PC, Linux
Last week I was tricked into enjoying a sliding tile puzzle, and this week I’ve been tricked into enjoying a circuit puzzle! What is happening to me?! Am I… am I old? God I’m so old. However, I do believe Linkito might have the same effect on a fair few others.
Circuit puzzles are those games made by electronics nerds, who think there’s nothing more fascinating for the human mind than wiring up a NOR gate to three AND gates, to make a little light switch on. Awful people. But Linkito fooled me with its splendid presentation, meta-narrative, and all-round professionalism. And… bah! I’m enjoying myself!
The core principles are similar. You’re given fancy versions of circuit boards, and asked to wire up the components such that–sigh–a light comes on. But also so a robot reaches a destination. Or you make a broken toaster work. It begins with very simple wiring, moves on quickly to AND, OR and NOR gates, but then rather than getting stuck there, offers puzzles about programming little robots, or just wildly brain-fuzzling cunning challenges to endlessly rearrange wiring, NOR gates and switches to keep four lights lit simultaneously from four power sources that switch which is working every second. Which is to say, yes, it’s electronics nerdery, but it’s far better combined with core puzzling brilliance than I’ve seen before.
This is then all given an extra layer of purpose with a narrative about being a lowly citizen in a dystopian future, where you’re selected by a lottery to be one of the few allowed into the remaining wealthy on Earth. Except, you must ask yourself, why are you doing all the manual labour, fixing the toasters, and so on? On top of that, there are also lots of extras, bits of storyline to discover hidden amongst the level selection rooms, as well as bonus puzzles in each area that can be discovered by opening cabinets and poking behind things. It’s decoration, certainly, but it has an enormous effect on how the game is perceived, and offers significant motivation for struggling through the tougher challenges.
It’s not exclusionary, either. Faced with level 3-5, I was daunted by a full screen of buttons, wiring points, deadly traps, and the need to rescue two robots at the same time. The first route is of course informed guessing, wiring various things up to see what happens. The second is then brute force guessing and looking at the ceiling. And then third, the second option exhausted, you can click on the “?” button, and it’ll offer you a tidy hint. Not a solution, but a suggestion that’ll point you in the right direction. In this instance, it points out that destroyed robots can be rebuilt, and hey, maybe that’s an interesting idea.
I’m nowhere near done, because this is really hard, and I’m an idiot, but it’s a tremendous amount of fun. I swear that’s because of the quality of the puzzle design, and not because I’m suddenly the world’s biggest fan of OR gates. I think a large part of it is also because the game never feels like it’s trying to nobly teach you anything, or, god forbid, be “educational”. That it’s achieving both despite this is perhaps the point.
Linkito elevates the form, with stunning art, a daft and interesting story, characters who talk to you betwixt levels, hidden extras, and a sense of fairness. It’s really rather excellent. And for this I only slightly resent it.
- Kalinarm / Playdigious Originals
- Steam
- £13/$15
- Official Discord
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