Filament

 Switch
User Score
8.5

Generally favorable reviews- based on 4 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4 out of 4
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 4
  3. Negative: 0 out of 4

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  1. ClinOton
    Oct 15, 2020
    8
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Filament is the prime example of quit while you’re ahead. This game reasonably should be scored an 8/10 to 9/10... early on it appeared to be well on its way to a 10/10. It all falls apart in the end game. The bridge of the ship is where it all becomes unplayable. One example in particular is the first puzzle on the bridge that uses the map that guides your filament path. After hours spent attempting to decipher the map...which I assumed was intentionally ambiguous forcing the player to use deductive reasoning...the solution to this particular puzzle brakes the rules of the map with the filament running between columns that clearly are not specified on map. (If you are aware of this puzzle I am not referencing the columns outside of the box of 9 columns) I suppose I could be wrong on this point yet from my perspective it seems indisputable the puzzle doesn’t follow the rules. Once on the bridge of the ship the game quickly becomes a convoluted billion variable mess of an excuse for a puzzle game. This is not the case with every puzzle variation but often enough to make this game unplayable to most. I can tie a ball of yarn into a million knots and tell you to untie them all. I can label it a puzzle. This does not make it enjoyable or a good puzzle. I can forgive the puzzles that are a brute force guessing game of trial and error. I am the demographic that actually enjoys this...the fact that the puzzle I referenced is broken is unforgivable! Even with all this said, the parts of this game that do work well are worth playing! 9/10 for the parts before the bridge. I don’t believe that the official reviewers have actually completed this game and if so I don’t believe they have done it without assistance. Having beaten games such as the Witness, Talos Principle, Road to Gehenna and keeping an actual list of my current top 30 puzzle games, I am no rookie to this genre...This game is out of my league in difficulty and in patience needed to complete, period! If you want a game that makes the Witness look like child’s play this is it. Once again I can tie that ball of yarn into a million knots, untying them all is also extremely difficult...yet is it worth your time? It has few moments of that satisfying revelation of “I understand this now” but almost all victories in the late game come at the cost of grinding down the answer thru trial and error. This game is a bit like the show Lost, watch the first 5 seasons and pretend season 6 never happened. (Season 6 not actually that bad) I feel the game needed an extreme score of 0/10 for wasting so much time on unfair broken misleading puzzle/puzzles. If I am reviewing the human body 0-10 and everything functions perfectly except the lungs explode, what is an appropriate score? Buy this game, but unlike the game be warned...to quit while you’re ahead. ( I regret the zero score I gave earlier. I really am appreciative that games like this are being made. The Witness is also my game of the decade and 1# on my all time puzzle game list with The Talos Principle/Road to Gehenna 2# & Portal 2 3#. I admit even though I don’t believe I am wrong regarding this particular puzzle I referenced I could be wrong) big personal thank you to everyone involved in making Filament!… Expand
  2. wjomlex
    Jan 2, 2021
    8
    Clearly The Witness is a huge inspiration for this game. You explore a space with explicitly-given puzzles that have no instruction. Where in The Witness the core mechanic is moving through a maze, in Filament the core mechanic is wrapping a thread around pillars. This actually gives the puzzles a great tactile feel.

    My TL;DR is that everything in Filament is a bit worse than The    Clearly The Witness is a huge inspiration for this game. You explore a space with explicitly-given puzzles that have no instruction. Where in The Witness the core mechanic is moving through a maze, in Filament the core mechanic is wrapping a thread around pillars. This actually gives the puzzles a great tactile feel.

    My TL;DR is that everything in Filament is a bit worse than The Witness except that Filament has a really excellent story. The Witness is my game of the decade though, so that hardly makes Filament bad. Filament is actually great, on the whole.

    But let's look at things that are worse:

    - My main complaint (and I totally agree with ClinOton's review) is that some puzzles feel really trial-and-error-y. Some puzzles are great, some are quite a slog. If you get the first few pillars right, you can usually find a solution in a reasonable amount of time, but getting started on some of the puzzles feels like flailing in the dark. This does suck a lot of enjoyment out. I think a certain type of person might like this a lot, but it's not the part of puzzle-solving that I enjoy.

    (I disagree with ClinOton about the particular puzzle that they mention -- I believe that it follows the rules as I understand them. However I strongly agree that most of the annoying puzzles are on the bridge.)

    - There's less of a feeling of learning than in The Witness. You understand pretty quickly how the mechanic for any given set of puzzles works, and puzzle sets even have names that somewhat explain the mechanic. The Witness has some really clever sets of puzzles that actually lead you down a path of incorrectly learning a rule and then surprise you with what looks like an impossible puzzle if you've made the wrong assumption.

    - A few times the physics engine didn't quite detect a touched pillar. This was always fixable by unwrapping and re-wrapping, but in a game that requires a precise solution, the game needs to be similarly precise.

    - The space that you're exploring isn't as striking or varied as The Witness.

    - Environmental puzzles can be hard to read on the Switch (probably better on PC).

    - There were a couple times when the game froze, but no progress was lost because of the autosaving.

    Against all this, the story is really great. The Witness has fragments of a story that are a bit interesting, but Filament has an actually good epistolary narrative, on par with The Talos Principle.    … Expand
  3. DieMyDarling
    Jan 3, 2022
    8
    Wjomlex said almost everything that I wanted to say in my review in his. Like them, The Witness was my game of the decade for the 2010s. Like them, I found this game remarkably similar in design philosophy (but who wouldn’t). And like them I find it to be not as good for most of the same reasons - discovering how the puzzles work (at least until the bridge) never has quite the same feelingWjomlex said almost everything that I wanted to say in my review in his. Like them, The Witness was my game of the decade for the 2010s. Like them, I found this game remarkably similar in design philosophy (but who wouldn’t). And like them I find it to be not as good for most of the same reasons - discovering how the puzzles work (at least until the bridge) never has quite the same feeling of unbridled wonder, the environmental puzzles are sometimes nearly impossible to see, and the world isn’t as wonderfully varied. Another thing that sets the witness apart from this is that since the puzzles take place in the same space that you’re exploring it did some truly remarkable things with the premise.

    Is this a review of the witness? No. And since wjomlex said pretty much all of this why am I even bothering to write this? To me it’s because they characterized the difficulty of the puzzles (and they are quite difficult, even early on) as “trial and error”. I believe this is not correct. I believe that the puzzles are so layered that the problem is simply most people (certainly me) could not figure out upon first seeing any given puzzle why it would be difficult or where the problem area(s) were. You start solving, pretty confident it would be easy until you realize that one pylon has a little wall on the side you wanted, or that there was only one pylon that could be used as an anchor for two different gates. It seems like trial and error when it’s really only because this puzzle system is so unique that the things that gave a specific puzzle it’s character just aren’t apparent at first glance.

    Also the bridge: let’s not pretend it’s any different than the end of the witness where the puzzles start breaking down and you have to solve a half melted screen or a busted color monitor. Also no puzzle broke any rules given in-game.

    Specifically what I didn’t like were the color mixing puzzles - not the first set where you’re mixing colors but the second set where you’re mixing absences of colors. I’m not gonna lie: I basically brute forced the last couple of those because trying to wrap my head around mixing absences of colors while also trying to manage the multiple characters and multiple tethers was just too much. Also, the first time you crack a multiple tether puzzle you feel pretty smart, but after that they just feel long and tedious as you follow everyone around the room switching who is in the lead to get your wrap right.

    In the end being second best to the witness is still being better that almost every other puzzle game in existence. I’d have given it a 9 but it just felt so familiar in its delivery that it lost some points to lack of originality. Still, kudos to the designers for finding a simple, clever puzzle and doing so much with it. And it was $6 on sale! I feel like I robbed them. Had I known how good this game was I would have paid full price.    … Expand

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
84

Generally favorable reviews - based on 6 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4 out of 6
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 6
  3. Negative: 0 out of 6
  1. Pure Nintendo
    Nov 16, 2020
    70
    Filament is a clever puzzle game that will challenge even the most ardent fans of the genre. The relaxing atmosphere helps to ease the frustration, but the complexity of later levels may put off casual gamers.
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  2. NintendoWorldReport
    Oct 26, 2020
    90
    Filament is a game I thoroughly enjoyed for expanding my puzzle-solving skills, as well as delivering a relaxing soundtrack, visuals, and wonderful story. This is one of those games that you can either spend a whole weekend playing through, or even just pick it up quickly during a lunch break for 15-20 minutes, then pick it right back up where you left off. High difficulty is very much present throughout the majority of the runtime; that said, I feel that this where it truly excels. The real highlight of the entire experience to be had within Filament is the massive number of puzzles, each being very unique and creatively designed in its own way. If you’re looking for your next puzzle-solving indie fix, look no further than Filament.
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  3. Screen Rant
    Oct 18, 2020
    90
    Filament enthralls with its puzzles but lingers thanks to its empathy. While the universe depicted is haunting, the way Filament portrays it is so grounded in care and love that its lasting impression is one of hope and wonder rather than despair. There have been many indie darlings this year and Filament deserves to join their ranks.
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