden Archway, Hidden Ring: These puzzles simply involve locating invisible objects, offering little in terms of depth or challenge.
Armillary Rings: A perspective puzzle where players must find a straight line across all yellow rings without crossing blue rings. While initially engaging, it becomes repetitive due to overuse.
Grids: The main puzzle type, offering a wide variety of challenges and creativity. Subtypes include Pattern, Environment, Viewport Numbers, Memory, Music puzzles, etc. each offering its own unique challenge.
Hidden Cube: Players must find hidden cubes scattered throughout the world, which becomes more interesting when players realize they emit a sound.
Hidden Pendant: Involves finding hidden pieces in a spherical area, often leading to frustrating experiences.
Sentinel Stones: Another perspective puzzle that requires finding a location where all pillars are visible at once, lacking in significant challenge.
Skydrop: Players must form a circle with giant balls in the sky, offering minimal depth beyond basic spatial reasoning.
Crystal Labyrinth: A labyrinth with nearly invisible walls, providing little in terms of challenge or engagement.
Morphic Fractal: Generally uninteresting, requiring players to move the mouse around until the puzzle is solved.
Shifting Mosaic: Offers nothing new or innovative, resembling typical sliding block puzzles.
Flow Orbs: Players must run through all orbs within a set time limit, occasionally offering strategic challenges.
Glide Rings: Involves gliding through all rings, providing minimal engagement.
Match Three: Similar to Candy Crush (or any of the other billion match three games), offering occasional moments of interest but lacking depth.
Rolling Block: Resembles Bloxorz, offering challenging and engaging puzzles.
Phasic Dial: Requires syncing clocks spinning at different rates using different buttons, providing a significant challenge.
Sightseer: Players must find where a picture was taken, offering enjoyable moments outside the overworld.
Shy Aura: Involves determining how to interact with an aura, offering minimal depth or challenge.
Light Motif: Players must find patterns drawn in the environment, but often lacks interesting variations.
Ultimately, while Islands of Insight offers moments of enjoyment, particularly within its core puzzle enclaves, it falls short in several key areas. The repetitive nature of puzzles, lackluster storytelling, and disjointed open world detract from what could have been a more immersive experience.
If Ubisoft made a puzzle game, this is about what I imagine it would be. There's some genuinely fun puzzles (mostly logic grids), and then a ton of 123abc filler """puzzles""". The game is "multiplayer", but there is 0 interaction between players so it is entirely pointless. Overall just experimental in all the wrong ways, but still kinda fun to play as a chill game.
Why the fuck would I want to customize a character when I'm just gonna solve some puzzles with other people I can't even interact with - I'm not here playing Final Fantasy XXXVIIII. The visuals are also muddy as hell even after maxing out the settings. GG, no thanks.
Just play Talos Principle 1 and call it a day.
Just play Talos Principle 1 and call it a day.
Islands of Insight is a game filled with a self boasted 10,000+ puzzles. These range from logic grids where you must deduce where black/white tiles go based on rules, gliding through ring puzzles, many perspective puzzles, memory grids, grids in which you must replicate a "song", glass mazes, a couple types of hidden objects, and other stuff. Overall there are officially 24 different types of puzzles, but the logic grids themselves have plenty of different rules to make them a game on their own. Most of them I find fun to do, while others I just ignored because I don't wanna expend the effort. There are also plenty of easier puzzles to do if you get pissed once puzzles get too hard, which I do! Morphic Phractic puzzles are fucking stupid and I never really tried to understand them. They are like kaleidoscopes, but you gotta twist and turn your mouse until you get the exact right visuals it shows you; just could not figure out how to operate it.
How does this game contain these puzzles? Well, with a pretty good sized open world. It's not like this world hold's 10,000 puzzles at once, no, they are on rotations and "reset" at set times. There are 5 biomes where you can travel around solving whatever puzzles you see, this sensation to me is like Saints Row 4 where you just get lost collecting the orbs. Its a fun flow state of going from puzzle to puzzle. To help you travel along, you get a Double Jump (!!!) and a glide that can last a long time. These movement options are so dope. Making a game fun to move around in is awesome!
These larger open segments aren't the only mode though, there are actual structured segments where the dev's put permanent puzzles to solve. These are the "story" that you go through essentially. The story to this game is like nothing, and I didn't read like any of the lore I picked up. Just kind of vague nonsense I think, but maybe it is good, idk!
This game is also a MMO, kind of(?). So this game is an online game (sadly for any offline wanters) and it is a very strange for it. Since it is online, you can see other plays wandering around doing stuff, which is pretty cute I guess, but there is no meaningful way for them to interact with puzzles/help each other. You can party with friends, but there isn't really an in game way for helping. Like you can't co-op puzzles together, but you can just like talk with someone in VC about the puzzle or whatever. You can also ping stuff like hidden objects or whatever to help people.
In combination with this game being online, there are a huge range of cosmetics to unlock through Mastery (experience). Every puzzle type has its own Mastery levels, and whenever you level up a puzzle, and when you level up 10 times like that, your total Mastery level goes up 1. This works like a "Battle Pass" in the way that every level gives you a reward (ranging from currency, lore fragments, and cosmetics). Whenever you do a puzzle you get XP and currency; and some cosmetics can only be bought by currency.
Currency can also be used on the skill tree. The skill tree mostly consists of perks that give you more mastery/currency the better you do puzzles (ex: do grid puzzles with 0 mistakes, or solve certain puzzles fast). The skill tree also gives you QOL stuff like a paint fill bucket for the logic grids, or a super jump to get to high places. You can do this super jump 3 times, then it has a 5 minute cooldown which is just asinine to me.
There are also mysteries you unlock that tell you vague descriptors of a place, and what you must do there. Like it will describe an area with a logic grid, then tell you new rules to use instead of it usually is. They are cool extra shit for people who wanna solve shit detective style.
Overall, I like the large variety of puzzles in this game, and I honestly felt like I did get better at the puzzles (up to a point). If you like puzzles, casually or more so, I really think you should check this out.
How does this game contain these puzzles? Well, with a pretty good sized open world. It's not like this world hold's 10,000 puzzles at once, no, they are on rotations and "reset" at set times. There are 5 biomes where you can travel around solving whatever puzzles you see, this sensation to me is like Saints Row 4 where you just get lost collecting the orbs. Its a fun flow state of going from puzzle to puzzle. To help you travel along, you get a Double Jump (!!!) and a glide that can last a long time. These movement options are so dope. Making a game fun to move around in is awesome!
These larger open segments aren't the only mode though, there are actual structured segments where the dev's put permanent puzzles to solve. These are the "story" that you go through essentially. The story to this game is like nothing, and I didn't read like any of the lore I picked up. Just kind of vague nonsense I think, but maybe it is good, idk!
This game is also a MMO, kind of(?). So this game is an online game (sadly for any offline wanters) and it is a very strange for it. Since it is online, you can see other plays wandering around doing stuff, which is pretty cute I guess, but there is no meaningful way for them to interact with puzzles/help each other. You can party with friends, but there isn't really an in game way for helping. Like you can't co-op puzzles together, but you can just like talk with someone in VC about the puzzle or whatever. You can also ping stuff like hidden objects or whatever to help people.
In combination with this game being online, there are a huge range of cosmetics to unlock through Mastery (experience). Every puzzle type has its own Mastery levels, and whenever you level up a puzzle, and when you level up 10 times like that, your total Mastery level goes up 1. This works like a "Battle Pass" in the way that every level gives you a reward (ranging from currency, lore fragments, and cosmetics). Whenever you do a puzzle you get XP and currency; and some cosmetics can only be bought by currency.
Currency can also be used on the skill tree. The skill tree mostly consists of perks that give you more mastery/currency the better you do puzzles (ex: do grid puzzles with 0 mistakes, or solve certain puzzles fast). The skill tree also gives you QOL stuff like a paint fill bucket for the logic grids, or a super jump to get to high places. You can do this super jump 3 times, then it has a 5 minute cooldown which is just asinine to me.
There are also mysteries you unlock that tell you vague descriptors of a place, and what you must do there. Like it will describe an area with a logic grid, then tell you new rules to use instead of it usually is. They are cool extra shit for people who wanna solve shit detective style.
Overall, I like the large variety of puzzles in this game, and I honestly felt like I did get better at the puzzles (up to a point). If you like puzzles, casually or more so, I really think you should check this out.
I'm quite torn on Islands of Insight.
On one hand, the game includes some truly excellent puzzle design. Especially the puzzle grids, the most common type of puzzles, that manage to feel fresh even after solving hundreds of them, thanks to their variable rules. The meta puzzles (or "Mysteries") were also very interesting, and some of them were very cool to solve.
Puzzles that are scattered around the open world change every day, making the game very hostile to completionism. Which, as a completionist myself, I think actually improved my experience! It encouraged me to just go with the flow, solving only the puzzles I passed by when I feel like it.
Occasionally seeing other players in the world make the world feel more lively.
On the other hand, the game just isn't very good from a technical stand point, and feels too unpolished in many aspects.
The game has many bugs / server issues, that never completely break the game, but are frequently annoying (jumps breaking in mid air, progress not properly displayed, ...).
The online aspect of the game feels somewhat incomplete. Although you can ping locations and gesture to other players, with no way to know what puzzle the other player is in need of help with, you can't really meaningfully interact with them. The whole experience/resource system also felt like it was made with this online experience in mind, but just didn't gel very well with the rest of the game.
While I enjoyed the mysteries, I often felt like I had some idea on what could have been done to make them feel substantially more satisfying to solve.
The lore is also completely uninteresting.
Despite all that, if you're a big fan of puzzle games, I'd still recommend you to check this one out. It tries some unique stuff that is still interesting to see. But maybe wait a few months to see if some of the technical issues get fixed.
On one hand, the game includes some truly excellent puzzle design. Especially the puzzle grids, the most common type of puzzles, that manage to feel fresh even after solving hundreds of them, thanks to their variable rules. The meta puzzles (or "Mysteries") were also very interesting, and some of them were very cool to solve.
Puzzles that are scattered around the open world change every day, making the game very hostile to completionism. Which, as a completionist myself, I think actually improved my experience! It encouraged me to just go with the flow, solving only the puzzles I passed by when I feel like it.
Occasionally seeing other players in the world make the world feel more lively.
On the other hand, the game just isn't very good from a technical stand point, and feels too unpolished in many aspects.
The game has many bugs / server issues, that never completely break the game, but are frequently annoying (jumps breaking in mid air, progress not properly displayed, ...).
The online aspect of the game feels somewhat incomplete. Although you can ping locations and gesture to other players, with no way to know what puzzle the other player is in need of help with, you can't really meaningfully interact with them. The whole experience/resource system also felt like it was made with this online experience in mind, but just didn't gel very well with the rest of the game.
While I enjoyed the mysteries, I often felt like I had some idea on what could have been done to make them feel substantially more satisfying to solve.
The lore is also completely uninteresting.
Despite all that, if you're a big fan of puzzle games, I'd still recommend you to check this one out. It tries some unique stuff that is still interesting to see. But maybe wait a few months to see if some of the technical issues get fixed.
You know those Steam reviews where they've played 3000 hours and then give it a thumbs down? I finally understand how they feel. This game is made for me, and I love it a lot, but I also hate it a lot and I absolutely can't recommend it.
The decision to make this an always-online MMO-lite is ruinous. The servers can't cope, and you keep getting lagged out of position, which is a killer when so many puzzles are based on accuracy or dexterity. I had to stop playing for a month when the server just refused to let me in. I'm also certain they've got the min specs wrong - my computer is within the min specs (if not the recommended specs, admittedly), but I had to turn the graphics all the way down, which makes some of the puzzles in the recent Archipelago of Curiosities update impossible because the object I need to target is being automatically culled.
If not for all that, this would be one of the best puzzle games ever made. The variety is fantastic, and the sheer amount of puzzles scattered around make this compulsively playable. The set-piece Enclave levels are cleverly constructed, with a few good gimmicks peppered through them, and the Mysteries (post--game challenges which usually require you to hunt down and solve a previous puzzle with a new set of rules) really make me appreciate that puzzle design is an art. Not all the puzzle types are winners (sorry, Morphic Fractals), but the good ones are really good. Logic Grids, styled after Japanese logic puzzles, are the clear winners, but Pattern Grids and their lateral-thinking solutions are delightful too.
I feel sorry that the publisher closed the dev studio. I don't think any of this was the devs' fault. All this needs is an offline mode, really, and then it can be fully appreciated.
The decision to make this an always-online MMO-lite is ruinous. The servers can't cope, and you keep getting lagged out of position, which is a killer when so many puzzles are based on accuracy or dexterity. I had to stop playing for a month when the server just refused to let me in. I'm also certain they've got the min specs wrong - my computer is within the min specs (if not the recommended specs, admittedly), but I had to turn the graphics all the way down, which makes some of the puzzles in the recent Archipelago of Curiosities update impossible because the object I need to target is being automatically culled.
If not for all that, this would be one of the best puzzle games ever made. The variety is fantastic, and the sheer amount of puzzles scattered around make this compulsively playable. The set-piece Enclave levels are cleverly constructed, with a few good gimmicks peppered through them, and the Mysteries (post--game challenges which usually require you to hunt down and solve a previous puzzle with a new set of rules) really make me appreciate that puzzle design is an art. Not all the puzzle types are winners (sorry, Morphic Fractals), but the good ones are really good. Logic Grids, styled after Japanese logic puzzles, are the clear winners, but Pattern Grids and their lateral-thinking solutions are delightful too.
I feel sorry that the publisher closed the dev studio. I don't think any of this was the devs' fault. All this needs is an offline mode, really, and then it can be fully appreciated.
I remember when yahoo first introduced virtual chatrooms, which you could try for free but needed to host them to get people to join, and, well, this was at a point where I didn't know anyone with both The Internet and Any Desire To Do This. Anyways, one of their visual chatrooms was a weird skatepark that in my mind's eye has the same color scheme as the original Half-Life 2 trailer on that pier going into early Ravenholm. Using my formless avatar I ran up and down the half pipe, pretending I was skateboarding.
About 25 years later, the other kid who did that probably released this. I wish I could tell them I understand what they mean.
About 25 years later, the other kid who did that probably released this. I wish I could tell them I understand what they mean.
Le jeu de puzzle infiniiiii
amazing puzzles engaging lore wish i could complete the mysteries
I've seen that Sonic meme about wanting to pay more for smaller games with worse graphics, etc. and I vibe with it as much as the next guy, but it's rare for me to encounter a game that I actually feel like I would have enjoyed substantially more if only substantially less work had gone into it.
Islands of Insight is a game about solving a zillion logic puzzles dotted throughout a number of serene, scenic locales. And that's already a winning formula, as the success of The Witness and The Talos Principle can attest to. That's all I needed. And if that's all there was to Islands of Insight, it would be a reputable entry in the genre. The cornerstone of the game is the Logic Grid, which is a consistently fun time with all the myriad rules that get added, twisted, and blended together over the course of the game. In addition to these are a variety of other puzzle types, which cover pretty broad spectra of difficulty, engagement, and quality. Some, like the classic block-sliding puzzles, are similarly cerebral to the Logic Grids, whereas others, like the hidden objects and perspective-based Skydrops, are tiny little things that you can pop off as you make your way from one major objective to another. Many of the puzzle types didn't vibe with me, like the crystal mazes or the fractal thing, but they're easy to ignore and simple enough to not be frustrating even when mandatory. The only hard stop I encountered was the music grid, which past a certain complexity level just requires a brain function that I don't have (now that I think of it, I think these are what made me drop The Witness too).
But however much joy the simple act of solving puzzles brings, it's marred by the game's greater ambitions. The online aspect is weird, on the face of it - the game seems to have been initially pitched as some kind of puzzle-MMO but player interactivity is heavily limited and the puzzles themselves are all single-player affairs, necessitating the removal of the "online co-op" tag a few days past release. I don't particularly care about any of this, as I was planning to ignore the online aspect completely. But there's one part of it you can't ignore, and that's the server lag. In multiple play sessions I found myself experiencing constant rubber-banding, to the extent that the more movement-centric puzzles became impossible to complete.
Additionally, although there are no microtransactions or anything in the game, there's still this "live-servicey" energy permeating the entire game, where puzzles will routinely appear, disappear, and reset, such that you can never actually completely clear any of the hub areas and instead progress through them by grinding out puzzles over multiple play sessions. This was probably intended to give the game more longevity through more content, but ironically had the opposite effect for me - most puzzles became disposable to me when I realized this, and I would bypass them entirely if they took more than a second or two to solve. This is only true of the hub areas, though - the main progression is done through more classically-designed Enclaves. These are still quite fun, and some of them take advantage of their hand-crafted nature to give the more boring puzzle types like the mazes a unique twist. Maybe it's a blessing in disguise that I learned to ignore the hub areas, since that funneled me towards the best content that much faster.
I didn't engage with the story at all, because the Ubisoft-y dopamine loop of making numbers go up kept me cranking through puzzles at a breakneck pace. However, I think it can be accurately summarized as "if you swallow all the cubes you are legally a master".
Islands of Insight is a game about solving a zillion logic puzzles dotted throughout a number of serene, scenic locales. And that's already a winning formula, as the success of The Witness and The Talos Principle can attest to. That's all I needed. And if that's all there was to Islands of Insight, it would be a reputable entry in the genre. The cornerstone of the game is the Logic Grid, which is a consistently fun time with all the myriad rules that get added, twisted, and blended together over the course of the game. In addition to these are a variety of other puzzle types, which cover pretty broad spectra of difficulty, engagement, and quality. Some, like the classic block-sliding puzzles, are similarly cerebral to the Logic Grids, whereas others, like the hidden objects and perspective-based Skydrops, are tiny little things that you can pop off as you make your way from one major objective to another. Many of the puzzle types didn't vibe with me, like the crystal mazes or the fractal thing, but they're easy to ignore and simple enough to not be frustrating even when mandatory. The only hard stop I encountered was the music grid, which past a certain complexity level just requires a brain function that I don't have (now that I think of it, I think these are what made me drop The Witness too).
But however much joy the simple act of solving puzzles brings, it's marred by the game's greater ambitions. The online aspect is weird, on the face of it - the game seems to have been initially pitched as some kind of puzzle-MMO but player interactivity is heavily limited and the puzzles themselves are all single-player affairs, necessitating the removal of the "online co-op" tag a few days past release. I don't particularly care about any of this, as I was planning to ignore the online aspect completely. But there's one part of it you can't ignore, and that's the server lag. In multiple play sessions I found myself experiencing constant rubber-banding, to the extent that the more movement-centric puzzles became impossible to complete.
Additionally, although there are no microtransactions or anything in the game, there's still this "live-servicey" energy permeating the entire game, where puzzles will routinely appear, disappear, and reset, such that you can never actually completely clear any of the hub areas and instead progress through them by grinding out puzzles over multiple play sessions. This was probably intended to give the game more longevity through more content, but ironically had the opposite effect for me - most puzzles became disposable to me when I realized this, and I would bypass them entirely if they took more than a second or two to solve. This is only true of the hub areas, though - the main progression is done through more classically-designed Enclaves. These are still quite fun, and some of them take advantage of their hand-crafted nature to give the more boring puzzle types like the mazes a unique twist. Maybe it's a blessing in disguise that I learned to ignore the hub areas, since that funneled me towards the best content that much faster.
I didn't engage with the story at all, because the Ubisoft-y dopamine loop of making numbers go up kept me cranking through puzzles at a breakneck pace. However, I think it can be accurately summarized as "if you swallow all the cubes you are legally a master".