The puzzles in this section are terrible in my opinion. It wouldn't be so bad if you didn't have to constantly walk back and input the solution for the previous puzzle countless times while trying to deduce rules that constantly change and contradict the previous ones. It also doesn't help when I look up the solution and the sounds being played are different than the ones I'm getting in my game.

My problem is that I have ideas for puzzle mechanics, and I feel like they have great potential, but still struggle making it work as a puzzle. For example I'm working on a massive metroidvania currently, with 8 dungeons and I'm just really married to the idea (for one of my dungeons) of using these giant sandworms that basically move through an underground labyrinth of tunnels of their own making in looping paths. This creates many one-way paths as you can follow one, but cannot pass one coming your way. But that isn't a puzzle, that's a maze with one-way paths. Their bodies can be walked on as a platform, which could be a solution to a puzzle, they could potentially FOLLOW you at a forked path, chasing you and changing their direction which could be a solution to a puzzle (but if you're already in front of one, it's no longer in your way, so how's that solve anything?) I thought of placing various giant bells that, when shot, ring loudly and drive the sandworms away from it, but again, laying that out just feels clunky and forced. Is this a bad idea, or a good idea that's just missing an essential modification or two? Perhaps the sandworms serve other functions? perhaps they can open new paths by being led to burrow through like, sand-blocked tunnels? (that one feels like it has some potential maybe) How can I even know without brute-force trying to come up with solutions until I give up?

1:00:13 This one was the most obscure puzzle so far and the first one out of 423 that I decided to look up. And the worst part is that I have noitced the trees and tried multiple things with them but somehow missed the solution. And if I would find it, I would still not be sure that it wasn't accidental.

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Great talk! Do you have any advice for coming up with the rules that you want your game mechanics to exist in? Im having trouble coming up with the hook that the rest of the game can sort of exist around

18:40 I don't think calling them "forward" and "backward" design really makes sense. You could design an arbitrary puzzle forward, stacking layers from the beginning until deciding to say that one of the steps is the last one. And when designing a truthful puzzle, I think you can very often do it backwards and have it be good, if you first discover an interaction in the system and then make a puzzle that forces the player to use it, you are starting from the solution, but you still make a puzzle with a new concept that teaches the player about the system.

The bit at around 17:44 I assumed was to make a ramp symbol to get on the platform

I wish i could buy this game, but its not available on IOS. Which is strange because this games isnt that heavy.

Just started watching the video but so far so good can't wait to listen to the rest of it I'm making a new game called Moto trials for the PS4 this will be my second game and I loved limbo and inside I thought they had some incredible well thought out puzzles and so I started making puzzles and it's harder than one would think but it's really cool after you create the puzzle you have your friends and family play them and get to watch them and see what they do

33:00 I disagree that the Nervewrecker level of The Talos Principle is redundant. The first room needs to be there as a warmup to the rest of the level. The last two rooms need to both be there, because if they weren't, you could just jam-swap into the first room, lock the two mines in the first room in the start, escort the middle mine of the second room and lock it in the start, jam-swap into the second room, and then jam one mine and the last door to win. The point of the level is juggling the last two rooms in such a way that you can escort the second middle mine to be locked out of the way and jam-swap into the third room while still under threat of mines; that's why it's called Nervewrecker.

Game needed some more hints to make it playable. If you get stuck literally all you can do is look up the solution which is what 99.9% of the people playing did.

I love this soundtrack, thanks for uploading it!

I believe that this game is the closest thing to a perfect video game that we have right now. Gorgeous fucking game

I hated this part of the game.

What’s the way to tell where the vaults are?

I'm embarrassed by how totally un-phased you were with the suit of armour jump scare! 🤣🤣

Incredible game

Wow uh where do I start, I'll just begin anywhere and inconsistently weave to what I want to say :D As others have already told, Taiji is definitely excellently constructed and its influence of The Witness is immediately clear. I'm not the type to exaggerate with hollow appraisal, for me it wasn't necessarily its nice appearance, flawless fluidity, atmosphere/music or the puzzles on their own, but rather that The Witness wasn't just an inspiration for the direction of the game. Instead the philosophy of its principles were quite well executed. It may not be too difficult to implement a rather straightforward primitive visual layouts such as a single-click interactive tile grid or a line connecting dots through a grid on a pad, but what I do consider quite hard is to provide a well balanced introduction to new concepts and how to enhance and intertwine them, always letting the player question their interpretation of a concept by not giving away too much information right away as well as not drowning the player in having to understand multiple edge cases or aspects at once. Before playing The Witness I've never seen any game apply this principle in such a gentle fashion, because it shifted the focus of solving a puzzle in a one- or two-dimensional manner onto the player solving their own uncertainties as they'd like to approach it. The entire experience suddenly feels much more centered around the player than the puzzle. Now of course, The Witness did expand on its layout by integrating it into its world as well by hiding tons of lines in its environment, actually not just hiding, but even creating puzzles out of dynamics in the environment as well (Sun/Moon cycle, boat position, multiple perspectives for a single start), but Jonathan Blow did certainly have a higher budget for his title. Therefore, congrats for Taiji, the part I hated most is how quickly it ended, I wouldn't have minded it if it was ten times as long, since the difficulty curve and shown concepts could easily be extended, primarily because it doesn't yet reach a higher ceiling whereas areas like the gallery do exactly that, except it's too short to be able to evolve further. For what was mentioned in the video, I would have anticipated higher sales for Taiji as well, on the other hand I barely would have even noticed the game exists even though I'm probably part of your core target audience given that the Witness is among my favorite games I've played, especially my favorite puzzle game. I feel like similar to many who play The Witness, I'm not a general hardcore puzzle fan, I rarely ever look into pure puzzle games. But the way The Witness was designed and its new phisolophy to puzzling itself was an immediate spark pulling me in. I did want to demand to advertise Taiji more, but I'm not sure if advertisement is the way to go as I'm not into the game development field (or not yet :P), but there must be ways to spread word more efficiently, personally I mainly get to know about games through Steam's recommendations, large events such as E3 or occasionally through random videos/announcements and scarcely from friends. Which, thinking about it, is kind of dumb considering I would have loved to be informed about Taiji, yet the factors I just mentioned are certainly harder to influence than raw advertisement. I rather wish Steam would simply have a more sophisticated recommendation system which would take away the need for investment into advertisement for small development studios and immediately guide the game to a suitable audience, which in my eyes is a win-win-win-situation, Steam makes more money, small developers can worry less about their game being noticed at all and players don't have to waddle through large amounts of stuff they wouldn't ever consider buying anyway. As you've mentioned, the market potential is there, especially because barely any attempt to replicate the philosophy of The Witness. Possibly a coincidence(?), but given that you're now working at Lunarch Studios for Project S [or Islands of Insight I think it's now called], at least we don't have to worry too much about its potential puzzle design mismanagement with someone familiar with intricate puzzle phisolophies. I did get to know about it through E3, I am still not yet sure whether it's intended to also head in the direction of a The Witness approach or venture a different path, but regardless interested in where it will end up. Please stay in this field, the market needs minds like yours, we'll appreciate it :)

So it was you. You're at fault for the slew of 2d shiite flooding Steam for the last decade 😂

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36:45 is really poorly designed. I spent a very long time looking at the pillars and matching them to the monitor, and trying to figure out how the spilled black paint comes into play. I also did not know that you could separate the same color into different regions. 2/10 puzzle

No way possible I’d ever get the puzzle at 19:00 on my own, poorest design of the entire game imo

Did you put out a demo? And I just saw that Puzzle Fest event happen back in April / May. Perhaps just keep plugging those events and possibly find a publisher? (Anna Purna or something similar?) A game that I worked on (Kaichu) with Squiddershins got picked up by Top Hat Studios, who also published Frogun, which managed to get a Switch physical release (Frogun did, not Kaichu)

This zen picture that he drew himself as a part of this massive artistic undertaking of a project with a thought that he got 15% of the revenue at the end.. It is kind of disturbing. Some people made good money of his creative stream.

I hate this part of the game, I did all the others puzzles, but this part...

I always loved channels providing specific case studies and analyzing why certain moments in games work so well for players. It's not direct advice but it's admirable and it encourages a "vibe" of being courteous as a game designer. "No level of pretentiousness" is what I love like you mention about NakeyJakey. But it does make me wince a bit to hear people talk about what they thought it should've been, and how it's bad in missing the player's vision. Sometimes game design getting conflated with narrative or story. It's nice to see them trying to understand, at least.

Thank you so much for Taiji, your development logs, and your analyses of other games! You are a great inspiration to me (an aspiring puzzle game maker). I hope you find the energy to make more games. Would definitely play more stuff that has that much love and attention put into it.

I tried to look more carefully into your words of warning to anyone chasing the indie dream. I don't see how the Steam and IndieFund part could have been optimized but as far as I understand, your $62,000 income is taxed at a rate of approximately 40.32%, resulting in a $25,000 tax payment. In Eastern Europe such a tax looks unthinkable but I suppose this is normal in the first world? Still, it staggers the mind. I believe some countries allow income averaging for people like artists who have irregular income streams. Did you get taxed like this as an individual? Couldn't this tax be reduced by declaring business expenses for your company, carryforward losses, or retain some of the income within the company and pay yourself a salary or dividends over time? I'm not an accountant and I have no understanding of these things, so I'm just throwing stuff at the wall but > 40% looks terrifying, I'm obviously in the denial phase of grief because I'm about to move to a first world country :D

If you look at what the negative reviews for The WItness say, it's clear that its greatest marketing sin is in not clearly signaling itself as a pure puzzle game. Most of them mention the lack of story or incentive systems as their primary criticism. Steam recommends games almost entirely based on tags+reception, so it is unfortunate that TW happens to be very similar to narrative exploration games in all sorts of superficial, taggable ways. Taiji not only is inherently clearer in what it is through the perspective alone, but it also demonstrates puzzles rather than environments on its store page. As a corollary, the Steam algorithm currently likes Taiji far better than TW. I actually found this game through it popping up and being sticky about it when trying to find tags that placed TW as most similar.

A great learning experience I think.

Good to see you again. Glad you are doing what you enjoy.

The money paid to indie fund also includes paying back the money they previously gave you though, no? Effectively, you did get that part, you just already spent it in the past.

Thanks for the post launch commentary, I appreciate hearing it! I'm happy the game's had a positive reception! And that's nice you're working at Lunarch now!

Insightful, thanks!

A KZbin channel I respect that focuses on puzzle games made a positive video about this game around when it came out, and I immediately went in purchased it after. I enjoyed The Witness a lot so seeing another spin on the formula after so long was exciting and your work on Taiji didn't disappoint. Acclaimed games on Steam can have a surprisingly long tail, so I hope Taiji still has gas in the tank.

Killin fields need blood to graze the cash cow It's a number game, but shit don't add up somehow Like I got, sixteen to thirty-two bars to rock it But only 15% of profits, ever see my pockets

Always glad to hear Taiji did well. Mourning the loss of a promising young streamer.

I feel terrible that you didn't bring in more money at the end of the day. You deserve more for your work on Taiji, the game being in the world is worth more than $40k in value. I sincerely hope that you are able to work on your own project again some day, if you so choose. I would be first in line to buy it.

Congratulations on finishing the game and being lucky! You may also consider offering your game on GoG or Epic. I hope this option might be more straightforward than porting to the Nintendo Switch. GoG also promote very well the games that land on their platform so I often buy my indie games there because I get notified about them. If you worry about GoG's no DRM policy, Epic is also great and gives a larger cut as far as I know. I purchased Taiji on Steam, but I'm moving away from the platform (because by the end of the year the Steam client won't run on Windows 7). So if I don't change my OS, I will lose access to my collection of over 550 hand-picked games (I never buy bundles). As a result, I have been re-buying all my Steam games on GoG, where I truly own them and not just rent them. I would gladly re-purchase Taiji on a different store as well. I noticed that Taiji is available on itch.io as well, but I don't know if it can be played on itch without requiring Steam. If you could clarify how this works, it would be greatly appreciated.

For greater clarity, what's your best guess on how many regular, eight hour work days did you put into the game? Now that you have some publicity, do you think you could get more profit without Steam? Also, don't be ashamed of luck. Luck is an element of success, and it's always there.

Oh thank god there is another game having a similar approach to puzzle design philosophy as the witness (my favorite puzzle game btw :] ). While I just discovered it and already know that I'll get it, I'm a little confused by how even though I was occasionally searching for comparable puzzle titles and my interest in great puzzle design didn't make me stumble upon this one a lot earlier. I'd presume it's mostly due to marketing issues, because I'd love to see more games in this direction, not necessarily grid layout designs, but just featuring a similarly well thought out approach as the witness. I can imagine this release thereby leading to financial struggle or your disappearance in game development, but I wish it were the opposite way, because there is an audience including me who absolutely want to be struck by it, if not yet done so please attempt to slightly extend the marketing. Of course I haven't played it yet, but the mere presence of your The Witness analysis videos suggest a high degree of understanding more sophisticated puzzle approaches than typically applied in the 'genre'.

I genuinely think I must be half of these views.

Ever since Cracking the Cryptic streamed Taiji for a few hours last week, I've been listening to the soundtrack on repeat. It's so soothing, perfect to have running in the background while I focus on things. My favorite track is Distant Wind Chimes, but White is a close second. Thanks to you both for making this work of art available.

Taiji soundtrack is also available on my KZbin channel as a playlist of short videos (one video per piece). You can find detailed info about the music in the descriptions and comments of the short videos. kzbin.info/www/bejne/fnKbeHl5o5x7fKs

Estoy jugando Taiji, me parece un excelente juego. 🥰❤✨ Gracias por documentar todo el proceso, de igual forma un excelente material. 😊❤❤❤❤❤❤

This is so utterly relaxing and perfect for reducing anxiety. This will be top of my Spotify 2023 no problem. Thank you to both of you for putting the work in to make it available.

Black is so peaceful and calming

Great! This is what I needed! Thanks!

Yesss! Finally! Thank you Grzegorz and Matthew for this wonderful music and game!