PATHOS - A puzzle game like Psychopath

[Frevett]

Wellspring is doable in 166

[AutotelicBrown]

Yeah, just realized there was a very simple optimization left lol

There rest of the solution is the same though so I'm guessing that's optimal.

[Reach]

The optimizations in some of these open ended stages are absolutely wild.

Warehouse is absolutely busted, I got 353 but I don't think that is even close to optimal, another 10+ moves can probably be shaved off easily.

My only concern is that some of these levels are going to be scary difficult to beat for people when completely optimized. Thankfully you can leave many levels incomplete and still move onto the next world later in the game, which is great design imo.

[Brett]

Pushed an update with these new routes minus Warehouse Duty. Got Wellspring down to 164 as well.

[AutotelicBrown]

Warehouse is likely improvable, I got 349 without really trying to optimize. Some other more open-ended and/or ice block levels with larger optimizations that I posted are probably improvable as well for the same reason (Magic Bullet, Four's a Crowd, Karst and Nexus). They are super annoying to optimize without a clear goal though (which I guess is the reason they didn't have great solutions in the first place) so I'll only revisit those if I clear the rest of the game or someone else posts a better solution like just happened for Wellspring.

Interesting to know it's possible to shave 2 more on Wellspring, I'll see into it later alongside Frigid Engine.

[Frevett]

Nice find on Wellspring. I struggled to get to 349 on Warehouse so I'm kind of hoping that one is optimal.

Found a 272 on Karst, but it doesn't feel optimal yet.

[AutotelicBrown]

For now the best I could find on Warehouse is 343. Spoiler for solution:

edit: Finally solved Trash Heap and got the all Agonizing levels achievement. At least I was rewarded with an optimized solution (112 moves):

[Reach]

272 on Karst should be optimal, I don't see how it could be optimized without a level break (My solution is the same thought process as autos but with path optimization on the bottom).

But who knows. I suppose my rule for this game should be to never assume a solution optimal on some of these harder levels lol

[Bahamut-X]

Picked this up and prepared to sink a couple hours into it. I really enjoyed psycopath so I'm sure this will be money well spent.

[Reach]

Now that Christmas antics are over, back to some Pathos.

Cleaned up Magic bullet @ 176/180. Two different ways to do it, though I don't see any optimizations.

Edit: Onto world 13. oh my.

[Reach]

Circuit Board eviscerated @ 254/314.

Fairly convinced now this is optimal but it might not be. Man this level is like an onion. I LOVE this level!

One of my favorite levels ever (PP1 included).

devs: https://media.giphy.com/media/NnGGHE0muVqpO/giphy.gif

Edit2: Ah fuck, Four's a Crowd Busted @ 180/192. This level rapidly became a nightmare. I *think* this is the fastest possible solution.


Edit3: I'll happily confirm Nexus solved @330/330 though, I banged my head around breaks on this one for a long time but none of them are possible. 330 looks solid. Couldn't break Hallways either.

Edit4: Small fix @ Crawl Space, 257/259. I'm not convinced 255 isn't possible, but done playing with it for now. (Amazing level too btw, up there with Circuit Board)

[Frevett]

I'm struggling to keep up with you guys setting new records. I hadn't managed to re-beat Four's a Crowd after the first optimisation yet, now I'm way off again.

You missed a bit on Circuit Board, 252/254 is possible. That's a fun level, nice spot on the alternative route.

[Reach]

Nice 252, I figured it was possible but looking for those last 2 steps sometimes is time consuming.

Re Four's a Crowd: This is probably deserving of Traumatic now, probably need input from others to see if anyone else can solve it or if more moves can be shaved but I really hope not, I put quite a bit of time into disproving the logic behind any other approaches lmao

Many of these levels in World 13 are super good, this is top notch puzzling. Some of them are time consuming to find the last few moves in though. I want enough bits to see the last worlds but man you need a lot of bits.

Into The Depths has a wild goose chase cooked into it in that there's a 6 off solution that is wildly wrong and it takes a completely different approach to win. Have no idea if this was intended but man that was rough.

Rack and Ruin also has the absolute motherlode of 4 off solutions too.

[Frevett]

Yeah, you need to beat pretty much everything to unlock the last worlds, as well as a bunch of the puzzle achievements to unlock world 16. I've hit a brick wall on those and haven't managed to unlock it yet.

World 13 made me want to go back and play some of the old classic Psychopath levels again.

Cut a bit more on Four's a Crowd - 176/180

[DarkManticoreX2]

I kinda feel bad about all these broken records, but feeling decent that most? Of the tougher levels are holding up.

[Reach]

Originally Posted by Frevett

Yeah, you need to beat pretty much everything to unlock the last worlds, as well as a bunch of the puzzle achievements to unlock world 16. I've hit a brick wall on those and haven't managed to unlock it yet.

World 13 made me want to go back and play some of the old classic Psychopath levels again.

Cut a bit more on Four's a Crowd - 176/180

You're further than me then. I too have been enjoying world 13 the most as a psychopath fan, so I haven't cleaned up world 12 and 10 and am missing bits that I need to go back and get. I want to unlock everything though because I want to see how hard the puzzles get.

God damn you re Four's a Crowd though. I honestly have no sweet clue where you saved 4 moves. I'd be happy never touching that level ever again lol

As for the Breakthroughs; yeah, I have four of them solved but all by accident. Two of them were actually cool and I unlocked them solving strange things within the puzzle itself that was I was disappointed didn't work, but enjoyed getting an achievement for it.

With that said, are there ways of telling which levels actually have Breakthroughs in them? I guess what I'm confused about is how I go about figuring out which levels I'm supposed to look for clues in. Are the names puzzles in and of themselves and related to the level names? I'm not sure, the last one I unlocked has a title with a reference to quantum mechanics. I did take quantum mechanics in undergrad, but I'm not even sure which level it goes with. A Schrodinger's achievement.

[YoshL]

maybe something simple like, once a player has completed all the levels in a world, highlight the one(s) with a breakthrough

[Frevett]

Yeah, there's no way of telling exactly which levels have them in. Some levels have slightly off-colour squares that seem to indicate there's one on that level linked to the square, though there are a few levels like that that I haven't been able to figure out. The achievement names, descriptions, and icons are meant to be clues to figure them out. There are quite a few where I have no idea where to even begin.

[AutotelicBrown]

Nice find on circuit board, that level is so memorable that I was able to remember each detail of my previous solution from two weeks ago straight away and managed to find the 252 solution as well.

And thanks for making me revisit crawl space, found an alternative route with a 221 solution. I haven't found the -2 in the original solution though, so it might affect the new route as well.

Indeed world 13 is very good overall. I'm not really excited to revisit four's a crowd though! Glad (and surprised) Nexus haven't been improved, I don't want to touch that again either. Aside from those quickies today I haven't really touched the game since unlocking world 14, will probably return to finish the hard stuff once I get more free time next month.

Maybe it's a bit late to bring this up but I think it'd be cool to make some sort of spreadsheet to share the progress and/or new optimizations from people here.

EDIT: ok got 176 on four's a crowd.

[Reach]

Yeah, we should probably have an updatable spread for the devs or something since the breaks are happening so frequently.

Just the nature of this type of thing, some of these levels really require a ton of testers (ran into issues even just publishing 65-72 on the original psychopath).

Amazing find on crawl space. Gosh, I was so certain when playing it that I was going to break it but I just couldn't see that. Beautiful find, I'll try and -2 it when I get time.

Then again I was certain Nexus was breakable but couldn't break it, 330 might be breakable but I honestly think that level just has an illusion of complexity. When you break down the warp gates on paper the logic is extremely constrained.


Edit: Finally cleaned up Orchid to finish off all Traumatic levels and get achievement IX, but haven't beaten many agonizing and tortuous so I'm still 40 bits off world 14. Urg, I'm 2 off on Pipe Organ, Blot and Lockmess Monster (WTF IS THIS? I've spent at least 10x longer on this level than any other level. I don't get it? Can someone just PM me a hint and put me out of my misery?), and Wiggle room. I absolutely hate these god damn orange block levels. Not clicking for me!