PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath

[Brett]

Just pushed an update to Steam with the new step counts.

I think we're going to add a ticker for Breakthroughs for each world. Until then, there's two in each world (not including Respites, cinematics or not-full worlds (does include Pathos world)).

[smartdude1212]

Bought this game thanks to this thread and my extreme interest in puzzle games like this. I've been playing it off and on for the last few days, and before tonight I'd reached the end of VIII save for Stasis, Feng Shui, Turbine, and Prison Break (VII harder than VIII for sure).

Finally went back and made it through the rest, managing to pull off a 98/100 on Prison Break yiss. Spoilers obviously, there's a lot of retreading in this one.

Time to start IX but I'm terrified about what's to come.

[Reach]

Wow, nice find. I definitely didn't think there were two more moves to squeeze out of that one. That's going to make it a real annoyance to beat now that's for sure.

And it definitely doesn't get better. I'm completely done with world 13 now but I still need to finish two more levels in world 10/12 to unlock world 14 and man I've hit such a wall on some of these levels.

All the levels I have left are 'orange block' or 'red circle' levels (save lockmess), which ostensibly I'm terrible at (Or they're underrated in difficulty). I'm 2-4 off on every level I have left other than maelstrom and bunker and neither of these levels make any sense to me (Obvious goal, opaque pathing). I'd rate them as far harder than anything in world 13 so what do other people think of these levels?

I completed Wiggle room the other day after being 2 off for awhile, and honestly I don't even understand how I beat it. I was confused when it happened because the solution appeared identical to failed solutions, and when I tried to replicate the solution I wasn't able to do it. Optimizing these levels isn't clicking with me and it's making some of them a real shit show to find the remaining moves in D: That and sadly whoever tested these levels optimized them vs many of the ice block levels which were completely unoptimized so no leeway lol (seriously where are the last four moves on bonefish, fuck this level dry).

[DarkManticoreX2]

I didn’t really have much difficulty with the circle levels. Thought those were kinda easy when testing tbh.

The orange block and ice levels were not my forte, which is why you’re finding so many breaks on them I guess.

There’s a couple of end game levels I didn’t fully optimize, I’m trying to get there and optimize them before you guys get to world 14 lmao.

[Reach]

Probably just a blindspot of mine then.

If the world 14+ puzzles don't involve red circles or orange blocks I really really want to try them.

Should probably just lock myself away on the weekend until I figure out these damn circles.

Excited to try out a level editor for this game though, I can only imagine the kinds of nightmares its possible to build.

[DarkManticoreX2]

Originally Posted by Reach

Probably just a blindspot of mine then.

If the world 14+ puzzles don't involve red circles or orange blocks I really really want to try them.

Should probably just lock myself away on the weekend until I figure out these damn circles.

Excited to try out a level editor for this game though, I can only imagine the kinds of nightmares its possible to build.

The main level I didn’t optimize you start inside an orange block and cannot leave it

[Frevett]

I thought world 13 was easier overall than some of the preceding ones but wasn't sure if that was because I'd played so much Psychopath in the past. I found orange block levels overall the toughest, and it'd probably take me a while to find the solutions to a lot of them again. Bonefish is still the hardest though imo - but I haven't rebeat all the ones that have been optimised yet.

Originally Posted by DarkManticoreX2

The main level I didn’t optimize you start inside an orange block and cannot leave it

That one's going to be a nightmare to optimise. I really hope the current record stands but don't expect it to.
-

Chaos Machine is doable in 900. Don't think it's optimal yet but should be fairly close. There's too much going on in it and I'm losing track of what I've tried.

[Reach]

Doable in 900.

900...

Alright well at the very least I want to see what that looks like so I'm gonna have to clean up world 12 this weekend.

As for Bonefish, yeah I'm not sure about this one. I've found two ways to 110. I'm wondering if I'm just missing something subtle or if this level is what I would deem a "wild goosechase" level. By far the most sinister effect of some of these new mechanics is the potential to devise puzzles that have several complex solutions 2-4 moves off that are irreducible and completely wrong but not obviously so, whereas it's much harder to do that with traditional levels (Pipe organ the only one in this game that I can think of).

[DarkManticoreX2]

I saw some record breaking on six bits, brought the new solution down to 134

[Reach]

Oh, I actually knew about this one and didn't post it here.

Here's a few other optimizations I'll post here.

Baby Steps: 89/95
Jar of Nothing: 100/106
Magic Bullet: 174/176

All of these move these levels solidly into thoroughly annoying territory.

A gentlemen named Davidspencer also found an optimization on spelunking but I can't beat it normally so can't confirm lmao

In other news I haven't beat a single puzzle I've been stuck on now for awhile. Waiting for level editor, might try them again at some point when I'm feeling inspired. Still really want to see the final puzzles, but the last 2-4 moves on some of these misc puzzles elude me. They might yield to brute force like wiggle room but I suspect I'll be similarly disappointed with the solutions.

[stargroup100]

Yo KingOreO, long time no see.

Eventually I'll check this out and respond with something but in the meantime if you wanna catch up or discuss some game design stuff hit me up with some way I can reach you, like Skype/Discord/etc. Same goes for anyone else in this thread who likes this stuff.

[stargroup100]

Played a couple worlds, this is a different approach from the same vision I had for this game. Like hi19hi19 mentioned, I preferred to stick to much smaller levels generally, but these levels are generally pretty darn good too, though difficulty curve I think could use some major work to bring it to a larger audience. I like the attempt to bring story into it and I wanted something of the sort too, but it's bit dry for me personally or maybe I'm too dumb to understand what's going on.

There are some themes in some of these levels that are just gorgeous and I'd love to steal some of them if that's okay. Ideally, I do want to get a bunch of people together who have been working on various similar projects and just release something that will bring in a new fresh audience for the game.

[Reach]

I wonder how this game is selling. It's one of the best puzzle games I have, and I suspect this game could be quite a bit more popular with some tweaking to make it more friendly. I very much enjoy the allure of a sadistically difficult puzzle game too, but the build up has to be right.

I'm OReach on steam if you want to chat sometime, I like to talk about this kind of stuff.

Right now I'm still very excited for the devs to release level editor, since I'd like to expand the universe of what is possible within the engine here with the puzzles and tackle some new content. I haven't gone back to the handful of puzzles I haven't finished yet, might someday.



EDIT: Devs, any word on updates? Editor?

[Brett]

Real quick update for those that are interested.

PATHOS is going to go on sale very soon and will be ~$3.99 in an effort to reach a greater audience.

Mac and Linux support will be released within the week, as well as controller support for planned Switch and PS4 ports.

The level editor and necessary Steamworks integration will unfortunately not be here until around June/July as most of us pivot to our next project. In the meantime, if you're interested in designing levels that I plan to release in a puzzle pack in the future, send me a PM. I'll send you the project via Unity so you can access the same tools I have. I'm only going to send out a handful of these to spare some complexity on my end.

[Reach]

Hi Brett,

The update has caused a host of input errors. Inputs regularly get eaten now. It doesn't appear to break the step counter but it does make the game pretty unplayable and should be fixed ASAP.

Also sent a PM re: making puzzles for the pack, would definitely like to join in on that.

[YoshL]

is respite 6 supposed to have the exit available without collection the yellow pieces of gold?

===

i'm nowhere near as versed in solving these things as others, i'm stuck on a bunch of levels all over, in worlds 4-6
Lefty Loosey... - 2 off for the longest time
Bad Directions - still yet to find the route
The Doldrums - 4 off
Over-under - haven't actually given this one a go
It Takes Two - don't even have the correct solution, i'm like over 20 off
Double-Cross - I see what i need to do, no route yet
Fool's Goal - 2 off in like 3 different ways aaaaaaaa

==========

had some "i'm actually dumb" moments
knocked out lefty loosey, bad directions, and the doldrums, can now move on to world 7 hoo

really quickly got worm hole, musket tears, and hoodwinked, didn't give too much else a good shot. i feel like i stumbled upon the solution really luckily for musket, because i got it like, on my first try, and hoodwinked felt so much more like an original psychopath puzzle

[Callipygian]

Just popping in here to say that PATHOS is the best puzzle game I've played since Spacechem. Honeycomb in world III was a huge difficulty spike btw; I was just randomly moving around until then but now I suddenly needed to actually think hehe.

First 6 worlds are easy enough. World VII has some real interesting levels. I liked Keep a lot. Still stuck on Impact, which, as a stressful level, should be one of the easier ones. I have like 100 ways to be 2 off. Psychopath traumas all over again . Having fun with VIII now.

Very well-made game. I prefer it over Psychopath since it finds more creative ways than grid scaling to ramp up difficulty. Keep up the good work, devs!

EDIT: Not sure if I'm the first one to find this, but Bonefish 100/104!

EDIT: Magic Bullet 170/174. This level took me 3 minutes lol

EDIT: Completely stuck on most remaining maps on XII. This world is simply brutal. X and XI were creative, but also quite annoying tbh :P

[Callipygian]

Bump for attention. Noone seems to be playing this game and the Steam forum is dead, so I'm turning to you nerds for help.

I'm struggling with some world XII and XIII puzzles and a few earlier ones as well. Does anyone still recall the solutions for levels like Wiggle Room (2 off), Spurn (2 off), Blot (4 off), Karst (4 off) and Virions (like 18 off lol)? I solved almost all traumatic levels in XIII, but am still stuck on a few of those agonizing and tortuous levels :/. Any hints are welcome. If I can PM someone for more specific questions, that would be awesome as well.

[Reach]

Sadly I think devs abandoned the game. Understandable since it didn't sell, but it's so fun

Wiggle room was notoriously difficult for me, I still don't know how I solved it. I was 2 off forever and then just randomly solved it. My only hint is that the real solution is very nearly indistinguishable from 2 off solutions so just keep banging out combinations.

Spurn...this one was very interesting. My hint here would be that this level is extremely deceptive and don't get caught up in optimizations of your current route. There are actually several very unintuitive ways to solve this level; look for them and the solution will follow.

Virions was one of the most annoying levels in the game for me. I spent forever on it and am still stuck like 4 off so if you solve this one give ME a hint

Amazing optimizations on magic bullet and bone fish. I still haven't solved bone fish @ 104. Maybe I'll see if I can engineer based on picture lol.

If you want to help eachother see some of the final puzzles, I am in need of a solution to lockness monster despite beating the entirety of world 13 LOL. I would like to see/try some of the final puzzles but don't have the drive necessary to go back and beat some of the shit like maelstrom and virions.

PM me or just add me @ OReach on steam if you want to discuss/ask specific questions.

[Frevett]

Nice find on Magic Bullet. Haven't managed to re-solve Bonefish at 100 yet, 104 was tough enough.

I can't be much help as I've forgotten most solutions in the last few months. I do have a screenshot for Karst's solution I can pm if you'd like.

Reach - I assume you're two off on Lockmess Monster. If you want to try and spot the trick in a different more condensed level, look up GTFI on Psychopath 2. Took most people there a long time to find it in just a 36 step level. Alternatively can pm the solution to this one too if you like.

I need to find one more breakthrough to open the final world. Has anyone had much luck with any of these?