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ABANDONED: Chromatron
Oh yeah sometimes I play games besides Pokemon, and I'm still doing that book report thing.
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xyzzysqrl brought my attention to a very cool-looking light beam puzzle game on Steam. She then pointed out that there are other games like that if I'm curious, and oh hey Chromatron is free. (She then also added, "You can see the, uh, production value difference.")
Okay but fuck Chromatron, though.
I'm sorry. I try really hard to persevere in puzzle games. I never said that I'm the undefeated Godlike master of all things puzzle, and I break down and have to use hints just as much as the next person, but I at least like puzzles and don't like to admit when a puzzle game is just too much for me. I try not to let it come to that point. Even if it ends with a COMPLETE entry about "Okay I did beat this but in retrospect here's a whole big essay on all the parts that were bullshit," I at least try.
I've beaten every game Qrostar has ever made. I've made it through SpaceChem and TIS-100. Not this one, though. I think Chromatron may be the first puzzle game I've played since I started this whole game report project that ended prematurely in a huff of "No. Fuck this."
I mean, the tooltip/tutorial/new concept writeup for level 29 reads: "When a quantum-entangled beam goes through a splitter or another quantum tangler, the quantum wave function collapses, and the two beams are no longer entangled." This is a new mechanic the game is trying to teach you. For level 29. There are 50 puzzles in the first game, all told.
No.
No, I refuse. I did 1-30 (minus one or two that required giving up and looking up the solutions along the way) plus 34. That's enough.
Honestly, this is... not a bad game in itself. The aesthetic is pure Windows 98 Chip's Challenge but it works and looks fine. The mechanics are smart, clever, and well thought out. They're too smart, is all. I am not the right audience for this game. I was a solid D student in almost every STEM class I ever took. This game hinges puzzles on your ability to think in terms of "Oh, yes, I know exactly how white beams of light split into red/blue/green at precisely the angles I need based on what angle they hit the prism, and all I need to do is recombine two of them to light the cyan crystal and then quantum-convert the split offshoot of one of them to change its color (leaving the other as-is) to light the magenta crystal." If that sounds like your kind of game, this is a great game.
For me, though, I've reached the point where I'm comfortable leaving this to my smarter friends, the ones who actually enjoy dealing with this kind of nonsense. I'm done. I'm tapping out.
xyzzysqrl brought my attention to a very cool-looking light beam puzzle game on Steam. She then pointed out that there are other games like that if I'm curious, and oh hey Chromatron is free. (She then also added, "You can see the, uh, production value difference.")Okay but fuck Chromatron, though.
I'm sorry. I try really hard to persevere in puzzle games. I never said that I'm the undefeated Godlike master of all things puzzle, and I break down and have to use hints just as much as the next person, but I at least like puzzles and don't like to admit when a puzzle game is just too much for me. I try not to let it come to that point. Even if it ends with a COMPLETE entry about "Okay I did beat this but in retrospect here's a whole big essay on all the parts that were bullshit," I at least try.
I've beaten every game Qrostar has ever made. I've made it through SpaceChem and TIS-100. Not this one, though. I think Chromatron may be the first puzzle game I've played since I started this whole game report project that ended prematurely in a huff of "No. Fuck this."
I mean, the tooltip/tutorial/new concept writeup for level 29 reads: "When a quantum-entangled beam goes through a splitter or another quantum tangler, the quantum wave function collapses, and the two beams are no longer entangled." This is a new mechanic the game is trying to teach you. For level 29. There are 50 puzzles in the first game, all told.
No.
No, I refuse. I did 1-30 (minus one or two that required giving up and looking up the solutions along the way) plus 34. That's enough.
Honestly, this is... not a bad game in itself. The aesthetic is pure Windows 98 Chip's Challenge but it works and looks fine. The mechanics are smart, clever, and well thought out. They're too smart, is all. I am not the right audience for this game. I was a solid D student in almost every STEM class I ever took. This game hinges puzzles on your ability to think in terms of "Oh, yes, I know exactly how white beams of light split into red/blue/green at precisely the angles I need based on what angle they hit the prism, and all I need to do is recombine two of them to light the cyan crystal and then quantum-convert the split offshoot of one of them to change its color (leaving the other as-is) to light the magenta crystal." If that sounds like your kind of game, this is a great game.
For me, though, I've reached the point where I'm comfortable leaving this to my smarter friends, the ones who actually enjoy dealing with this kind of nonsense. I'm done. I'm tapping out.
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If I'd been closer to the end when I broke down, then maybe. But when I was in that much despair and still with 20 levels to go... no. There's a such thing as cutting your losses.
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I mean you could always just brute force it but who's got sixty quintillion years to wait for a photon?
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About six of us were working on them, and it was a total blast when we all got stuck on a puzzle and went hmm and uh and well, try this, and then I'VE GOT IT!
But without that, I probably wouldn't have beaten all four, either.
(If you think the quantum entangler is bad, you do NOT want to look at the new parts in 3.)
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