Filament

This is a brutally hard puzzle game, where the main mechanic involves controlling a small robot to wrap wires around pylons to open the exit. There are a dozen or so puzzle mechanics, which are each isolated to one set of puzzles, and introduced at the start of the set. Solving puzzles gives you more cards that you can plug into the computer terminals to access the missing crew members’ emails to unravel the story.

Now I won’t hide the obvious fact. This game is hard, like really hard. You’ll find difficulty spikes within puzzle sets where the first 3 or 4 are easy, and the 5th makes you just want to give up, but I promise the story is just about compelling enough to keep going. There are only a few required puzzles at the very start and end of the game, the rest are not optional per say, but you only need to complete a certain number of them, meaning you can skip some if you need to, and can come back to them later if you’d like. If the story grips you and you just wanna finish, there is no shame in using the in-game hint system, or an external guide.

The story is interesting. You’re someone who has docked aboard a Fillament Corp vessel named the Alabaster, for unknown reasons, either to search for someone, or to steal stuff, or even just to investigate what happened, the game leaves this vague. You end up meeting a voice in the sky named Juniper, who is the pilot of the vessel and is trapped in the bridge, so your implied task is to solve the puzzles to disable the anchors to open the bridge again. As you unlock anchors, not only will you get more exposition from Juniper, you’ll also get password cards, which you can enter into the terminals scattered around the ship to unlock emails between the ships 6 crew members, Canary, Juniper, Aubergine, Vermillion, Marmalade and Pistachio, which you can use to piece together the wider story of the mission.

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1137350 £14.99
Humble Bundle: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/filament £14.99
Switch: https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/Filament-1841759.html £14.99