Zarf Updates

It's unfair to describe Occlude as "Solitaire... but eeevil!" But it's also funny so I will.

No, no, let's start over. Someone has constructed a ritual which allows you to change the past. One could use it to, oh, for example, obviate the sin of murder. Is that a good idea? Will there be repercussions? Take a guess -- but don't worry, you can UNDO any wrong guesses...

Mechanically, this leads with the solitaire. It's an interesting solitaire variant: you can stack both up and down on the tableau, and build both up and down on the foundation. (No spoilers, the tutorial screen explains this stuff.) Not too difficult once you've played a couple of hands -- but! There's a secret rule. Seven secret rules, in fact: Occlude presents seven scenarios, each with its own secret. Your clues are a set of four coins which shift and flip as you play the game. To complete a scenario, you must win the card game and satisfy its secret rule.

On the narrative side, well, no spoilers, but each scenario is a different person in a different year. You will see how they fit together.

You could compare this to Inscryption: card game on the surface, surprises in the depths. Inscryption was ambitiously huge, though. (I didn't finish it!) Occlude is much smaller. It'll take you a few evenings -- or more, depending on how good you are at figuring out the rules. That's the trick, of course.

Really the better comparison is Zendo, the classic experiment-and-hypothesize challenge game[*]. You have to watch the coins, guess what their movements mean -- and then verify your guess. Much as in Zendo, success depends on having both an open mind and the fiddly persistence to test your wild guesses. And just like Zendo, if you get stuck, you're pretty much stuck. No amount of experimentation can make the right idea pop into your brain -- particularly if you've gotten focused on a blind alley.

(* A moment in memory of Kory Heath, please.)

Occlude's first scenario is straightforward but the later ones are fiendish. You will soon find yourself setting aside the solitaire goal (stacking the cards) to figure out the secret goal. You have to fling the cards around and hammer UNDO repeatedly just to see what the coins do in every possible situation.

And that gets thematic, doesn't it? Sneaky.

The interesting question is how much UNDO you get. Occlude has two difficulty levels. In "Story" mode, you have unlimited UNDO. This means that you can pretty much brute-force each scenario: just UNDO any move that doesn't lead to the secret solution. You can bang your way to the end without ever figuring out what the secret rules are.

In contrast, "Classic" mode restricts your UNDO to prevent that. You can't revert a move that violates the secret rule; you have to start from scratch. Thus, you actually have to understand the rule to complete the scenario. This is of course how the designers intend you to play.

This gives Occlude a rather unusual characteristic. You can play through all the puzzles in "Story" mode, complete the game, see the end of the narrative -- and the puzzles haven't been spoiled! You have no idea what you did.

We usually take for granted that watching someone solve a puzzle will spoil the solution for you. This makes "easy mode" a bit of a paradox. Do you write a whole second set of easier puzzles? (Authors hate doing that.) Do you put in a SKIP button? (Authors hate doing that too but at least it's easy to implement!) Can of Wormholes took the utterly elegant (but labor-intensive) tack of providing an easier puzzle as a hint -- you don't get to skip the real puzzle, but you've been walked up to the key insight.

Occlude dodges the whole question. The "Story" mode isn't an easy mode; it's exactly what it says on the tin. It lets you see the whole story. The puzzles are still there waiting -- if you want them.

But I am not sneering at "Story" mode, not at all. It has another perfectly valid use. Infinite UNDO makes experimenting with the cards much more convenient! You can still tackle the logic puzzle that the designers intended. It's not any easier to figure out. (Not an easy mode!) There's just less friction. You can set up any card arrangement you like, check the coins, UNDO, repeat.

And this is exactly what I did (in the later trickier scenarios). I started in "Story", played around with the cards and coins until I understood the secret rule -- and then didn't finish the hand. Switched back to "Classic", started a new hand, and applied my new knowledge. If I was right (and I was!) then I got full credit for solving the scenario in "Classic". It wasn't cheating at all because I really figured out the rule.

So how hard is this thing? I can only give you my own sense. The first three scenarios were easy. The fourth was straightforward once I played through a hand.

The fifth and sixth got tricky. I was stuck on the fifth scenario for an evening; I came back the next day and spotted my false assumption, and then it was tractable. The sixth went quicker.

As for the seventh scenario, I will confess that I got totally stuck and looked at a walkthrough. But the puzzle was fine! This wasn't a Blue Prince situation where I read the solution and said "Meh, I would never have gotten that, I'm glad I cheated." (Everybody hits this point in Blue Prince, although where you hit it varies wildly.)

No, I had just failed to consider all the available information. If I'd slept on it again, I'm sure I'd have cracked it the next day. So, yeah, I was annoyed at myself, but whatever. Now I'm writing this review. Mission accomplished.

Anyhow, good game. Short but tasty. I like the snippets of occult storyline. Go play it.