孔明锁 (2024)

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孔明锁 is one of those tiny puzzle games that is incredibly simple to understand but surprisingly satisfying once I start messing with it. The whole game is built around recreating the traditional Kongming lock puzzle in three dimensions, with interlocking wooden pieces that have to be assembled and separated in the correct way. I liked the fact that there is no unnecessary story or complicated system getting in the way of the actual puzzle. The main challenge comes from understanding how the different pieces fit together. I have to inspect the three dimensional structure and work out which parts can move and which parts are blocking each other. I enjoyed rotating the puzzle and looking at it from different angles because a solution that seems obvious from one side can look completely different from another. The physical nature of the puzzle gives it a nice tactile feeling even though I am playing digitally. Watching the pieces slide into place is satisfying, especially when I finally understand the sequence needed to unlock the whole structure. It feels closer to solving a real wooden puzzle than playing a traditional video game, which I think is exactly what the developers were ai…

"孔明锁" ("Kongming Lock") is barely a game, it's a representation of wooden block puzzles that have interconnected pieces that you "unlock" to separate the wooden pieces. And then re-assemble. And then unassemble again. Literally minutes of fun. These puzzles were popular in the late 1970's before electronic entertainment changed the world. Now... not quite as popular. What do you do in the game? You pick from around a dozen locking puzzles then muck around with them in 3D. No real purpose or rewards or anything, it's at best a mediocre representation of some childrens toys. If the developer had made a 3D representation of an Etch-A-Sketch I wouldn't call that a game either. There's no English translation for the game, but that's okay. The language of bad games is universal. This feels more like a tech demo or a project smacked together hurriedly to try make a kind of minimum viable product just good enough to pass the developers unambitious idea and shove it into Steam Direct to see if you can actually pay $100 and publish junk through Steam Direct. Yeah, you can. Is this good for gamers? Nope. The graphics aren't great, rather low quality 3D renditions of old wooden…

我在这方面真是高手！