PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath
 

Hey folks. I made a game called PATHOS that came out on Steam the other day. I thought some other old fogies like me might enjoy it since it's uber-inspired by Psychopath. It might be the hardest puzzle game on Steam but hopefully it's just as fun.

Tim Halbert, who did the original music for Psychopath, did our soundtrack and local legend DarkManticoreX2 helped test/destroy 75%of my original solutions.

It's $6.29 for another 5ish days. It'll drop to $4.89 whenever the next Steam sale pops up (not Christmas, we don't qualify since we're new).

http://store.steampowered.com/app/679300/PATHOS/

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath
 

Ooh, hype. I might pick it up when it goes on sale - I loved the original pp & pp2 and am kind of sad the whole thing has just died.

Out of curiosity, who wrote the hardest puzzles?

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath
 

This actually looks pretty fun.

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath
 

Would buy if had money

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath
 

All the puzzles were designed by me -- you miiiiight remember my name KingOreO from pp1 and a little pp2. There's about 170 total, though a handful are 'cinematic' and whatnot. You can disable story elements if that ain't your thing.

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath
 

Is PATHOS more or less difficult than Psychopath ?

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath
 

The first half of the game is easier on the whole I'd say, mainly because we're introducing new mechanics -- giant blocks, ice blocks, rotten, etc. and we wanted the solutions to be more fun than punishing. We took the difficulty curve seriously, as you don't need to complete every level to continue on.

The second half has some nice hard levels, classic pp1 and pp2 stuff, as well as some real devious solutions using a bunch of the new mechanics all at once.

There's also 24 lateral thinking 'puzzle' achievements, 2 in each world. There's a hidden world, secrets sprinkled across the game and even some stuff that breaks the 4th wall. /end salesman

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath
 

i think i'll actually check this out because psychopath was great fun

played for 45 mins so far
level select is a bit too segregated, i liked being able to see every single level at once to see the progression - having to scroll through all the different level sets feels wonky

imo the level start screen, where you have to hit start to play the level is a bit unnecessary as well, as all that information can be contained in the actual level screen (difficulty, and level name) without needing the extra 7 seconds of downtime. since there's nothing stopping the user from quitting out safely from wherever they want to stop, it feels like that screen can be taken out.

there was a weird progression issue in terms of level difficulty curve where a bunch of the early levels use the 3 block "lock" that really isn't a lock, and can just be maneuvered around otherwise, then all of a sudden, an actual 3 block lock pops up, with backtracking needed and it felt weird not introducing the simple concept in its entirety before jumping into the good psychopath stuff

i digress, i'm on honeycomb atm and i'm having fun reliving the psychopath days

oh also the lateral thinking puzzle achievements is very convoluted, and the way they're named "Breakthrough" made it seem almost like i would be "skipping" a level if i pressed 'B' which i didn't want to do. That screen itself is kinda confusing as well, given that i've gotten like 1 of them, and after visiting the screen, can't really distinguish the one that I got from the rest of them

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath
 

ey YoshL, I knew pp vets would give me the best criticism.

A couple of the menu things were consequence of a couple different overhauls. We initially had all the level info on the 'world select' screen but it looked insanely busy. There was probably a way to work it out but we just couldn't find one.

I know what you're talking about with the 3 block locks, and all I have to blame is Manti for at least one of those where I intended something else.

The breakthroughs may get a name change, never thought about skipping. There's a bug where achievements aren't making a ding noise and the pictures aren't turning to color once solved. Should be fixed tonight or tomorrow afternoon.

Glad you're having fun with some of it though!

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath
 

yeah once you figure out that you can just back into the menu and pick anything, it becomes clear that breakthroughs aren't actually level skips or anything lol

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath
 

:twisted::twisted::twisted::twisted:

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath
 

tb to pp1 27 and then LiNk To ThE PaSt

i definitely do remember you (kingoreo) actually - think you made some really hard pp2 levels i could never do lol

as an estimate - how hard would the hardest levels be? like pp1 late 60s, or maybe even comparable to forgive me/pp2 masters?

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath
 

I'd say not quite as hard as pp2 master except for maybe 4-5 levels. Also, I don't have a clue how to embed images on this thing.

But here's a level from each of the last 4 worlds not including super final world and the hidden one: http://www.kingoreo.com/randomscreens.jpg

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath
 

The warp level is evil

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath
 

Looking forward to playing it :D

Edit: Honeycomb was solid :)

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath
 

Haven't really played Psychopath but this a cool game, done all puzzles up to Respite V for now. Looking forward to the harder ones!

I agree that the breakthrough wording is pretty poor and took me a while to actually check it out because I thought it was some form o hints system.

Not having a "step back" button and having to restart the entire level each time I misclick or try to sketch out a solution is pretty annoying, especially when most levels are laid out as a sequence of independent sub-problems. I'm guessing it's to give less incentive to brute-force but I don't feel it's worth the annoyance.

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath
 

Whoa, KingOreO, long time no see.

Wish I had known about the development of this game!
I'll definitely give it a look once exams are done!

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath
 

@Reach glad to see you playing! Surprised at all the Honeycomb comments so far -- some thought it was too much of a jump in difficulty.

@AutotelicBrown awesome you like it, not having played pp and all! -- and that's precisely the conflict we had when thinking of putting in a 'rewind' function, but we just decided it would undermine some of the decision making.

@hi19hi19 hey man I'm pretty sure I played all your custom pp1 levels. I dunno why we kept dev under wraps, wasn't really the greatest marketing idea ._.

So the current road map is to introduce the level editor and Steam workshop support sometime in February as a free update. Was thinking of gathering the best user-made levels and adding another world or two to the main game in the future as well.

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath
 

Yeah, wish I had known of the game earlier.

Loving the game so far. Very hard as of world 6. Some of the new mechanics are brutal.

Honeycomb is quite hard for world 3, but fun. Personally the most brutal difficulty spike so far was Bad Directions in w5. Holy crap that level man.

Achievement question: The clear all levels in a particular world achievements don't work.

Edit: And I spoke too soon. World 7 was brutal. Soundtrack is fantastic and makes the struggle so much better though :) KEEP the definite highlight of W7, favorite level so far.

Edit 2: W7 Short Circuit - Without spoiling the solution, isn't the solution to that level inconsistent with the logic? Probably the first solution I don't personally like.

Edit 3: Officially 2 off on 9 stages. Fuck. me.

Re: PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath
 

Oh hell, didn't see the edits.

Makes me so happy, Keep was probably my favorite. Everybody hated Short Circuit -- thought I'd try a "one off" level like One Plus One but alas