Completed Slender Threads.
I’m not very good in puzzle games, so the difficulty for me is alright. Most of the puzzles are just item puzzles, although there’s one mapping a sequence and another with “alien numbers”, which I bruteforced, because two numbers are obvious, and for the other two, you have just 3 options each. Also, at a couple of episodes you get your inventory taken away, and have to do with what you find.
The story is a bit meta, but not in a way I was expecting. I thought that the protagonist will be an escapee from the asylum. Then I thought it will go towards breaking the 4th wall, and the black hand being that of the player.
But turns out, all characters are marionettes (thus, threads). And the plays they are used to are kind of Twilight Zone (familiar from Alan Wake), that’s why at one point you’re told something like “you will kill us in many different ways every evening”. And the radio you hear at the beginning is the announcement of the next show.
All in all, it’s a great adventure game. Not too difficult, with a lot of smart references (the veil and the window are straigth from Cthulhu mythos) and with a distict visual style.
Games like Slender Threads also make me think why I often enjoy modern adventure games, but not those from the Golden Age. Those tried to justify full-price tag, and so made the puzzles too difficult, so the game would feel longer. While modern adventure games often cost a fraction, and I don’t mind when I finish them in a couple of evenings.
