Filament

a First Look by flotsam

[Linked Image]

Three hours in and am liking this a lot.

It's a simple concept. Drag your filament around a room and make contact with all the pylons in order to trigger the door which will allow you to access the next room. Simple in concept, far less so in solution.

Think of your filament as a tether, attached to your back. When you enter a room it is fixed to a wall, and that point can't change. It stretches as you move about the room, navigating from one pylon to the next. Connect all the pylons and you can leave. Unless of course the filament is in your way; once stretched from point A to point B, it restricts the movement between the points.

It is just one of your potential restrictions. You need to maintain tension on the filament and the pylon, which can determine from which direction you approach the pylon. Some pylons have brick appendages attached, which limits how you can make contact with your filament. Others have brick walls between them, which might collapse if you connect the appropriate pylons first. Still others need to be powered by first connecting other pylons, further restricting the possible solutions. I have no doubt other challenges will arise as I get further into the game.

I have spent considerable time in a number of rooms, pondering over my top down perspective, devising a plan for what to try next. You can unravel any room by pressing the R key, but backtracking over what you had done unsuccessfully was sometimes insightful as to what to perhaps try next.

The whole thing plays out in a spaceship, but I confess that is of little interest to me.

It uses the keyboard for play, and autosaves when you exit.