What Makes a Game Feel Mysterious?

[@GMTK]

Thanks for watching! My very first game, Mind Over Magnet, is launching on Steam on November 6th. Please consider adding it to your wishlist! store.steampowered.com/app/2685900/Mind_Over_Magnet/

[@FooMaster15]

Great! That's so soon

[@jp9707]

Would you consider putting the sound from your video essays onto Spotify? I'd like to be able to listen on the go!

[@sleepycritical6950]

So what’s the next game Mark? Any plans long or short term? Might be fun for you to anonymously apply for your own game jam next year and see how well it would go and maybe figure out what went wrong or worked wonderfully.

[@dontstealmydiamondsv3156]

There's a saying that 90% of the work is in the last 10% of the development process. I don't know how exaggerated that is but uhhh good luck you can do it

[@jacobramiscal2743]

Hey Mark! are there spoilers here for Outer Wilds? Want to watch the whole video but also want to experience the game blind.

[@starvoid_official]

The secret sauce is banger soundtracks

[@thatcat_]

The secret is having piano riffs play as you near something big.

[@E_Fig05]

So not Breath of the Wild then?

[@paragon12321]

@@E_Fig05𝐄𝐗𝐓𝐑𝐄𝐌𝐄𝐋𝐘 𝐋𝐎𝐔𝐃 𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐎𝐑𝐑𝐄𝐂𝐓 𝐁𝐔𝐙𝐙𝐄𝐑

[@Rpodnee]

​@@E_Fig05 shots fired! But I have to agree lol. BotW had a boring soundtrack imo.

[@prototypeinheritance515]

​@@Rpodneeand I have to disagree

[@GameTesterBootCamp]

Oh SNAP! I actually worked on Rain World! Super happy to see it get represented on a big channel! Nice!

[@molycow]

What did you specifically work on?

[@GameTesterBootCamp]

@@molycow I was QA.

[@skylark.kraken]

@@GameTesterBootCamp It's a quality game, I'm glad you assured it

[@bryxxdore4150]

Lmao you were just a support "you didn't work on it"​@@GameTesterBootCamp

[@molycow]

@@GameTesterBootCamp That's really cool! Did you work for Adult Swim / Akupara / Videocult? Or with someone else? What do you even have to do when doing QA?

[@Justinb2]

My favorite genre! The worst part of Metroidbrainias, especially Outer Wilds, is that you can only play them once without having the knowledge keys and you are forever seeking out games to replicate that feeling of discovery.

[@error.418]

I absolutely love knowledge gate games, I absolutely can't stand the name "metroidbrainia." There is nothing Metroid-like about so many of them, and that's not a bad thing. We really don't have to try and shoehorn in a reference to Metroid gameplay.

[@cv5953]

Haha, maybe *you* can't relive them! But I have brain damage 😊

[@SomeDudeSomewhere]

@@error.418 It makes perfect sense though: it's like a metroid game in the sense that you need to acquire new abilities to unlock new zones, but instead of upgrading your character you're upgrading your brain. I love the term!

[@Bluesine_R]

That is one of the most asinine and forced attempted names for a genre I’ve ever heard. ”Metroidvania” was already bad and only Castlevania games that copied Metroid should be called that. This is infinitely worse.

[@error.418]

@@SomeDudeSomewhere I'm glad you love it! I don't agree with your rationalization, though. There are several things wrong with it. And that's okay, I'm not going to try to control language, but hoo boy does it leave a bad taste in my mouth.

[@ryanwillingham]

i'd argue that answers ARE important to some players. imagine if every time you asked a question, the answer was always "just because" - as mark said, players will start predicting the answer, and stop asking the question in the first place. i've lost interest in some games very quickly because although their worlds were fascinating and complex, there was never anything hidden below the surface. "what's through that door?" "what could i find in that dark corner?" and "i already know which way is forward, but what could be behind the other passageways i haven't explored?" are all questions that can be just as compelling as any puzzle, but if there's never anything to find in those areas, players will quickly stop exploring. answers don't have to be limited to items or upgrades, either. a beautiful view, a bit of environmental storytelling, or even more questions to answer are all great rewards for an attentive player who took the time to investigate the most unassuming of locations. sincerely, a player tired of poking around empty rooms.

[@ryanwillingham]

also, regarding the tunic door mark mentioned, i do remember what was up there! the puzzle to open the door was one of the greatest puzzles i've ever solved, and i'd argue that the reward ensured the puzzle wasn't just incredible to solve, but also became permanently lodged in my memory. in my opinion, a person's unique playthrough of a game is a story in and of itself. "i solved a really good puzzle" is just a statement, but adding "and it gave me a reward that helped me later in the game" makes it a plot beat.

[@kevintrueblood1057]

This is why I thought it was a bit funny to quote JJ Abrams. His "mystery box" approach has seen a lot of backlash for this exact reason. Some folks feel like you're yanking their chain when you say "the curiosity is more important than the answer".

[@BananaWasTaken]

@@kevintrueblood1057Personally I’d say the curiosity is more important than the answer, but that the curiosity loses all meaning and importance if there isn’t a good answer

[@AnimaLepton]

I think this is why it's also important that there actually "is" an answer that the game is building towards. I think there's an important balance to hit that some of the more minimalist games don't grasp - discovery is cool, but I personally like games most where they do actually give you something to start and something to build towards. Not every question needs a "full" answer, but the developer should have had something in mind that they were building towards and that a player is actually able to glean. Hollow Knight is a good example where there are answers, sometimes buried in the lore or world design, but the answers do actually exist out there. Outer Wilds very much has the answers as part of the game. Edith Finch absolutely has a mystery with answers that you're slowly unraveling as you go through the game and pay attention to the clues. Conversely The Witness is fundamentally about the theme of perspective. It'll present some opinions about perspective, and there are *some* underlying answers, but a lot of the questions really don't have answers or that are just there as a way to get you thinking about a topic on perspective without really following the throughline to the end. I think it's best when there's a thesis behind the theme. And that's just these explicit "mystery" games - a game with a more structured storyline (e.g. something closer to an RPG, or something that actually has cutscenes) can still have plenty of story, lore, gameplay, and environmental mysteries along the way, without pulling a Lost ending.

[@iota-09]

@@AnimaLepton interesting, never thought about that, but i guess that's another reason why i bounced off of the witness... the other being that it soetimes was a little excessive in its hiding of a puzzle's rules, as the game does have progressive difficulty in its puzzles, but you can explore pretty much anywhere from the beginning, so you could be looking at a very advanced level with barely any if at all understanding of the mechanics. i don't think systems and mechanics need to be explicitly explain to a player, but at least whenit comes to the thigns that are generally more obviously "things the player should be interacting with", the game should be more clear on whether you are lacking fcritical information/tools to tackle that interaction or not, and iunfortunately feel the witness failed immensely on that front from what i recall of my experience with the game, conversely, a title like Rime which also reveolves around solving puzzles on an island, fails in keeping a player's interst by aiming for one of its points of interest seemingly be the journey of the protagonist, but effectively making said journey... boring and without a clear goal. the problem with a mystery, in my honest opinion, lies almost entirely in expectations: "what will be beyond this mystery? what will i get from it? am i able to solve it? *can* i solve it? will there be more after it?" etc, all these are questions that don't neccessarily demand an answer or a satisfying one, but ignoring all of them risks making a game about mysteries feel... shallow, as then it becomes a matter of solving mysteries for misteries sake.

[@3dcbd393ce]

I love how virtually all progress in Outer Wilds happens inside your head. Once you learn its secrets, beating the game is almost trivial. I also love how it provides a mind-map to track what you've learned, in lieu of saving your progress.

[@Ahrpigi]

Also a masterclass in the impact of music. End Times, and the final campfire music... Gets me every time.

My galaxy brain take: Outer Wilds is a traditional metroidvania with a traditional map. It's called rumour mode

[@AnotherDuck]

Beating Outer Wilds is almost trivial. It's not as much of a challenge as an adventure. There are some puzzles, but almost everything is explained one way or another, so you very rarely need to figure something out. A few dots to connect, but that's it. That said, it's a good and fun game. Feels great to explore, and you can do it however you want.

[@PlanetDoong]

This is something thats particularly interesting from a game designer’s perspective, because as the designer you know the answers to all the mysteries, so it makes it that extra bit harder to put yourself in the player’s shoes and to decide how much information you give away and how much you hold back

[@wenhj25]

I find Return of the obra dinn still being underrated despite being one of the best mystery game.

[@jp9707]

This reminded me to put it on my Steam wishlist!

[@Dionysus24779]

Check out the Case of the Golden Idol for a game that has a similar idea and a fairly cool story.

[@ferdinandpenguin]

Phenomenal mystery game, though I’m not sure it’s quite the same kind of “mysterious” he’s talking about here

[@jokerofspades-xt3bs]

Just started my playthrough of it, somehow managed to avoid everything related to the game.

[@i-am-the-slime]

Botw is so horribly overrated. It feels so dated. Everything it does is there to destroy immersion. Watch this cooking Cutscene. We respawn all enemies and destroy your weapons to keep the play time high. I really don't know what people like about it. Now Obra Dinn was just so good.

[@radiorah768]

I remember being a kid playing Super Metroid. After reaching a certain point in the game, I accidentally discovered that if you leave the game on the title screen, it will show off secret moves that Samus can perform-Shinespark, Wall Jump, Crystal Flash, and Charge Beam Combos. My jaw dropped to the floor. It was fascinating, and I would watch it multiple times to try and figure out how to do them. Just the thought of putting an easter egg behind the title screen made it a really cool moment and a fond memory I have with that game.

[@Koopaperson]

Step by step guide to boost your views slightly- 1. Put rainworld in the thumbnail 2. That’s it

[@gearbox8969]

I see slugcar, i clik

[@HollowSlugg]

Yeah lol- Every video that has RW on the thumbnail ends up summoning the community... I think Wikipedia was right with its description of RW community being cult-like...

[@ashmarten2884]

The slugswarm is summoned

[@tjb3171]

thats literally why i clicked lmao

[@eco1969]

by like 5 weirdos that are VERY obsessed

[@pikapomelo]

I like rumors in games. Tears of the Kingdom does this well. Characters tell you their interpretations of things they've heard or seen and they are often exaggerated or false. It's a fun way to guide the player to an area and then create a fun moment when you discover what's actually there. In addition to dialog, totk also has in world notes, photos, and visual clues to lead you there. While there is a central mystery in TOTK, there are plenty of rumors that have no real importance. I'm not sure if this fits with any of your categories. Thanks for the video, it was a fun one!

[@jackmcawesome7087]

For anyone who likes metroidbrainias and games that feel deeply mysterious, I recommend void stranger! It's a linear series of block-pushing puzzles on the surface, with vast secrets underneath that reveal crazy lore tidbits and turn it from linear into a sandbox where you can jump around the void as you please. That being said, it can be quite unforgiving and it will require doing a lot of block-pushing puzzles, sometimes more than once, in order to get a peak below the surface. If you hate block-pushing puzzles, or just don't have a lot of patience for them, the game's secrets likely won't be worth it to you to find.

[@fliptopjim]

That sounds like a fine recommendation. Checking it out now

[@philershadi6037]

Void Stranger made me achieve enlightenment and ruined my soul simultaneously

[@ryanwillingham]

as someone who recently finished Tunic and whose favorite game ever is Outer Wilds (which i discovered through the gtmk episode on time loops!) this video was MADE for me

[@fractalgem]

Tunic looks so cuuute

[@minerman60101]

Try out Void Stranger :)

[@danigar]

Would you say Tunic was worth it? Outer Wilds is also my favorite game and I tried Tunic for a little bit as it was recommended but I couldn't fully get into it first because of the combat difficulty and second I thought it was just too abstract in its story/world/objectives to evoke the same sense of mystery that Outer Wilds did. But I don't know if that changes as it goes on.

[@JaredJeyaretnam]

@@danigarCombat is unfortunately a big part of Tunic, at least until the end game - but the mysteries are really worth it. It’s maybe my second favourite after Outer Wilds.

[@ryanwillingham]

​@@danigar i'd say it was worth it, but it's definitely more of a mixed bag than outer wilds. in terms of my enjoyment, it was a game of high highs but fairly low lows. the puzzles are definitely the highlight of the game - some of its puzzles are among my top video game puzzles of all time - but the progression was a bit of a mess. with outer wilds, it felt like there was always something to do. if i got stuck on something, i always had some other place to explore, and if i found myself aimlessly wandering, i would inevitably stumble upon a new mystery. tunic suffers, at times, from having too few places to progress, leaving you frustrated and wondering what hidden but critically important element you missed as you retread the same paths many times. you'll be given more direction the more pages of the manual you find, but the game remains pretty abstract. i am a person who likes to explore for the sake of exploring, and i loved how it rewarded me for poking around in every little corner. however, if its abstract nature bothers you, do note that it requires you to go places without having a real reason to do so. the game doesn't really rely on mystery and making deductions as much as it does pure curiosity. and yes, it is a fairly difficult game, especially compared to outer wilds. the enemy designs are awesome, but the combat mechanics themselves are just... fine. not bad, just fine. tldr; the puzzles are fantastic, the combat is decent, but the progression can be frustrating. i'll post a second comment with some other mysterious games not mentioned in the video, just in case tunic doesn't scratch your itch.

[@beecoughs]

One of my favorite videos on games of all time is Noclip's "Rediscovering the Mystery of Video Games" that talks about how the internet has robbed a bit of the inherent mystery of not being able to see everything in a game. It's fun to see some of the approaches that people have had since then, like Billy Basso intentionally having collaboration as a means to solve the puzzles or just making it so obtuse that you are unlikely to crack the code by yourself. Anyways, this feels like a great continuation of that Noclip vid (that also looked at The Witness and Spelunky, as well as Frog Fractions) and I am here for it!

[@geeshta]

Subnautica. That's the game that filled me with the sense of wonder and mystery the most, as well as dread and unease.

[@richardclegg8027]

God yes. There was a real feeling of terror to it.

[@Cinnamonbuns13]

I played that game over covid because Sony gave it for free. I knew nothing about it before playing and didn't look up anything about it while I was. Best gaming experience I've has in a long time.

[@gctypo2838]

@@richardclegg8027 And the cool thing about Subnautica is that you feel terrified _while rarely being in a whole lot of danger_ - the terror hinges upon unfamiliarity. Because so many things look bizarre and "alien", the average onlooker will sometimes have a hard time figuring out what and where is dangerous vs what and where is relatively safe (aside from the obvious big predator teeth and stuff). You're constantly looking over your shoulder and worrying if that thing you're getting close to is going to end up trying to kill you. And when it doesn't, you're not sure if it's actually harmless or just not aggro'd. And when the threat _is_ obvious, there's always a question of where is safe and where isn't, and knowing you have a barrier into danger in front of you without knowing when you've crossed it. The world, by presenting itself as more dangerous than it actually is, invites the player to come to the danger of their own will - they have to push into the unknown. A player engaging with "the scary things" in this way, more gradually and occasionally, mitigates numbing the player to the danger. Instead of disconnecting and starting to see only the game systems that they've butted up against, they remain sensitive to the world and immersed in its dangers.

[@pramitpratimdas8198]

​@@gctypo2838that's a thing I'm not sure even the devs themselves understood cuz I missed that feeling of dread in the dlc

[@amoliski]

I start every puzzle game thinking "I'm going to solve this myself!" only to end up with a walkthrough telling me the solution. It's at the point where I'll have a guide open while a friend plays a game so I can give them a bare-minimum hint if they get stuck. Even as simple as "Hey, you can solve this with what you have" That kind of makes it suck to have a puzzle like the Animal Well one in your game that REQUIRES you to collaborate without any indication in the game itself that that's what's expected of you. Are you following the developer intention by jumping on reddit, or did you just spoil the game for yourself?

[@NKCubed]

to be fair it's also a third level secret, but it's not like you can really know that without looking it up

[@FG-418]

You need to beat the game TWICE in different ways (have a new credit end scene) before you NEED to collaborate in any way. It is VERY optional for the ones that want more out of the game.

[@buttonasas]

Particularly egregious is that FEZ black monolith puzzle because it's totally just there and seems like just the next step in a reasonably simple puzzle... NOPE. Nobody has ever figured it out completely. Now THAT _sucks._ Animal Well at least limits this by simply hiding its "black monoliths" and it's unlikely you'll find them in the first place. I never found this puzzle in Animal Well (it was "invisible" to me - I didn't have a "question") Honestly, GMTK including these is really weird, especially in the tone that it seemed like a good thing? I completely agree with you that it's _bad._ Thankfully, I only ever found a couple of these across _all_ the mystery/knowledge-based-unlock video games I've played. You can safely ignore the internet for 99% of games like this... but, perhaps, do look at reviews and recommendations - some puzzles and games are designed better than others :P

[@theresnothinghere1745]

@@FG-418 That's barely relevant when you can come across the puzzles built around collaboration before even finishing the second layer. There is also nothing at all that actually hints to some of them requiring such things so players that come across them will just spend time attempting to solve something they can't.

[@scrub_jay]

@@buttonasas What's egregious about it? Contrary to popular belief a game is not obligated to cater to every single player's ability (or threshold of willpower) to complete it 100%. There are some puzzles in The Witness that are physically impossible for me to complete due to colorblindness, but I do not automatically jump to the conclusion that the puzzles are bad design. Having an optional puzzle that is ridiculously obtuse might be the designer making commentary about the nature of games in general, and the way some players approach them as mere checklists to be completed and moved on from. I got a similar impression in The Witness with the puzzle that requires you to watch the final 10 minutes of the movie Nostalghia.

[@dribblesbarbax7570]

That moment when you discover that there are puzzles hidden in the scenery in The Witness is one of my favourite moments in gaming.

[@soltreeii]

Absolutely recommending Void Stranger for one of big great mystery games!

[@jmiquelmb]

Seconded. Also Fear and Hunger 1&2

[@niang46]

Oh, I didn't expect someone talking about Void Stranger. That game deserves to be so much more known! It hooked me as much as Outer Wilds, tunic or the Witness with its mysteries and twists. And the music, the atmosphere, the relationship with all the characters... it has some undertale's side

[@Saturnode]

I was about to comment the same, Void Stranger definitely belongs to the mystery category but not mentioned in the video !

[@Allen-jj7vv]

True hidden gem❤

[@WangleLine]

Yes!! Seconding this

[@typemasters2871]

The Ace Attorney series doesn’t count as a mystery or “puzzle box” game but I do like how it can give players a similar feeling when playing Yes you can just brute force your way through each game, and the games do fall into the old point-and-click critique of “you need to follow the designer’s train of thought” But when it works, you are trying to unpuzzle each case, making hypothesises of how each crime was committed, only to make a new hypothesis whenever the gave provides new evidence or when try to submit evidence that supports your own hypothesis only to be told you’re incorrect and needing to adjust your hypothesis

[@ArnaudMEURET]

I ❤ the AA series but frankly many times the path is completely so wacky that you have to brute force it to uncover the twisted relationship between two elements.

[@moonlitxangel5771]

@@ArnaudMEURET I wouldn't necessarily say whacky but it does tend to be very outside the box. In most cases, I think you can figure it out without brute force if you keep in mind what the whole premise of the game is. That being flipping cases on their head in a "turnabout". And the game frequently reminds you of this trick because it intends for you to use it when things get sticky. I do wish they'd make it a bit easier though to know when something is hiding in testimony and when you just need to press everything to progress.

[@buttonasas]

I had the opposite experience - I stopped trying to figure out the answer because I already knew the answer to every question already: "some nonsense".

[@TheRoseFrontier]

oh yeah, absolutely. Ace Attorney made me fall in love with the thrill of seeing the mystery unravel-when seeing what curveball gets thrown at you next and just finding what how things happened and why is as interesting as knowing 'who did it?', which is usually easy to narrow down. Also, I think about one of my favorite cases, that fifth one they added later to the first game, Rise from the Ashes... lots of fun stuff with that one but I especially think of that infernal security camera video I watched a million times, which had so many clues in it?? Details that, at least for me, I didn't notice at first but finally got after so many tries, and then, a whole story starts to unravel??? That was especially fun because you have all the information from the start, but you don't know what to look for. So yeah, many fond memories of doing that one for the first time :)

[@kirrb-dot-exe]

I remember figuring out how to tackle a cross examination while showering as a eureka moment. I felt so smart and cool then haha

[@pupondrun]

I am currently playing Tunic and the amount of discoveries that keep happening and the way it plays with my base knowledge for games just makes me fill with the want to solve everything

[@dwilliams21]

I envy you, I really loved the first half of that game!!!

[@AubriGryphon]

I think that tagging in JJ Abrams is a bad move here. His "mystery box" isn't a mystery at all; it's just random events that suggest the existence of a mystery, but he hasn't bothered to actually create the mystery beforehand and whatever he comes up with is merely a retcon. It's approaching the concept of mystery from the wrong direction, creating clues and then trying to craft a mystery to fit them rather than starting with the hidden knowledge and trying to imagine how you can draw the player/viewer from hint to hint without explaining it outright.

[@stevenmcdonald5837]

very well said

[@codahighland]

That's just a different technique. It's nearly obligatory in serial publication -- movie series, yes, but also long-running comics, web serials, book series, D&D campaigns... If you can't afford to write the entire storyline in advance, or if you need to be able to pivot in response to audience feedback, then it's wise to include some hooks where you have a rough idea of what you might do with them but you don't fully flesh them out until you need to. You can even abandon a hook if audience reactions take the story in a different direction incompatible with that hook. Some people will notice, of course, but if it's not too egregious the flexibility it grants is worth a few scratched heads. Even in a self-contained story the technique can be useful as a creative exercise. Plant some ideas for yourself and see if they bear fruit as you write. Just remember to go back and clean up anything you don't end up using if they create plot holes!

[@D.KRyley-mq1do]

​@codahighland i was going to say, the technique is fine the execution can be bad though. Personally I wouldn't feel comfortable doing this for a long tv series but for a one off self contained story? That's exactly what I do.

[@nellkellino-miller7673]

I think games do mystery better than any other medium. The interactivity lends itself so well to collecting clues and trying to make sense of them.

[@bradb9635]

I have to disagree regarding the payoff of the mystery being unimportant. This is the same opinion that J.J. Abrams espoused in his "mystery box" TED talk. It creates an experience like the "Lost" TV show, which you referenced, whose ending famously disappointed everyone. Or in Star Wars, where "somehow Palpatine returned", because there was no planned answer to the various mysteries from the beginning. When you set up a mystery, you're making a promise. It's important to deliver on your promise.

[@justinfarischon7868]

The mystery box only works when the answer is not plot relevant. In Pulp Fiction, Wallace's box is a great mystery box, because the answer, to "what is inside the box?", doesn't actually matter. It doesn't affect the story at all. But the grand mystery in Lost, or Rey's parents are very important because the answers are relevant to their stories plot.

[@clearcutter74]

Worst TED talk ever. It should have been called "How to sell your audience the illusion of a story"

[@amoliski]

Yeah, it's the reverse Brandon Sanderson approach- he pays off every single mystery, including things you didn't even think were mysteries until the Sanderlanch starts. As a result I'd consume a hundred pieces of Sanderson media before I even consider another Abrams mystery box.

[@MaxIzrin]

Agreed, mystery boxes are a symptom of bad writing. Exploration wouldn't matter, if there is nothing to discover. And I do remember what's behind the golden door.

[@adam-varner]

"Disappointed everyone?" News to me. It's very widely loved by everyone I speak to about it.

[@aaronlittle5478]

Tonight I'm finishing running my first Call of Cthulhu campaign, and I wish I would have found this video earlier. There's a lot of good advice here that GMs can apply to creating mysteries in tabletop games.

[@kristiangregory4860]

9:56 is a significant point. Some people use external journals to track this stuff but in-game options (when well designed) prompt a player to track relevant information in easy ways.

[@HopperGameDevelopment]

It can be a tricky balance between mysterious and confusing sometimes. You also have to convey to the player that a mystery they should not be able to work out is not meant to be solved till later. Doing that implicitly can be tricky, but it's so important if you don't want the player to research it on the internet, potentially spoiling their experience.

[@dopaminecloud]

I've definitely bumped into this but it's a behavior on the side of the player that can only be learned through extensive exposure to the relevant genres. All genres have similar quirks that rely on this kind of meta-understanding of design.

[@k0lpA]

@@dopaminecloud Yeah, I remember the first time I went on the moon in outer wilds and saw that alien structure, I thought I had to set it in one position or another to open a door somewhere else or something.. but in outer wilds things aren't all related to puzzles, it's not like myst where if you can look through a telescope there's gotta be an angle where you will get a solution to a puzzle or something. In outer wilds if there's a gravity canon that can shoot shuttles it's because the nomai used it to move from planet to planet, it doesn't necessarily have a function to the player.. I think it's one of the reasons I preferred outer wilds DLC to the base game, I knew the design philosophy

[@CheesecakeMilitia]

Mark's been cooking on this deluxe Metroidbrainia episode for a while

[@JD-qq8fz]

Outer Wilds and TUNIC are the left and right hands I hold to my heart as my favorite video games of all time. They are what proves that videos games as a medium are capable of something special that nothing else can replicate. They really stick with you.

[@GreyWolfLeaderTW]

The original Halo: Combat Evolved did a surprisingly excellent but understated job of selling the mystery of the Halo ring. Being an action game, the atmosphere and aura of mystery around it was kept largely in the background, but it came forward in full force during the quiet moments between battles, such as in the levels The Silent Cartographer, Attack on the Control Room, 343 Guilty Spark, and especially The Library (for as much as people hate the repetitive combat with the Flood, it's hard to ignore the atmosphere Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori's soundtrack weaves through that stage). But the first Halo having these features was largely a byproduct of the game starting life as a Strategy game that morphed over development into an FPS, and the subsequent Halo games almost completely abandoned even a secondary focus on the mystique of the rings to dedicate all of its effort on the bombast and drama of a Sci-Fi Space Opera.

[@catgirl_warcrimes]

Replaying the Myst series after beating the Riven remake, I was completely enthralled by the worlds and mysteries in the series. Although I might be partly blinded by nostalgia goggles lol. The series is far from perfect but is foundational to the wonderful mysterious games we see today.

[@yanwittmann]

RAIN WORLD IN MY GMTK??? YES, PLEASE?

[@potatinator9831]

Long have we waited... our reckoning is come.

[@ppgod6989]

Rain world SWEEEEEP

[@sheep177]

Yes!

[@reaper_artwave]

Literally my exact reaction!

[@atlas16198]

RAIN WORLD SWEEP

[@cooperm211]

It's so wild how subjective "too many locks" can feel too. Because I flew through lorelei and felt fine, but felt overwhelmed in animal well and still haven't finished it. Something about the feeling that the world was so big vs lorelei just being a few hallways

[@darksentinel082]

@@cooperm211 it might also be the mechanic depth in animal well honestly. there’s fewer threads, but a million more ways to pull at them, which can get overwhelming and put me in a similar position occasionally when playing through. LatLE is mechanically light to a fault, and when you need an item it’s always quite clear which you need (at least it was for me) meaning it’s all about making the connections you need to make to solve things.

[@cooperm211]

@@darksentinel082 yea I think that's the core of it. So it ends up being hard to know if you have the things you need in animal well to progress because of how wide the mechanics go.

[@Meb2x]

Playing Talos Principle 2 while watching this and you explained it so well. The puzzle mechanics are better in this game, but I don’t care about the story, characters, or philosophy at all in this game compared to the first that felt more mysterious.

[@BlackMarluxia]

Tossing in Void Stranger as another game that rewards curiosity and hides a lot more thsn one might initially expect

[@N7spectre117]

I just want to mention how great it is that you include sources for your video essays. I really wish more people did this.

[@ultimatedsoup5965]

This video was from start to finish a talk about the games in my top 10, love it :) (everyone should also try Noita or atleast look up the secrets of that game... it's insane)

[@AalapShah12297]

I love how well-structured your videos are. Almost feels like watching a university lecture from a professor who loves to give lots of real-world examples, while still feeling extremely entertaining to watch.

[@bungercolumbus]

I remember the moment I played the game Noita for the first time. All they give you as info is how to move, shoot, float and change wands. You have to figure out on your own how to create godlike wands and survive whatever the game throws at you. But honestly I think Noita is a game on the other side of the spectrum. On the first floor in the mines if you go a bit more to the right you find an orb of power which rewards you for your curiosity... except your curiosity is going to summon an extremly hard boss. The game has so many hidden secrets that even by looking up the Wikipedia you can still find unanswered stuff and you can still find out new strategies to make your wands and you can still find new ways to traverse the dungeon. I for one love the wand making system and what some players from the community were able to pull off.

[@MichaelFromTheAttic]

Tunic remains one of the most rewarding and satisfying experiences in recent memory. The feeling of FINALLY figuring it out is truly insane. And aside from a few mysteries that did require me to look up guides online, the vast majority of is very much doable for anyone. Highly recommend this gem.

[@dontstealmydiamondsv3156]

For sure the mystery is way more valuable than their solutions. That being said I want to warn against the JJ Abrams style 'mystery box' technique running rampant in modern storytelling, which prides itself on aggressively riding the hype of mysteries that turn out to be completely arbitrary by design. Feelings of wonder are one thing, feelings of being ripped off are another. This is ultimately a problem of expectations though, so you aren't going to run into this problem by having a random hidden chest with a worthless item in it for example. The player wouldn't really have anything riding on that chest to begin with. Larger scale mysteries on the other hand...be careful

[@panampace]

Yeah JJ Abrams’ stuff are terrible examples of mysteries - he never has any answers planned! It always leaves you unsatisfied.

[@Lorentz_Driver]

k but you never explained what the abrams mystery box is.

[@Lorentz_Driver]

@@panampace Nah he's great.

[@ultimaxkom8728]

^ JJ Abrams' "mystery box" refers to mysteries _written_ with answers not planned. Its answers superposition collapse only when the box is opened. Which is way easier to write. In exchange for throwing cohesion in the car trunk with tapes on the mouth and eyes.

[@TobiasAmaranthh]

Thank you for this one. You've listed a huge chunk of my favorite games right from the start. TUNIC is my top game recommendation even before factoring in foxes, and it's simply an amazing experience as it teases and guides you along its path. I think there's a similar sort of feeling I look for in the RPGs I play. An evolution of the storytelling to keep me drawn into the world. Both CrossCode and Phoenotopia Awakening do a wonderful job with this, and Sea of Stars comes close to scratching the same sort of narrative pull. They each have a certain heart to them that pulled me in, in a way that I don't see in most other games. I have still yet to replay PA because I feel like it's still stuck in my brain, too familiar despite having replayed TUNIC and CrossCode several times by now.

[@the_tele_porter4665]

I think at 22:36 you pursue the mysteries, but forget about the context of the game. You learn more about the world, become more experienced, and this solid piece of knowledge then lets you make informed decisions and choices such as "No, I don't need to go there, I'm fine with my current spirit ashes" or "I need more spirit ashes, I should look for a catacomb". At some point, player experience can and should outweigh some mysteries. That is correct.

[@corykahane]

My fave example of "not taking things for granted" - in Dark Souls 2, there are three moments where you sit at a bonfire like you've done a million times (and in the previous game) but suddenly IT EXPLODES and an NPC emerges from the fire. 😮

[@stevethepocket]

Fun fact: When the "Scholar of the First Sin" patch first came out for the original edition of the game (exclusive to players who had bought the DLC), he was just already there in place of the bonfire. I don't know when or why they changed it.

[@line4169]

Not a game but reminds me of first time Beast titan spoke in Attack On Titan, broke my understanding of the world that story was taking place in & made me even more interested in the story & it paid off unlike Lost.

[@Ahad-bj1cz]

Attack on Titan was filled with those moments. Remember the characters seeing a photo for the first time in Eren’s basement? I remember being genuinely taken aback at the concept of that level of tech in the world.

[@GAHAHAHH]

"Attack on Titan" had the best ending to a story. It had so many world changing revelations that you didn't even realise that what you just said could be considered a "spoiler". I am normally someone who doesn't care about spoilers but this story had me appreciating it as it was released because every new season/chapter I could go back and find foreshadowing that I didn't even know was foreshadowing; it's an extremely time consuming and inefficient way to re-watch the whole thing after every season but I can't think of another show that was so well thought out that it rewards that kind of behaviour instead of punishing it with "plot holes". And I don't even think the "mystery" is the best part; I think the best part is what it says about human desires and the character development, also the action is some of the best there is.

[@line4169]

@@GAHAHAHH The ending of AOT is total ass & goes against everything it setup previously but yeah except for that the whole show is a perfect masterpiece that has probably greatest plot twist in any fiction ever 'The Basement'

[@line4169]

@@GAHAHAHH The ending of AOT is total ass & goes against everything it setup previously but yeah except for that the whole show is a perfect masterpiece that has probably greatest plot twist in any fiction ever 'The Basement'

[@GAHAHAHH]

@@line4169 Your reply comes across as a parody. Alas it's impossible to tell sincere extremism from a mocking satire of extremism. From your earlier comment though I would guess that you liked some of the most shallow aspects of the show and didn't really understand it to a possibly dangerous extent. If you want to make an honest effort to understand the ending you should watch "The final mystery of Attack on Titan" by invaderzz. It's a good place to start but honestly I doubt the likes of you is capable of being open minded and there may still be too much about the show that you don't understand that simply explaining the ending wouldn't be enough. I liked your comment previously but if this is how you respond to someone who likes the show in it's entirety; I have now changed it into a dislike. It's one thing to only like some parts of a show and not others but it's another to incessantly and pointlessly complain about the parts you don't like to the people who do like those parts. You aren't going to convince anyone who doesn't already agree with you, let alone me. I honestly don't get people who didn't like the ending, maybe they just don't like endings in general but any more specific than that and their "reasoning" doesn't make any sense. It's always "it didn't do X" when it literally did do X or "I don't like that it did Y" when it often only remotely did anything close to that if you force it to appear to have done that. I would ask for you to "prove me wrong" but I am really just not in the mood.

[@FugaceFugite]

My only gripe with "invisible question" based mysteries as you've called them, is when the game makes it seems like everything could have another meaning. On the one hand it's great, it makes for a wonderful eureka moment of "what else could there be ?" after finally solving a puzzle that had been standing for years, and if you're capable of leaving it there it can be one of the greatest memories you can have. But on the other hand it can completely ruin that feeling by making the players attempt to do more, when there isn't anything more, potentially spending many hours for nothing. Animal Well had this effect on me. I was excited to finally be able to partake in a game promising ARGs and mindblowing puzzles as it is being solved and so I kept up with the community and participated in the effort of making progress on the game's deepest secrets, which was really fun but... eventually the end was reached. While technically speaking some secrets still exist, we had gotten nearly every answer the game could offer, but it took a while for players to realize that. I myself spent about 20 hours after completing the most hidden secrets looking for other things, hidden meanings in whatever could appear peculiar. For context that's about the same time it took me to finish the game in the first place, so about half my playtime was in the post final end-game content. And the thing is, there isn't really that much more to find, instead of leaving the game at the high of solving a series of crazy puzzles, this moment got buried under hours of observations, analyzing, categorizing, theorizing, and attempt button sequences over and over again that were ultimately doomed to lead to nothing. And I got out early compared to many other members who kept playing and playing and racked hundreds of hours, some which are still regularly returning to the game to attempt finding something else. My point being, had the game been more explicit about the progress being made, about whether or not something was left or how much potential there was, I, and probably others, could have had a better memory of the game. Not to say that the possibility of something more being there isn't exciting, but in the end we all have limited time that we have to carefully choose where to spend. This kind of unending search for most likely nothing can waste so much of the players' time. While such a lengthy endeavor panning out to some new actual secret could make for an incredible story, it is no mystery that every game has an end, a finite amount of content. Trying to hide what is left is particularly disrespectful of players with little free time to spend on games. There is no good solution to this conundrum and ultimately I'm glad that some games do attempt to resist gauging their completion, and at the same time wish they didn't make it feel like anything was still possible. This problem is especially prominent when it isn't fun to go through the process of searching or attempting a solve of some potential mystery that might or might not exist. I bet several players played dark souls by constantly hitting every wall, and perhaps any other prop, after finding that one of the walls did in fact hide something, and in doing so ruined the game's pace and turned it into a chore for themselves, yet were unable to not do that because the fear of missing a secret simply by being lazy in that one moment exists.

[@AnotherDuck]

Thanks for the warning; it's on the play list. Though I also stopped Tunic before the last few puzzles that required some out-of-game-stuff to solve (not counting translation notes).

[@ryanlee5693]

This is so important. Being left by the dev to over-analyze every sprite, animation, shadow, sound and movement is exciting for a short time, but leaves me feeling very anxious and I cannot relax into the game anymore. Being left alone by the dev can add to the depth of the game, but if you don't know where that depth ends...I swing back and forth between feeling that "this game is the most amazing game I've ever played" and "this game is seriously flawed, and I am no longer having fun"

[@atkvin]

Highly agreed, I think I know precisely what part of the game you're talking about, too. I would say it is likely ubiquitous for most players that reach the end - especially since it breaks some rules set up by itself that were at an earlier point explicitly used to hint where there were more secrets to find. The specific case I'm thinking of actually does feature a way to gauge completion - but it's the developer's deliberate inversion of it, defeating the point, that makes it rather puzzling and silly.

[@kalithar394]

While Elden Ring's mini dungeons do ruin the surprise of the rewards by being so formulaic, I think it still gets used well for the mystery of solving the puzzle. There's a catacombs in the Mountaintop, well after you've learned the formula for solving catacombs, where you get shown the lever to open the boss door pretty early, and it's pretty obvious you have to follow a path up and drop down to get to it. You do so, use a few tricks you've learned from previous catacombs, find your path down, drop down into the room from earlier, and the lever isn't there. You explore around for a bit and find eventually that you haven't looped around and dropped back to an earlier point, you've instead dropped into an entire second iteration of the catacomb. If you take the path you took to get to the second iteration initially, you end up back at the beginning of the first iteration, and still can't get to the lever. You instead have to, in the second iteration, find a path that wasn't in the first iteration, and that finally lets you get to the lever. This isn't the best example, but there's a type of mystery that can only be done by playing with expectations that are developed from a clear formula, and I think FromSoft is really good at those. There's also the ruins in general, which have a similar kind of invisible question to the secret puzzles in the Witness. The first few ruins you encounter, there's a basement you go into, sometimes fight a boss, and there's a reward. There's a ruin in Limgrave that has a fake basement, but that's pretty obvious because it teleports you into a death trap. Once you get into Liurnia, though, there are a few ruins that don't have a basement, and it's early enough that you can write it off as not every ruin having a basement. It's not until you discover a ruin that has a basement hidden by an invisible floor that makes you wonder if those previous one had a basement too, and you can start noticing the tells for where a hidden floor is.

[@iota-09]

on point

[@Taaaamas]

Probably one of my favourite videos of the channel, and a topic that I've been so fascinated and interested in ever since I started playing video games. Secrets and mystery are some of my favourite elements of any game, I often believe that if you don't try to sneak something in like that, it's a HUGE missed opportunity!

[@bungercolumbus]

I think another game which goes well in this category is Minecraft or Terraria. Even tho it doesn't seem like it I remember the first time I played Minecraft or Terraria I had no idea how things worked. I explored the world and saw all kinds of different things, materials. The nether was something insanely cool for me as a child. Each time I got a new ore or weapon in Terarria I went to the main NPC and asked what could I build out it. Some amazing games for a first experience.

[@kaleenar963]

I tried to play Terraria like that, but I felt like the guide character was massively unhelpful, so I couldn’t get very far, and I wasn’t in the mood to wiki binge for several hours so I’ve never gotten past what I think is the early game for Terraria.

[@pramitpratimdas8198]

Would recommend @AboutOliver's playthrough of Minecraft that he played completely blind. I'd say Minecraft is on the obtuse side, some of things like the comparator are near impossible to figure out on your own. Terraria is much more balanced in that regard even if it's a much simpler game mechanically

[@jaymarksman]

21:59 The journey to opening the door in Tunic is a memorable one, but I can never forget what was behind it, because it was so simple, yet so very fitting. I personally think the answer/conclusion to a mystery matters a lot. Sure, the journey is very important, but I don't think it's a good feeling to get to the end and feel like "I did all that for *this*?"

[@guybrushmonkey97]

Riven is a masterpiece of mystery and environmental storytelling, absolutely recommend both the original and the remake

[@haydengamingportal286]

My favorite example of an invisible question is baba is you. Finding out that you can solve puzzles on the world map is amazing, and the level of depth it goes into once you figure that out, with layers of hidden secrets, is just spitacular

[@JoaoVictor-ms4zp]

One thing that make a game mysterious is unique interactions. we always try to make game components dinamic and replicable, so one game object can be used in a buch of places, but for a game to feel mysterious i think we should have a bunch of objects that have unique interactions in specific circunstances, but this is a lot of code. Totk and rain world can make this unique interactions because they dont exactly program all the possible outcomes, but there are other ways of doing it. The main thing is not let the player percieve a pattern in how things work in the game ( but a game still requires SOME pattern so the player dont feel completely lost)

[@ebunny1652]

Agreed, I'd love to see more games that are not just a mystery to the player, but even the devs themselves. Simulations with so many variables or possibilities that it's impossible to predict. Not just to be random, but to create real mystery and interesting and unexpected outcomes. Or games that ask questions that not even the developers have answers to. It makes me think of cellular automata like Conway's game of life.

[@dopaminecloud]

@@ebunny1652 Here's a different issue though, there's a reason people that love mysteries don't just get into physics but instead consume fiction. The rewarding part of a mystery has intent and a designed, paced, unraveling. Intensities and reveals a simulation can never come remotely close to. A good example is shadows of doubt, that game will never simulate a crime that is half as interesting as any in LA Noire.

[@ebunny1652]

@@dopaminecloud Yeah that's a good point. I guess it's about finding a good middleground between simulation and design, chaos and order.

[@GrahamWiebe]

My favorite thing about this genre is the fact that when you have knowledge gates instead of inventory or attribute based ones. Its not the character that levels up to progress, Its you

[@_Salok]

6:21 Dark Souls stats are "cryptic" until you just press the "Explanation" button ... THE PROMPT IS RIGHT THERE !

[@ebunny1652]

Hell yeah, the Metroidbrania episode. Just seeing Rain World in the thumbnail was enough to get me excited for this banger of a video. Funny that just a few days ago I was talking about this stuff with Discord friends, inculding Phil Fish and Dark Souls. Probably one of my favourite videos of yours, as this is probably my favourite type of game, in large part thanks to Jonathan Blow, who opened my mind to this. It's been cool to see these ideas spreading more and for the wider gaming community to learn about this stuff, because I feel like this is one of the ways video games have an incredible amount of potential and we're only just getting started. Having new terms like "Metroidbrania" can also help to communicate these things and progress (our understanding of) the medium. Who knows, perhaps at some point this type of gamedesign couldn be the new norm and then the avant garde games will be going even deeper. What a time to be alive. Let's be careful though, because I think part of the beauty in this stuff is how it's subtle and not overused. If every gamedev were to start doing this it might lose it's charm.

[@deskbot000]

Noita is another great game for discussing mysteries and secrets. When you first see it, it seems to play like Spelunky, then you look deeper and it turns out it's more like Terraria. If you look even deeper there are tons of secrets, some of which the community as a whole still hasn't deciphered (the Eye Messages and the Cauldron Room). It's layered sort of like Animal Well, with a complete game with an ending available without even realizing there's more going on, and so many secrets of varying complexity for those who want to seek them out.

[@elliotgott2993]

When you talked about the multiple "layers" of mystery in Animal Well, I immediately thought of Ittle Dew 2. On the surface it's a pretty standard open-world Zelda-like, and you can have a perfectly satisfying experience just playing it normally; but it has not only a bunch of optional dungeons with much more difficult puzzles, but also a secret layer of incredibly obtuse mysteries for the truly dedicated players.

[@mystman1210]

Glad to see Riven get a mention in this! It remains my favorite game of all time and the Remake is phenomenal, even if somewhat different from the original. Honestly I'm just posting this comment to let people know that they should absolutely play it. Cyan deserves all the attention they can get for what they do and for what they did with Riven.

[@AnotherDuck]

One of those games I've had a mind to play, but there's always been something else.

[@guybrushmonkey97]

One of the best games I have ever played as well!

[@jamic6107]

10:40 "Show, don't tell" became "stop telling when you're already showing".

[@tzeneth]

I am probably a terrible person for mystery. I enjoy mystery games like Obra Dinn, the Case of the Golden Idol, and the Plainscreek Killings but absolutely bounced off of Tunic. Some of the mysteries in these games are the type that just frustrate me and get me angry. That one you used as an example from Animal Well would probably make me mad and frustrated when I looked it up after realizing I couldn't solve it. At that point, I'm going to end up playing the game with a guide while frustratedly looking at the game and going, "What else am I going to need a guide so I can solve/not miss because **I** am not meant to solve it?"

[@GAHAHAHH]

My frustrations with "Animal Well" don't even stop there. I bought the game simply because I was told "it is a metroidvania with no combat" by someone who was so impressed by it that they didn't want to "spoil" any more. I was expecting an easy relaxing game but I was met with some of the most frustrating design I have ever seen. I had questions like "What power up am I missing to solve this?" When the solution was "just platform better". There may be mostly "no combat" but the game still has plenty of fail-states. I just wanted to explore it at my own leisure but the game expects a lot of technical skill in a game that controls quite finicky from even those who are supposed to be "level 1" players. A lot of the "levels of design" feel like they are in the incorrect level there are things in the game that people who just want some sort of ending deserve to experience and there are things in the "level 1" design that I wouldn't even wish on the "level 3" players. And this is coming from someone who 100% complete "Celeste" ( with a few gold berries too ) and actually likes the concept of puzzles so extremely difficult that it take a whole community to solve them, so I can only imagine how frustrating it is for someone who just wants to play an "easy" game with some "light" puzzles.

[@Lokonarua]

Settle with your friends so one can play a game first, and guide the rest with the smallest hints possible. I watched my brother playing Outer Wilds and Tunic after i played, and i can say he got a smoother experience XDD

[@Lokonarua]

what i think Tunic most differs to, lets say, Obra dinn, is that in the latter you cant solve any death by mistake, you could solve 2 deaths and "guess" the third, but this is more of a cheat than the "correct way", where in the first, you can absolutely stumble upon a thing you will only encounter later in the manual (i discovered the "merchant" completely by chance), so i guess tunic can be a bit more appealing if you dont expect to solve everything by only narrative means, but with map exploration too

[@dwilliams21]

See, I mega-heart ADORED the first half of TUNIC, when I was discovering things....but the last half left me really mad and frustrated and I ditched it.

[@kylesmall6279]

Super metroid may not require the bomb jump or wall jump, but those were quick to figure out through average gameplay. One thing they never told you (maybe in a manual i didn't own) was that you could run before getting the speed boost. I always got stuck in this one room as a kid because in order to get out you had to use the run, which I had no idea existed until the internet became a thing

[@marekk3301]

omg you cannot just spoil outer wilds without a warning ⚠️ 10:45

[@BacchusGames]

Thanks to this comment and KZbin showing comments with timestamps around the time you’re watching, I once again avoided spoilers for outer wilds. Thank you stranger 🫡

[@Djadou]

I don't understand how game maker's toolkit did not realize it would be a big spoiler for a game where the community has actively avoided disclosing the spoiler in question, and he just says it outright.

[@Lokonarua]

Up

[@petermarsh4578]

I appreciate it buddy

[@cherubin7th]

Very exiting when a reward is not guaranteed. Also I love when something peaks that I never saw before in the game and then leads down a rabbit hole.

[@jumpay6524]

def recommend void stranger

[@WangleLine]

I'm kind of surprised it wasn't mentioned in the video

[@wortwortwort117]

1:26 I cant put into words how bizarre it was to see my top 4 games of all time laid out like this at once. I guess mystery is just my type of game

[@ooooggll]

I actually liked the company of the expedition members in The Talos Principle 2. It was a nice change from the first game where you're all alone. Having actual conversations about philosophical topics was cool compared to the first game too, especially being able to talk to different people with different perspectives instead of just a pessimistic AI. Sure, they could be annoying at times during cutscenes, but they helped break up the game loop of doing puzzle after puzzle.

[@tailesque]

Same here; and they're not nearly as annoying as Mark makes them out to be; it's not like they're remarking on big imposing megastructures all the time. Reducing them to "yapping" sidekicks feels wildly unfair to what they offer. Talos 2 tackles a lot of new philosophical topics relative to the first game (many focused on societies, communities), and having an ensemble cast is part of that direction.

[@scrub_jay]

@@tailesque FWIW I found them to be pretty annoying as well. This is my opinion but I found both the writing and the voice acting to be sub-par. Maybe I need to revisit it, but the philosophy felt fairly surface-level to me. This is fine for many video games but Talos 2 clearly made it a major focal point of the play experience and it just drags to listen to the whole time.

[@ohnree4110]

Fantastic video! Really well edited and narrated! I loved all the analysis you made, it helped me a lot. I would also add that the way that mystery is sensorily communicated is important. A mysterious sound, a mysterious color or movement (like the dragon in BOTW), the sheen of light over the yellow pads in Tunic when you walk over them... a mysterious soundtrack like in Outer Wilds... handwritten foreign language... many different ways to indicate depth to the player through subtle sensory cues...

[@smergthedargon8974]

I feel like you missed a game that belongs in a video like this: Hyper Light Drifter. That game uses precisely _zero words_ outside of the main menu, and it procs all the same feelings of mystery as games like Outer Wilds and Dark Souls. It's an all-time great and not enough people talk about it. Disasterpeace is a god-tier composer for mysterious games.

[@Road_to_Dawn]

Taking inspiration from your game dev series, I finally started making my own game - a bullet heaven, Survivors-style game. But unlike most others I’ve seen, I want this one to have secrets, a story, and alternate minigame modes. I appreciate your videos for giving me ideas! Like this one, for example. Maybe I could have a locked door, not too far out of the way on the first stage, but you’re only allowed to spend a few minutes there at first, and while you might be able to spot the key, you won’t have enough time to reach it until you’ve unlocked a harder version of the stage where you have to survive for a longer amount of time. And to make the mystery worth the player’s while, I could have an unlockable character behind the door.

[@cebo494]

Mystery is both one of the most powerful and most dangerous aspects of games. This video was a collage of some of both some of my favorite games, as well as a bunch of my greatest dissapointments in gaming; where I played a game for an hour or two, didn't really know what I was supposed to do, and then never played again. For me personally, I do need a certain amount of direction, at least at the start of a game, to motivate my exploration. I really liked games like Hollow Knight, Tunic, and Animal Well, where there was a great sense of mystery but I never really had the "where do I go" problem. But a game like Outer Wilds was a bit too open ended for me, I just didn't really latch on to the story and so I just felt like I was pointlessly wandering around without really having any of that deeper motivation to explore. And for games like Elden Ring and Rain World, the combination of them not providing any hints of where to go at the start, as well as the relatively high initial difficulty, made it so I just couldn't tell where to go; I couldn't tell which areas I wasn't strong enough for yet vs which ones just required a bit more persistence; so I just sort of got bored of not knowing what to do and gave up. I do really want to try some of those games I didn't initially care for again at some point. I tend to struggle to get into a lot of games on my first try. Even Hollow Knight didn't really capture me until my second attempt several months after the first. I think a big part of it is just what expectations you have going in. Although, I do think there is something to giving the player an "obvious" objective but having that greater mystery unfold over the course of the game. I think Tunic is one of the best examples of this I've ever played; I went in expecting a charming little Zelda-like, but it slowly unfolded as something much greater, slightly holding your hand via the instruction booklet while still remaining mysterious the entire time.

[@Still_Me]

I think I'm in the same boat. Maybe my brain is too narrative-driven for a lot of these games, because I'll often find myself getting stuck, then giving up, because I have a moment of "wait... why do I actually care what the solution to this mystery is?" And all too often, the answer is that I don't care. The Talos Principle and The Witness spring to mind as two games that I gave up on because I got stuck and didn't have enough motivation to continue. Similarly, I find it endlessly frustrating when a mechanic isn't shown to you, or at least when a game doesn't teach you how to look for a mechanic or how to find the information you need to solve a mystery. You stumble upon a solution, and instead of thinking "of course!" you think "well how the hell was I supposed to figure that out?"

[@iota-09]

in fairness to elden ring, it gives you four(two, but given in different ways) MASSIVE hints at the start of where to go: varrè telling you to go to stormveil and then mentioning the guidance of grace(which you can see both on the map and in the actual world) and also the erdtree and melina mentioning wanting to go there as part of the pact with the player. what it lacks is personal investment, as the game expects the player to make up a reason for why their character should want to become elden lord ont heir own rather than presenting it,(this is where the character origin plays in, as it gives tips on plot drive for your character in the form of things like "the prisoner was a carian school prisoner, maybe your character wants to take revenge on the school or to control it, and for that goal they want to become elden lord?" things like that) that's where most people's appreciation of the narrative gets lost i feel, but if you approach it like a ttrpg who fails to ask the questions it wants to ask of the player, then you can understand the developer intent. the rest of the world is there to dampen the hit of the hard difficulty that the critical path gives. rain world... gives none of that. it just hopes the player will find the mysteries intriguing enough to solve them for effectively no reason other than seeing what else has the game to offer.

[@cebo494]

@@iota-09 I have no idea who varre or melina are (isn't melina the final boss or something?). Are they at the start of the game? Like the START start of the game; walk out of the cave and see the horse guy start of the game. I only played ER for like an hour or so, and I don't remember encountering any NPC's at all, so I'm not sure that I even made it far enough for them to tell me what you're saying. Although it's been like a year since I played so I could be misremembering.

[@iota-09]

@@cebo494 yup, varre is the "you're maidenless" guy next to ye grace before the golden horseman, melina is the person who gives you the abilty to level up, you could consider them to be appearing usually shortly after the tutorial.

[@cebo494]

@@iota-09 I don't think I ever saw them. Maybe I saw varre, I don't remember. Still didn't fix the "where am I supposed to go" problem

[@cowabunghole]

Mark, I'm so glad I found your channel! Not only do we clearly have an extremely similar taste in games, but you do such an excellent job of illustrating exactly *why* those games tickle my brain in just the right way. I had the same experience re: the mountain door in Tunic; I honestly don't remember what was behind the door either, but I do remember the satisfaction of figuring out how to open it as one of my favorite gaming experiences in many years. Your videos give me a deeper appreciation for game design and inspire me to get back to making my own games. Plus, they also give me suggestions for new games to play and be inspired by. And if you like them, I'm sure I'll like them too. Keep up the amazing work! PS Can't wait for Mind Over Magnet :)

[@AnotherDuck]

I remember what's behind the mountain door because it's one of the best rewards that don't do much of anything I've seen in a game. It made it feel even more satisfying. Best puzzle, though.

[@gjergjipocari8227]

I wanna talk a second about something that has been on my mind lately about video games, and especially games like Animal Well, Tunic, Rain World etc where the crux of the game is how you interact with the game. What I mean is our actual physical and mental capability of interacting with games. These games to me are like celebrations of video game design and only people with "inside" knowledge on video games would get them. We give for granted our ability to interact with games but what trying to teach a young person to play Super Mario taught me was that actually playing video games is a skill that has to be learned, and actually not that easy. Only somebody deeply familiar with video games would really "get" these games. It's the "always check behind waterfalls" phenomena but multiplied 100 times. I don't know where I wanna go with this, that we should consider video game literacy as important as other kinds of knowledge maybe? It's one of the reasons why I love GMTK, Mark is the cool teacher giving insights into this human phenomena called video games and how it has evolved and still evolving and how we interact with them.

[@Lyoishi]

Even trying to imagine introducing a non gamer to outer wilds is tough. Learning a controller plus 3 dimensional movement even some gamers struggle with, plus the main gameplay.

[@dopaminecloud]

I wouldn't say it's "important" but it's definitely the nature of the joy and endless reward of engaging deeper with art. Think about music for a second, how long do you think it could take you to get someone that has only ever listened to radio music to first find and second be genuinely touched by a piece like "Dense" by univers zero? A piece that people deeply involved in the art herald? How many people that go to the cinema every month will ever watch "The Cow" in their lifetime even when it's one of the most important movies in a certain part of the world? Gaming is no different, I think. Some things take time, luck and willingness to understand. It's part of the beauty of it.

[@gjergjipocari8227]

@@dopaminecloud That's the thing, you can enjoy great music and other media without knowing how to make it, it's a passive thing. With games you have to know how to interact with them and the examples I mentioned require an even deeper understanding of what makes game "games" and their design to actually appreciate them.

[@GrainOfSalt1661]

I used to play fps games where there are a lot of locked doors and giant structures which only purpose are mere decorations. It makes me often ignore subtle mysteries in exploration games. It felt like a curse, really. I didn't even realize the existence of the giant tower that are 'supposedly' visible from distance throughout the game while playing half-life 2.

[@sponge1234ify]

That smash cut to Uncharted footage as you said "uncharted" is the kind of high-brow, game design commentary editing I am here for.

[@easymentality]

I am not a game Dev, but I love your videos. Appreciate that you're posting them. And appreciate your patrons for making that possible.

[@GallowglassAxe]

I also like unexplained mysteries in games that have no direct answer. Like in Majora's Mask the "Them" which seem like a bunch of aliens coming from nowhere to steal cows and no explanation other than that. Or in Super Mario Galaxy there is those shadowy figures in the background of the Hell Valley Sky Tree. world. Not from a game but in the book Lord of the Rings you have Tom Bombadil who was purposely left vague as Tolkien said, "Bombadil is just as he is. Just an odd 'fact' of that world. He won't be explained, because as long as you are [...] concentrated on the Ring, he is inexplicable."

[@sackboiiii]

Speaking about Knowledge. You've just learned me the term Metroidbrainias. This allows me to find more games like Outerwilds and Tunic. I cannot thank you enough!!

[@AMan-xz7tx]

What, no Voices of the Void? Still, banger video, keep it up man!

[@megacier]

Deciphering the braille in Pokémon to find the three golems, such good childhood memories... I still remember the answers to this day

[@emdash8944]

You watch GMTK for the amazing writing and editing. I watch GMTK to get a dozen new game recommendations. We are not the same

[@me1ne]

I did not understand the skill system of Morrowind when I first played it. Got into Alchemy. Went all over the land to find new plants to try them out in combination with the others. Made a matrix and took notes. Felt like a real alchemist. Unintended, yet still one of my favourite gaming experiences.

[@ruri666]

28:04 Are you?! 🤔🤔🤔🤔

[@FeltyLP]

I just wanted to thank you for the spoiler alerts with timestamps :)

[@LonelyAncient]

damn you really gonna make me pause this to play the (reportedly) great games I've put in my backlog forever. Damn you GMTK.

[@matman000000]

Probably my favorite experience uncovering a game mystery was in Immortality. At first I was just enjoying the film clips, trying to piece together each movie's story. But when I encountered the first hidden message, it scared me and hooked me even more. The game called me out for snooping around and all I could do was to delve even deeper.

[@Marlo_Branco]

Thank you for including my favorite game, The Witness, in this incredible list of games. A fantastic game but overlooked

[@lucasenraraujo]

As per usual, a great essay, Mark. Thank you for the enlightenment and introspection on the subject of Mystery

[@Thyana-ig5no]

Not even sure if "mystery" actually exist or is just a nice name for gatekeeping a gaming experience by underexplaining

[@magnum567134]

0:48. Fuck the blood moon. I get why it's there from a development standpoint, but everytime it came up it felt like an ad just interrupted my game😒

[@jp9707]

The creepy music and everything slowly turning red gave me so much anxiety every time 😬

[@poleve5409]

you can skip it but it requires a weird button combination no normal human being will ever find. It's X and + together.

[@leetri]

@@poleve5409 Nah, you just have to press X to bring up the "press + to skip" prompt and then press +, no need to press both together. X is used to skip smaller cutscenes like cooking food or activating a shrine, it just has the added layer of needing to press + so you don't accidentally skip a cutscene (all of the more important cutscenes have this extra layer of protection). I found the skip right away by just testing the regular "skip cutscene" button and getting the prompt to show up. It's a standard feature in basically any game that allows you to skip cutscenes.

[@xScruffyDaSasquatchx]

An underrated mystery game is actually Carnivores. Yes on the surface its a deer hunting game with the deers replaced by dinosaurs, but once you dig deeper into the lore of the hunting preserve actually being an alien planet, it gets quite interesting.

[@firefly5247]

Honestly? I'm just here to hear Mark say "chewnic"

[@henriquefernandes7747]

On youchewbe

[@zejugames5045]

I think he says something closer to 'tyoo-nik'! Brits tend to retain the 'y' sound in words like 'tunic' more often than Americans, who are more likely to drop the 'y' sound. So, British speakers will either say 'tyoo-nik' or combine the 'ty' sound into 'ch,' turning it into 'chew-nik'!” Brits often do the same thing with the word "Tuesday" as well, which I love to hear!

[@FeiFongWang]

He said Tunic perfectly fine in this vid

[@thespeedyyoshi]

Hehehehe It makes me so happy 😊😊

[@terdragontra8900]

@@zejugames5045 the Brit’s often turn “ty” into “chy”, you mean. I’ve never heard it as just a “ch”

[@rockinpatty346]

You don't understand how much I will be revisiting this video! Thank you Mark for this banger! Probably my favorite video so far that you've put out

[@humanbeing8676]

if you want a more obscure but really good mystery game play void stranger. It's as good or even better than outer wilds

[@PhantomThiefXI]

you sold me on it, ill do it

[@humanbeing8676]

@PhantomThiefXI it takes a while for the mysteries to really get going but once it does you'll love it trust me

[@Roboardo]

​@@humanbeing8676VOID STRANGER MENTIONED!!! 🔥🔥🔥WHAT THE HELL IS A META NARRATIVE??!!!?

[@humanbeing8676]

@@Roboardo peak gaming

[@niang46]

I confirm, if you loved Outer Wilds, the Witness or Tunic mysteries, Void Stranger is quite at the same level. And in bonus the atmosphere and music are awesome

[@Comicbroe405]

I first encountered this feeling with Elden Ring. What a game man..

[@matthewanderson7824]

LITERALLY ALL MY FAVORITE GAMES

[@GoodBloodGames]

Beautiful video, Mark.

[@ah3611]

Void Stranger! Void Stranger!! Void Stranger!!!!

[@ZeekerssRBLX]

It's really special to hide something Big, in spite of the fact that most players won't find it. Because as a player playing typical games, I've been conditioned to think that the more secret something is, the less massive or important it can be. And if I find something VERY big, I tend to think, "Oh, this isn't really a secret, then." If your game breaks that assumption, you have me hooked. I'm so used to exploring worlds that are designed to waste nothing.

[@guh69]

is him

[@GameDevYal]

One of the things I really loved with Tunic is how almost every secret is pointed out in the manual - shops you can't see thanks to the camera perspective have a doorway with two glowing red eyes indicated on the map, for instance - but usually it's so subtle that you'll completely overlook them if you weren't specifically on the lookout for something mysterious at this-and-that location to begin with. It really is "hidden in plain sight: the game", through and through, it's not just the mountain door puzzle that does it.

[@AnotherDuck]

But the mountain door puzzle is still one of the best puzzles in video game history. And yeah, I've seen several LPs where they go, "It's everywhere!"

[@blueeyedfox_]

The ad broke right when he said, "I think we need to go further than that", and I watched a whole game ad without even knowing it was an ad.

[@GameDesignverse]

2:10 Uncharted