Filament - Preview

Every now and then, I get the chance to play a game before release and one of two things happen, the first is that I am grateful and then wait til it is released in full, or the second is I am grateful and angry that things have come to an end so soon and the second applies to Filament.

At the core of the game is a puzzler, a very odd and unique one, but still a puzzler and this is what I loved about playing it, not the story, as I have not yet experienced the entire thing, but the puzzles. The basics of the puzzles are as such, you take control of a little robot, who has a cord in his back, that cord must connect with all the nodes in a room, which once done will open up the door, letting you proceed to the next, a simple concept yes, but a brilliant one. Each room contains a bunch of nodes, but as you progress there are more parts added as well, which in turn ramp up the challenge and while there are some frustrating moments, once you learn and understand the hook, you should make quick work of them.

The catch is that you can’t pass through or over your own cable, or filament if you will, so if you lock yourself in space, then you need to undo your work and try again, and trust that will happen a lot. Each level has a particular way of beating it and more often it will either jump out at you, or frustrate you so much, that once you locate the way complete it, you will sigh and cheer at once. The game does however allow you some easier levels, to help bridge the gap between the rage inducing ones, which is a welcome reprieve. In the process of solving a puzzle though, you have the option to rewind or restart your run, which means should you think that you need to make a tweak, you can rewind, which has your little bot running back along the route you just made and a restart, well it resets the level. With those tools and the option to focus, which gives you an overhead view of the puzzle, you have all you need to solve it, you just need some time and patience as well.

As you progress further in, more and more elements will find themselves being added, the first are a series of gates, that you need to enable in order to allow yourself to use the ones they are powering up. As you move forward, more and more puzzles will requires these gates, and sometimes they can be only one previous node to be made active, others they might need four and one of those requires two more and honestly it is a challenge. But even beyond that colours will start to play a role, your filament is white, but you need colours in order to enable some nodes, so you need to watch the order you hit things in, as colours can blend.

Outside of the puzzles, you will wander around a spaceship that is meant to be devoid of life, there are signs that people used to live there though, with paperwork and tools littered around the place. As you progress further into the ship, you begin to understand more and more about what is going on and solving the giant obelisk of puzzles will help as they are usually connected via a large cable to a lock box, for lack of a better world, that once you unlock will contain a scrap of paper or something, which I assume will help expand the world some more. The one aspect of the larger world that I did like, without any context is how the rooms are presented, both the puzzle locations and the ship itself, you only see the room you are in, there is a large white border around it and then the rest is nothing, it helps put focus on the game, rather than everything else.

Filament is a game that I think will see people falling in love with, the base mechanic is simple, move around and connect the items, but with the multiple parts, like gates and colours to help mix things up, it will test players. The story from the outside, when not in a puzzle is one, I can’t wait to learn more of and perhaps I will learn why the main character is wearing dungarees, though I suspect not. Filament is not due out for a bit yet, end of Q1 2020 is the plan, but that might change. If you are someone who enjoys a puzzle game, that does not require you to move at a frenetic pace the entire time, then Filament might just be the game for you.

If this sounds like a game you could enjoy, you can wishlist it on Steam now and be notified when a release date is announced.