398 - Puzznic

Puznik, be prepared for many long nights of frustration and excitement. Can't wait. Bye. And welcome to Nostalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. And I'm Joe. And that almost has to be like a poor translation or something, right? There's just no way you want to describe your game as frustrating ever, right? Well, I just like, you know, just the fact that it's also like a night of frustration. Yeah.

Just a little sexual is all. Many long nights. Yeah. Oh, wow. It's been a while. Yeah. And I guess like the frustration is that you can't solve the puzzle correctly, but like it could also just be described as like, I'm so frustrated in my purchase, right? Yeah. There's no, it's open for interpretation.

I mean, also just, you know, taking all the any sexual undertones out of it. It's video games are often very frustrating and it's never like, oh, yes, I can't wait for another frustrating game. Look, I feel I get it. It's a puzzle. You're going to be like, oh, I want to figure it out. But you don't want to associate it with a negative. You just want to say challenging. You just want to say challenging and then you're done with it. Right.

Joe, you actually can't take out any of the sexual subtext, though, when talking about Puznik, because the original arcade version of this game, which came out just a year prior. Did have a sexual component to it, where as you solve puzzles in the arcade cabinet, it would slowly reveal naked women on your screen. I have seen screenshots of this now that you mentioned it. I actually wasn't sure.

Now that you mention it. Now that you mention it, I'm not always looking at these screenshots just every day. But I wasn't sure when I saw it if it, like, is this an official thing or is this like a bootleg or, you know, so this was... this was now that's the og that's before this one the this version of it yeah yeah that is the og like sean said and then this is like the get your act together we're about to be on a family console uh can we can we clean this up a little bit

And their option was like, well, what if we just don't show them anything at all anymore? And that's weird, right? Like, what do you mean? You're going to show us any kind of reveal puzzle? Well, that's why you're so frustrated. It is weird. I guess it's, I mean, you have to be kind of confident to make that kind of decision and just like, oh, I guess the puzzle kind of stands on its own, right?

Right, right, right. Where you already designed the game to be like, well, the puzzle doesn't stand alone, so we might as well show some naked women.

And you see, you won't see these naked women in the NES game. You will in the arcade. But the way to see them or move on to the next stage is you basically just slide pieces so that, pieces, squares. of different shapes so that all identical shapes touch and disappear together when you have two or more and you want to clear off every symbol on the screen so that there are no squares left

And that's how you move on to the next stage. So it is very much one of those match games with the puzzle component. But we really are in full puzzle swing here, right? We keep running into puzzle games. And I think it's interesting that we call these puzzle games and not some more like a lot of adventure games are technically like puzzle games. If you think about it, they have real puzzles. This is just one big puzzle.

But this isn't, like, the same board as, like, Tetris or even Palamedes or Dr. Mario. It's a different kind of puzzle game. Yeah. I mean, it does, again, I don't remember what we said this for last time, the dice game. um palamides but like it does again give me right away like reminds me of tetris but this is even more different than tetris once you play it it almost i've never played this but i i'm assuming this is a lot closer to something like candy crush no

Oh, that's interesting. I don't think I only know enough about Candy Crush from just seeing my mom play up to like level 100. Level 694. Yeah, I was going to say level 100,000 probably. Yeah, or something along those lines. I feel like this has a bit more going on. Yeah, Candy Crush is more like Bejeweled.

you know where like the screen the screen's always kind of filled and you have to match three by like sliding two pieces you know like you choose one piece and say i'm gonna put it where this piece is instead whereas this is like a very empty or narrow passageway that you have to move specific blocks through the force of gravity to fall into the place.

specifically the way the puzzle was designed. Not every puzzle has just one solution, but there are certainly some that require you to move the blocks a certain way in order to successfully pass them. Before we get into the puzzle mechanics, though, or the gameplay, there is some light story.

some lore behind why you're playing Puznik. Did you guys read the manual at all? Yeah, I did. I don't remember what the hell they said about it, so please enlighten us. Yeah, so there's a... The first page after the table of contents is the story. So we have to take them at their word here and believe that this is part of the intended lore, even though it's more or less flavor copy and doesn't, you know.

It doesn't really say that this is the mechanics behind the game, but the story that they give you is, you've shot your last terrorist. What? You have beaten the bad guys. You've rescued the kingdom from the evil wizard and restored peace to the galaxy. What's an arcade warrior supposed to do now? This isn't the lore. This is...

This is not lore, Mike. No, but they're saying this is the story. Like the reason that you, the player, or the person you're controlling making the moves inside the game is playing this game at all is because you have beaten every other video. game you own so all right that your first sentence you've shot your last terrorist was very shocking to me but now i actually i i kind of like though i like that direction of like

Yeah, yeah, we know you like to run around and jump and shoot the guns and save the princess and all that, but, like, try this out now. Yeah, and we all know you like exciting stuff. Yeah, yeah. Like, why don't you try something else, okay? I don't know. You've shot your last terrorist sounds like a threat from Al Qaeda. You know, you just get like something in the mail. You've shot your last terrorist, buddy. We will be taking you down now. You get that in the mail?

Well, yeah, it would be strange if you get any mail from it. But I guess it happened at some point, right? Before email? Before they could spam you? Was Al-Qaeda doing that? Yeah, they were sending handwritten letters. Dude, you never got one? That's so weird. Lucky. All right, so let's talk about...

Puznik, because there is a whole other game in here too, which is weird. But let's just talk about Puznik for a second. There are 16 stages. 10 puzzles in each of these stages. So it's kind of like a 1-1, 1-2 kind of deal. So clearing one particular puzzle doesn't make you a genius. You have to clear all 10 to kind of successfully clear the stage. Makes 160 stages in total.

So there's certainly a lot of game here. You clear every piece by matching like symbols and two or more combos. But you have to do it before the timer hits zero. And the timer is pretty aggressive in this game in the sense of like... when more things happen on the screen. I do agree that they ease you into it because you get, what is it, usually 90 seconds? No, it depends on the size of the level, right? Yeah, I've seen 70, I've seen 60.

Okay, so then, but it's still mostly forgiving early on. But later on, when you have to actually think about what you're going to do, that clock is probably the most intimidating part of the game. It's not just like, sure, given an infinite timescale.

You could move these pieces around and figure out how to clear them so that you clear all of them. Because again, that's the hook, right? It's not just about... matching symbols together all the time you have to make sure that you clear everything you can't leave a piece behind so if there are strategically three symbols of the same block

You can't clear two of them because now you'll be stuck with one. And, you know, that's a fail state. So you'll have to start over. The matching, though, in general, the real the real thing behind it, right, is that there are. there's placement of the remainder of the screen so that certain blocks can't be moved or there are elevators that kind of move up and down the screen to transport blocks. There are blocks that have to fall into other blocks.

It's the design of the specific level that makes it maybe a little bit hard to talk about this game as a dialogue discourse. But ultimately, that's the interesting hook of the game is the setup. and then you having to solve it from that, right? They're always giving you, they're kind of leading you with the way that it's set up. Yeah, it's very much like an order of operations sort of puzzle. I guess a lot of...

Most puzzles can be boiled down to that, but it's very important here because you can very easily softlock a puzzle within the first move. And then you have to use a retry and that's not any fun. Uh, but yeah, it's a little, but then there's also like some Twitch reflex going on here too. because of that like movement and the fact that it's gravity based and sometimes you need to like move things while gravity is acting upon something else it's it's not as intense as that might sound but it

It can get a little tricky. I'm curious what you guys think about my take on this, but I think that this doesn't need the timer. I get that it's for that excitement or whatever. I think that this is... These are fine puzzles without the timer. You're just going to keep retrying anyways when the time runs out. So I don't know really what the timer adds personally. I just want to look at the puzzle until I solve it.

with a game like this i know that that might not be the uh i agree like the intent of the of the developer but like to me whenever there's a game like this and there's a timer and it feels unnecessary i just

i don't know they had something here where it was like oh this is different enough from tetris because it's not about like oh my god what's gonna happen what where can i put this you're not panicking it's more like let's sit and think about this puzzle and then they added the timer to kind of add that back in anyways

Yeah, I agree because like, again, you can fail without running out of time. I guess isn't something that you get like, oh, it's all about like just experimenting and. And like, no, if you do something wrong, you're screwed. So I think you're right. Yeah, I would agree too. The only thing I can think of in their defense is that the, you know, 160 total puzzles.

The timer is designed to make these kind of quick bursts, but that doesn't really matter if you wind up failing them anyway. Like it's just going to take longer. The game is incredibly forgiving, though, when it comes to retrying and starting over, because the only thing that happens is your score resets when you run out of retries. You don't start back at...

at the beginning of the stage you're on. You just start right where you are and move forward. I guess that sort of balances it out because maybe the only reason you would care about the score is if you're trying to do it... fast like you know right and the amount of time you have left is what you know boost your score the most so it's kind of like all twitch reflex stuff

Right. Because I've never solved a Rubik's Cube in my life, but the people that do do that tend to have some pride with how fast they do it. So, yeah. That's what I'm going to go with. Now, this game doesn't have exactly that... bejeweled candy crush thing that we were talking about where, you know, there's like a cascade where you switch two blocks and they clear, but then more blocks fall down. So.

They clear things that you didn't know, you know, like and all of a sudden it's like, wow, that caused a chain reaction of match threes and then a match four. And then, you know, now there's these new symbols popping up. It's not really this game, but you can design this game where like you match certain things to.

to create other matches as well. What's your play style here? Are you, before you're even like, before you're making moves, are you kind of counting the pairs and thinking about like, where's the best piece to start? Or are you just more of a... like feel feel the movement like you know uh solve the first the first pair in front of you and then deal with the next one and so on and so forth just vibe it out yeah exactly uh when i started

it was more so just vibe it out just move stuff around it'll all start to click then once i started to get those like straggler blocks i was like okay i gotta actually like try something here so i did start counting like oh do any of these have odd numbers like or are they sort of grouped in a way that like you're going to have to do like a a couple three uh three and ones and uh

Yeah, over time, once you start to learn the ways that the game is going to try and trick you, you become a bit more cognizant of it. Yeah, I like to usually try to just... you know go with my gut uh on a first on a first attempt and then on a second attempt if i if i failed i look at how i failed and i also like really will pull back now and like look at

Okay, if I put this here, where is everything going to line up? Where am I going to accidentally put two things against each other that I don't want to disappear just yet? And I really start thinking a few steps ahead. But I do usually, because there's no real punishment...

for getting it wrong i do usually try to go intuitively at first um which surprisingly works more often than you think because i do feel like the game definitely gets more and more difficult but i don't feel like it's a perfectly linear difficulty i feel like sometimes like okay now we're getting difficult

And then I get like a real like lob ball in there. Like just that's super easy. And then another hard one. And then like one that's a little easier. So sometimes I can just kind of solve it intuitively. And then when I fail those ones, that's when I'm like, all right, really sit back and like think. out my moves before I actually make them.

But like when you do fail, like, do you have that moment of like, God damn it, Joe, you're so stupid. Like, how would you think that, Joe? And then you just beat yourself up for an hour or so. I'm normally like thinking that way about myself at all times. Oh, okay. Just making sure. Just kidding, everybody. No need to call any support lines. Can we get a check on Joe?

And then I think, Sean, I think you were alluding to this earlier, but something I'm calling temporary pairs where and this feels like the only part of the game that I think like at a sooner than later, it is necessary. but I feel like it's also wrong. There's this ability to create a pair.

And then just drop the third one into place to cash all three at once, even though they didn't all like match at the same time. Like you're given like a few frames. Yeah. Kind of like get that third piece in there. And that just. doesn't feel right like i'm happy i solved the puzzle but it doesn't feel like i correctly solved now wait a minute though well that's only this designed and and i i think unless you're telling me otherwise that it's only

Like, yeah, the pieces didn't fall into place, but they were still as a result of your same last move. It's not like you can make a move and then quickly make another move before something falls into place, right? You kind of do have to do that. Like, in some of these levels... You have to use an elevator to move one piece into place that would then make contact with the second piece. But in order to get the third piece in there...

You then have to move that as well while the other one is on the elevator. And so, like, there's some twitch reflex stuff going on. And it's not entirely great with the way that the controls work because your cursor is super sticky. And it's like, I don't know. It's odd. I know the type of situation you're talking about, but I didn't take that as like...

Well, I kind of just cheesed the game because I snuck something in there before. Oh, yeah. That is the intent. That's the design possible. Yes, but I guess I was saying it doesn't feel like it because it's this weird thing where like... if you did you know like you only made a pair and then the third one just kind of you know to the point of the elevator like just popped into place not even at the same time like you don't have to necessarily

wait till the third ones are exactly lined up as long as it's clearing the other two still if the third one ever touches it adds it as part of the match But isn't that so fast that that's still sort of hard to do? I think that that's what like what I'm saying is that even though it's like, yeah, I put it there and now I'm seeing the other one come down and touch it. It's like.

yeah that's all part of the same move like yeah i guess it is weird because like it's like yeah i already had the thing on the elevator so it's not like ah like i lucked out it's like no i put that there because that's where it's supposed to go Yeah. I feel like it's the game being forgiving. You're not going to know the exact timing of the cycles. So it's like if you figured out the puzzle and you put it there, we'll let the cycle complete and see if you got it before we...

Before your stuff vanishes. If anything, honestly, it's kind of impressive that they were able to program it that way to, like, know that, like, yeah, you got it right, it just hasn't fallen into place yet. Right, right. I mean, most of this game is...

you know, more so than you making the groupings or, you know, strategically placing the blocks is also avoiding the traps that they're setting up because while those... elevators and such might be useful they're also uh very easy to create uh you know like a permanent lock where you'll have to retry because you now you know you fell

below the elevator or you locked a piece into one of those like one tile shafts that now it can't come out of it because you know gravity is always forcing itself downwards in this game so you can't lift that piece out you have to now retry the stage that's like that's the tough part of the game is avoiding all the traps that they've laid out especially in the later levels yeah and that's why I was describing it as like

It's mostly order of operations and only sometimes does like precise timing matter. Uh, because if you get the order of operations wrong, you have now failed the level. So how hard does it get? I mean, it gets to a point where I've definitely had some times where I'm like, oh man, this is like a bit of a stumper. And then it's always, at least as far as I've gotten, which is only like, I don't know if you call them worlds and levels, but like the third.

world i'm gonna like to maybe like three two or something like that um it's always once i solve it i'm like oh yeah yeah it was right there the whole time you know so i think like i don't know if i've ever spent more than like a few minutes on a puzzle but like

those minutes it shouldn't take minutes when you know the answer so like yeah there's there are some that give me uh you know that give me some thinking to do but then they always feel attainable in the end yeah i would agree that's sort of my experience

Yeah, I think what the game winds up doing is, especially in like the late stages, is just saying, well, the only way to make this harder is just to keep throwing in more and more blocks, you know? So it just becomes a game of... matching a lot of things inside a stage within a set amount of time and not necessarily like, oh, and we've got this new idea for the elevators on how to move the blocks or making these very narrow passages like that idea kind of.

remains the same and instead it's more just like can you match all of these different uh uh shapes which again that explains why they have to have the timer because otherwise

It's just going to be like a more tedious puzzle instead of a more difficult puzzle. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I think I'm also just I like this kind of puzzle. I find it. I find them kind of fun, but I. what i like about it is is the satisfaction of like sitting there and like figuring it out before i do it and being like okay wait if i do this like i gotta like the the difficulty to me lies in thinking enough steps ahead and keeping it all straight in your head

and then being right about that when you actually execute it. The game kind of encourages you to not do that and to just kind of go with trial and error almost because it's like, well time's ticking so you don't have time to just like do it twice. You don't have time to go over it in your head and then...

do it on the thing so that's just like the one the one thing that kind of keeps i guess maybe they they warn me about it about it being frustrating but that frustrates me and then there's a completely

other mode of this game which is not different enough to be like packaged as a as a sequel but it is very kind of them to include it in this game i feel like because it is It is different enough and branded different enough, right? The first mode is called Puznik, and the name of the game is Puznik. The second mode, Gravnik, is Puznik, but instead of...

directly controlling the blocks to slide them along and match them. You use, get a little of this, gravity for grab Nick to move all of the pieces at once. So you have this giant... uh directional pad on the screen that you can see and it shows you which way you're pushing your directional pad and that moves every piece in that upwards left right or downwards um direction

Now, of course, that has a lot more implications than the first game, namely that there are some directions that are just going to cause an immediate fail state. depending on the way that the levels were designed. So even though it's the same match rules, touching identicals, vanishes the pieces, I feel like some layouts just have like...

One bad shift can strand an entire potential match forever and create an unwinnable stage that you have to reset. So this one's even like... a little more limiting in like what's possible for your brain versus what's the correct solution i think this this one reminded me a lot of like was it like 2048 or Yeah, that was... I forget what the original... I think the original one was called Threes, but yes, 2048 is what I love. Yeah, whichever one.

Because it has that like, oh, you got to make sure that you're not blocking yourself because you're moving everything at the same time. I actually think that with what Joe is describing of just sort of. visualizing before acting like this actually lends itself to that even more um

Maybe that's just me. No, I completely agree. I played this one much longer than the other one because I was really enjoying that. I think this is an actually more interesting concept. Maybe it doesn't have the same kind of... Not ability, but the same potential for super complex gameplay. But I think it's a cooler puzzle design. And you'll notice that it's also Joe's favorite because there is no timer anymore. I was just going to bring that up. And I do think that giving you a move limit.

makes a lot more sense than a timer and granted the move limit i do think um lends itself to this style puzzle more than the other style but like yeah some of these some of these that are stumpers that take me a while i'm shocked at it it only takes like two moves to actually complete. You know, like that, that's really cool to me because I don't, I have a hard time wrapping around my head, wrapping my head around how this can be so difficult.

You know what I mean? I'm just like, yeah, I should just be able to look at this and figure it out. But that's the beauty of the puzzle mechanic. So which mode clicks faster for a new player? Does Gravnik feel clever or chaotic on first play compared to Puznik? I think it's more... I think they both have click. Yeah, I mean, I don't think either of them are super high concept. I think that...

Graphnic is more intuitive because you're seeing your input affect everything in such a predictable way. Whereas with... like you're using a cursor and uh like the fact that gravity works and like there's twos and threes like there's a lot of like wrenches that get thrown in whereas i think that uh Gravnik is a lot more elegant, but I don't know. Are there any mental tricks or reading ahead strategies for figuring out not just where everything's going to move on first input?

But like after two shifts, is there a way to visualize that? I don't have that capability. Yeah. I can't think two steps ahead of that. No, I, you know, and that's like what I was thinking too is like, I, I cannot picture that like no matter what I was doing, but. In the earlier levels, it was a little easier to view like, okay, if I move everything to the left, then there are certain pieces on this board.

that just act as blockers. They don't have to be matched. They're these gray tiles, and they move with everything else as well. But they just kind of block where things are going to be placed. And so as they're moving along, it's like, okay, I can kind of see that that's shifting everything to the left. So now my...

Let's say I need to match two red pieces and two green pieces. It's like, OK, so now they're all like next to each other. And so then when I move down, they'll all touch like that felt easier in the beginning. Whereas in the later stages where there's. a lot of easy ways to lock yourself out if you just go in the wrong direction. I wasn't sure how to like, get to that point. And so even though again, very friendly system of retries and unlimited continues, but

I didn't feel maybe as a master planner here as I was able to when I was looking at the whole board in Puznick. I wonder what that says about your brain. I know, right? I can't think ahead. Don't hire me. You know, what's funny is that there is like something about, though, those blockers and just the designs, the puzzles about. edge play in this game using those ledges or edge play? You're going to be frustrated. Yeah, I did say that.

The box told this, too, so we should be worried about that. But, you know, just like riding the corners and stuff like that so that you hit everything. Like, that's really the game. And then the matching part can just kind of be like coincidental at times. Like I was shifting these pieces around just to try to get them closer to each other, but then it just wound up matching. I can see that now that I think I understand what you meant by that.

Other than that, though, there's not much that separates Puznik and Gravnik because it isn't like there was never a, oh, if you match these two symbols. They act as bombs that blow up surrounding symbols too. Or if you match these symbols, they give you an additional move, you know, from your max limit. That neither game kind of makes anything special of the symbols. They just make it so that you have to match like symbols. What's like an example of a puzzle game that does do that?

Don't know on the spot, but I feel like surely that's not an uncommon thing, right? To have, well, for instance, you know, if we're going to say bejeweled, right? If you match four in a row of something. then it doesn't become just a, it doesn't go away. It kind of creates this crystal, the diamond, you know, and now it's like, oh, well, if you get the diamond.

to match with anything, then it creates a larger cascade. It doesn't just match the three in a row, it matches like a box in a row or whatever. And if you match five in a row, sometimes it creates like a... That's the one that creates the diamond, not the crystal. So on and so forth. And then it's like...

You know, it basically creates these additional power-ups, if you will. I'm not asking for power-ups in this game, but I think it would have been interesting to explore that, you know, there are bomb symbols and there are... uh extra retry symbols right where like it's your incentivized to clear those in order to help you like maintain your score or um Or just, you know, blow up pieces that you couldn't figure out another way to solve. I like...

I like the idea of those things, and I wouldn't be opposed to having them. If someone were like, I'm going to add that to this game, I'd be like, that sounds great, but I don't think it needs it. I do think it needs the simplicity, at least Gravnik. the simplicity of it like I do think I'm just surprised at like how many levels I can be playing and how different each of them feel um

But yeah, I mean, I would never turn away having new little features or new ways that it works. But yeah, I think it's like... And maybe, you know... Maybe it's like a... That's why they packaged two together, because maybe it's a tough sell because it's so simple. But I think that maybe there was a... If this were a mobile game I just downloaded, I'm very satisfied with it. And I don't think Gravnik had the elevators. It did not.

So would that have been an interesting thing to include? No, I think that would mess with it too much. You got like a turn. You got like a certain amount of turns, and it's like this.

sort of turn-based thing, and then you've got some kind of real-time element to it, I think that's a little... Unless they redesigned the elevator so that... it doesn't go up in real time it moves one tile every time you make a move that's true or something like that i could see it working almost every version of puznik uh that was released and it goes on for a while puznik was released all the way up to the playstation

So starting with the arcade in 89, NES in 90, there was a Puznik pretty much almost exactly. There weren't like new features or anything, but I guess there was. like a story mode, maybe where you finally took down your last terrorist. Was it always for perverts? In the PlayStation? You know, that's interesting. I'm glad you brought that up, Sean. No, it wasn't always for perverts. They pretty much got rid of that part of the game.

Until the... Remember that weird console that we talked about one other time? FM Towns? That version did keep the adult stuff because I guess they figured... If you can afford $800 or whatever it was for an FM Towns back then, you probably were an adult. Okay.

But it's weird that like the PlayStation version didn't get like a, I don't know, I'm not asking for 3D, but like just not even much change from the NES version of Puznick. It's kind of funny to think that you would pay for that. But almost every version includes this box art.

That is kind of like what Palamedes was for the dice, but it's for the blocks where it makes them characters. Oh, yeah. They don't have really creepy human legs, though. Yeah, yeah, exactly. No, they do.

They're cartoon legs. Cartoon legs. Not anatomically correct human legs. And I don't want to critique the box art too much because I'm not sure how many people look at the... the chapter art or whatever for our episodes but like if you're looking at it with us it's weird that some of the blocks have faces and then there are also blocks on the screen that don't have faces and are just those same blocks you know it's like what

what's going on there? Why did they not become real people yet? That's what I was going to say. Like, you know how there are some people that, you know, have like cogent thought within their, their brain, but then there's also those people. that don't actually exist. Yeah. Yeah. And then if you look at the NES box art, by comparison, it's like... It's like some 1960s jazz album cover. It's very postmodern minimalism. Geometric shapes. Puznick.

needs to be like they're they're really tooting their own horn here like this is like is if it was something so ubiquitous as a tetris you can get away with this but And maybe I'm underselling or I just don't really know how big Puznik was back in the day. But I think it's kind of tooting its own horn here a bit.

And then forgive me for this, but I have to ask it. I genuinely do not know the answer, so have fun with me here. Is Puznik supposed to be like a picnic for your brain? Like, is that what Puznik... What's the Nick part? Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I don't think it's, sorry, picnic for your brain. Well, I added that flavor because it's, you know.

No, I understand that. I'm adding the tagline. Their tagline is, this will frustrate you to no relief. Like at a picnic. I'd say he's like a beatnik, but... Oh, I like that. I like that could be what the Nick is for. And then for Grav Nick. It's like a beat Nick, but for gravity. I should have known. It's gravity for your brain. And nostalgia is nostalgia for your brain. And somehow that's going to tie into the essential games list.

I had a pretty good time with Puzznik. I'm not ashamed by that. It's pretty straightforward, but it also can get very complex. And I enjoyed like, I wouldn't say like I was stumped on a puzzle necessarily. I just kind of like ran out of time. I wasn't like, oh, I'll never beat 7-3 like they got me. But at the same time, I probably stopped.

because of the like just the time limit that i have in life uh and not necessarily because i stopped enjoying the game i think it's a pretty good game i don't think it's like enough of a game to and especially because it's put it on so many things to be like Oh yeah, this is like an essential NES game. When I think of the library of the NES, this is right up there with the greats. I don't think it's that, but I think it's a pretty solid puzzle game by all means.

Probably holds up in the realm of puzzle games better than, shoot me for saying this, Dr. Mario. Like, I don't know. I don't really like that game, but Puzznik, I'm enjoying it. Joe. This game has unlocked... memories of types of games that I liked when I was a kid. There's two in particular that this is kind of reminding me of. One is a Game Boy game called Boxel.

where you're playing this you're pushing boxes you can only push them forward you can't pull them back so you're like you can get stuck in a lot of ways and it's a it's a puzzle game kind of similar to this um A little aside, I have a crazy Mandela effect. I swear the game was called Box It, but there's no record of that online. It's always been Boxel. Second, it reminds me of the Ice Path.

puzzles in Pokemon Gold, Silver, and Crystal where you... Gravnik reminds me of that where you move in one direction and you slide all the way across in that direction until you hit a barrier. So you have to kind of use the barriers to decide like...

how to get yourself into the direction you want to go, which is kind of what Gravnik is doing. And I love both of those things, and I've really enjoyed those. I remember, like, long car rides playing Boxhole Forever and everything. I just don't know if, uh... I think that like now as an adult, this is just, I don't know, just to me as I've grown up, like I don't want to sit down and just play this all the time anymore. You know, I think it needs.

For me, personally, I need a little more stimulation because I'm just overstimulated at all times, and this game is too frustrating with the edge play and everything. Sorry, I just didn't know where I was going with that, so I'll just go on to the edge play. But yeah, I think that I really like this game. I recommend it if you like puzzle games. But I mean, you know, it's not it's not anything to write home about is what I'm trying to say. So I don't think I would call it essential. Sean.

Yeah, I'll echo that. Neither of these games have enough to it to really, at least in my opinion, be a... Full, like, release of something. I'm glad that they added Gravnik. I think I prefer Gravnik. And if it was just Puznik, it would be even more of like a, what do you take me for? I wonder how much this game MSRP'd for, I guess. But we've said that about a lot of these puzzle games or just a lot of these simpler...

So that's not anything new. I did like them as they stood. There just really isn't that much going on here in terms of content. So not essential. One last thing about the arcade version of the game. Keep going. Yeah. I don't know how to say this, but it gives you the name of the person that's going to be revealed first.

And you clear that part of the stage and then you see just the face and then you see the private areas. And then you see the full picture. It's a little strange, right? The order there. Oh, wow. You would think that you would be teased with everything and then get the delicate area. It's like anti-cancorship. I thought you were saying we should go name last. Yeah, well, I mean, you know.

we should at least get the name again it's kind of weird that the name comes off right like the name is revealed then it's not revealed any longer and then it's like okay now just here's a naked person it's like well i'd like to know that's it So really, we should have talked about this during the Bubble Bath Babes episode on the Nostalgia Bites. Why would we talk about that? Oh, yeah. Outro Music Outro Music