Filament Review

Filament is a narrative puzzle game created by Beard Envy, and features strong environmental storytelling and challenging puzzles. It follows the story of a spaceman as he attempts to rescue Juniper, the trapped pilot of an abandoned Filament Company ship, by winding cords around glowing pillars to unlock “anchors” and access the bridge of the ship. Filament succeeds on its attempt to create challe𝕴nging puzzles🦄 and an engaging story with very few missteps.

The Story

Filament is one of the best instances of environmental storytelling out there. The main story is delivered through emails; solving each puzzle unlocks a new password for a certain crew member during a certain week of the mission. Reading the communicati♚ons between the crew reveals a little piece of the story at a time, and the player gets to act as a detective as they slowly piece together what happened ▨to the crew.

The storytelling doesn’t end at the emails, though. The environment is beautifully crafted to feel lived-in and reflect the personalities of the diff๊erent crew members. Even though the player only interacts with Juniper through the game’s narration, the entire crew comes alive through what they have left behind. There are plenty of plot elements that are revealed through the beautifully crafted environment as well, and plenty of hints that things are not what they seem.

Credit should go to the game’s composer, Tom Rumbellow, 🃏specifically, since his๊ music essentially sets the tone of the game. It is homey and cozy, which only serves to increase the undercurrent of suspicion that runs through the game.

At times, the environmental storytelling is so good that the game’s actual narratio🍰n almost comes across as condescending, like the game doesn’t trust the player to discover the story on their own. Still, Juniper’s narration is different enough from the events gleaned from the emails to set up some foreshadowing for the end of the game🌞.

Unfortunately, the end of the game is perhaps the weakest part. It suffers from some pacing issues near the end, as the game seems to approach its climax only to open up into more puzzles. The ending is also a little obtuse, but good level design and atmospheric music make it a generally🔴 satisfying payoff to the setup that the game provides.

The Puzzles

To be clear, the puzzles in this game are hard. There is relatively little hand-holding, and the difficulty of the puzzles on a certain set of anchors increaseౠs exponentially as the player progresses. Avid puzzlers will likely enjoy the challenge, but beginners may struggle. The puzzles on the bridge of the ship are especially tough. There’s no evidence that some of the puzzles even have answers, but there must be. That’s how they work: just when you’re about to give up, the solution presents itself.

That being said, the puzzles are well-cওrafted and t𒉰he gimmicks are unique enough to keep things interesting. The solutions require brainpower and lateral thinking – or alternatively, a lot of trial and error and luck.

The ma♔in issue with the puzzles is that, while justified in-universe, often act as an obstruction to the story itself. This is not even𒆙 so much an indictment of the puzzles as it is praise of the story. Getting stuck on a puzzle can feel extra frustrating when it’s the only thing blocking access to those sweet emails.

Luckily, only a certain amount of puzzles have to be completed in order to beat the game, which is hඣelpful for those who are stumped by some of them.

The (Secret) Puzzles

If nothing is more frustrating than being st🅰ymied by a puzzle that is blocking the path forward, nothing is more rewarding than solving a puzzle that the game never mentions in the first place.

Filament includes several hidden puzzles that when 🍌solved, reveal the same type of visual password that is used to log into the computers to view crew emails. They can be hidden in interactable objects, ID cards, or even the environment itself. As opposed to the relatively straightforward variations on a theme that make up the anchor puzzles, these puzzles are allowed to be as creative as they can. They include everything from code-breaking to physically lining up parts of the environment to form the code.

These secret puzzles unlock secret🍒 messages that widen and deepen the world. They aren’t essential to the story necessarily, but they add a lot of lore that makes the world feel more real. Moreover, they feel so satisfying to complete, and add to the “detective” feeling that discovering the story creates. These puzzles are easily the best part of the game. They allow the player to feel clever in a way that the anchor puzzles do not.

A Bright Light

Overall, Filament is a game with an amazing story and challenging puzzles. While the main puzzles can be somewhat frustrating at times, they provide a good challenge for players looking for some harder puzzles, and solving the hidden puzzles is one of the most satisfying gameplay experiences avaဣilable. If Beard Envy were to make❀ a walking simulator, it would be one of the best games in the genre. As it stands, Filament is a very good puzzle game.