*VIDEO SPOILERS BELOW* Taiji Review, starting with what I liked: - This game is incredibly good at making hard puzzles that are incredibly interesting to solve, and it succeeds in doing so for multiple puzzle categories: pure logic puzzles, rule deduction puzzles, and environment observation puzzles. The rule deduction has some blips, but the other two are flawless throughout. - The ability to mark panels as un-pressed allows for the pure logic puzzles to get large and difficult without becoming overwhelming. You can break the large puzzles down into ones that are much more manageable and follow an extremely satisfying chain of logic to its conclusion, not unlike my favorite Minesweeper puzzles. - The dots, diamonds, flowers, and minus/slash sections are the holy grail of logic puzzles in thinky puzzle games. The difficulty was never hand-holdy, even though you were constantly learning new quirks of the mechanics with every single puzzle. It’s like the entire sections were tutorials, unbeknownst to the player. You never had to repeat the same logic, even in the giant boss puzzles. - The house part of the gallery was a masterclass in decoding environmental clues into puzzle solutions. There was always a solution that was extremely obvious once finding it, but never even close to obvious to find. The idea of hiding the other mechanics in paintings was genius too. I will never forget the realization I had of how they worked. - Decoding the pillars in the ruins was a ton of fun, I was impressed how a rule that seemed so simple had plenty of twists and caveats. The multi-columned pillars being horizontally mirrored felt a little shoehorned in, but I can let that slide. - The plateau section did exactly what a section with a simple rule should: be short. More puzzle games need to recognize when an idea is simple so they can stop milking it for too long. Solving “reverse puzzles” where you drag the symbols onto the board instead of pressing the panels was such a novel and fun idea. Great way to keep the endgame interesting too. - Every ultra-secret puzzle needed to unlock the secret ending was absolutely perfect… except for the binary one. There’s something so cool about recontextualizing the areas you’ve familiarized yourself with to solve a puzzle, and the game knocked (almost all of) those out of the park. - The multi-stage puzzle in the secret area was absolutely wonderful to solve and a brilliant twist on The Witness’s own multi-stage puzzle. - The art, sound design, and animations (especially the endings) were all flawless and added so much to the overall experience. The game wouldn’t have anywhere near the charm it does without this current level of polish. - 445 puzzles is the perfect length for a thinky puzzle game, especially since most are unique and substantial. - The Witness is by far the best puzzle game to pull your inspiration from. While this game does wear The Witness on its sleeves, it manages to carve out its own identity as well. What I didn’t like: - As with nearly everyone else, I completed the black and white block puzzles by the gallery without ever learning a 100%-certain-rigid rule. That is a major let down for a section whose only actual difficulty is supposed to be figuring out the rule. Now that I know the rule, I can say that the tutorial was weak, and the section as a whole failed to justify its purpose. Apparently, adding those puzzles was a last second decision, which explains the lack of sophistication. I wouldn’t be surprised if something changes post-release. - The entire binary section, including its secret puzzle, was a total waste of time. The only challenge was figuring out the rules, but the rules were boring, had no depth, and were inelegant when attempting depth. You can call the main rule XOR all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that it boils down to selecting the panels that correspond to an odd number of 1’s. You could actually feel my disappointment when I learned that rule. Next it goes through this whole song and dance of introducing the square before doing nothing interesting with it until the final puzzle, whose twist is inelegant anyway. The only rule that actually shows promise is establishing the dot as the start of a line, tricking the player that was previously reading left to right. It’s a cool twist that’s followed by absolutely nothing interesting, then later finding out that the dot isn’t even the constant between these puzzles (more on that in the video). The only interesting things to come from the binary section are the XOR pillar (which doesn’t need the binary section to be solved) and the 0 over 0 in the painting. - The trees section had a good rule, but was a little sloppy. - The secret area was mostly a dumping ground for hard puzzles with multiple rules and could have benefitted from more novelty like the multi-stage puzzle. It was a shame that there wasn’t a single puzzle that operated in ternary instead of binary (maybe that could have been a fun twist in the binary section). Overall Rating: 9/10 (Excellent) Between the two, I personally gotta give the edge to The Witness. My appreciation for that game grows stronger with every passing year and with every game that gets inspired by it.

I love that sometimes Tyler gets frustrated with a puzzle, and then Future Tyler comes in with his infinite knowledge to explain what he missed. But with the binary gravestone puzzle, Tyler got pissed, brute forced it, and future Tyler comes in, _and he's still pissed._

We have to appreciate the editor on this one. It made way easier to understand those blank puzzles with a filled in version on the side. 👍

@past Tyler: if you look at the lily pads in the lantern puzzle the darker pads lay out the grid to show row and column

I love how the Black/White Blocks puzzles were so -hard- confusing that two of them were the last puzzles that Tyler had to solve.

16:19 what I really love about this is how it gives you the same pattern whether you do "the starting cell" or "the middle cell". I was paranoid about which it'd be when trying to figure it out until I noticed they all were the same!

The number of heads present in the environment in Taiji is phenomenal, I only noticed most of them when the camera panned over during the end sequence. Kinda creepy if you think about it.

I love how Tyler basically just said, "Screw your happy ending, I've got puzzles to solve!"

Love the different colored lilipads denoting the grid in the house in the lake, the detail in this game was absolutely phenomenal.

I love 2 things in taiji 1:the creativity of the puzzles 2:The design of the game It was made completely with human or animal faces or heads

After a nice run, it's time to say goodbye to Taiji. Environmental/beautiful puzzle games always have a soft spot in my heart.

Ben's editing for this series has been phenomenal.

Ben forgot to add the "zeroes" which is all purple flowers on the flower puzzle (other than that, the editing on this video is legendary)

I'd like to point out that there were a ton of potential "environmental puzzles" akin to those from The Witness strewn all over Taiji. Knowing how inspired the creator was by The Witness, it is very possible that these were supposed to be a callback to the ending where the player wakes up and keeps seeing puzzle starts all over his home. One "environmental puzzle " that stood out is a fountain that Tyler walks past in one of the first few episodes that has a circular start and then snakes away under a cliff. I saw that and immediately thought, "there's no way this game put the same secret puzzles as The Witness'." While this would have been a cool twist and a great callback, it seems I was mistaken, at least on the matter of them having an impact on gameplay this time around. Still a great game and a great series on it!

33:09 I see two faces. It is really cool to see how the artist incorporates hidden faces all throughout the island.

I have to say that I ABSOLUTELY love how ALL of the environmental puzzles were the actual level sections themselves!!!

These final puzzles remind me of the puzzles in Tunic, and I feel like you'd really enjoy taking a crack at it. Unfortunately Tunic isn't entirely a puzzle game, there is also some brutally hard combat... That being said, there is an option in the settings that removes the difficulty from combat (by making you invincible). I'd love to see you play Tunic and have a go at the puzzles, even if you skip the combat.

Tyler not seeing the binary puzzle and then going on as Future Tyler to explain how the binary puzzle could’ve been ‘better’ by making it even more abstract… was uh, something. I literally just went there looking for eights, saw the gravestones, saw the dots, and started XOR-ing. I also messed up and had to go back to include the two rows without dots, but honestly this was one of the easier ones to see/figure out for me. Binary was definitely one of the weakest areas anyway, but idk, I gave it a pass during my playthrough because - although the rule itself is disappointingly basic - I did appreciate the attempt to make more interesting/challenging puzzles by changing direction.

Hello, for the binary puzzle, you missed a part where the rules of dotless 0/1s are introduced. Including them will clarify the tombstone puzzles to have a unique way of interpretation.

12:45 The brown and green lily pads actually draw the grid for that puzzle, which in the building is continued by darf floorboards horizontally and the floorboards' seams vertically

The editing in to visualise the puzzles is rlly well done and was extremely helpful

5:37 response; I mean, the upper gravestones ARE mirrored, so it doesn't matter where the dot would be, you'd read the same value either way...

Thank you for editing in an image of the grid while the puzzles were being solved. It really helped visualize your genus.

Great series, I played this alongside you and it’s always fun to watch you zip right through puzzles that I really struggled on. Your puzzling skills always impress me.

Great editing on puzzle explanation, realy helped following your thought process Keep it on

Tyler! I really enjoyed this series a lot. When you announced that you'd be doing something extra exciting and a great series was on its way I really didn't think it was going to be this great. These puzzles were fun and enjoyable to watch you solve and as always I appreciated your commentary about your thought process. A game this great always comes with the weight of concern to find another one just as good. Looking forward to future plans.

I really liked this game, while all of the puzzle rules weren't perfect, the puzzles that did have good mechanics were REALLY good. Really enjoyed watching you play this, was always a good start to my day. Keep up the great work!

When you're so soon the video isn't even 1080p yet.

Loved this series! I realy enjoy your puzzle game content. One of my favorite creators

Was anyone else madly refreshing to watch at midnight?!

I love the visuals next to the puzzle that make it easier to interpret what you’re solving.

I’m surprised you didn’t notice the darker lily pads making the grid for the dots puzzle.

It has been a fantastic adventure watching your struggles with this game. Great time spent. Thank you and hope for more good games :)

For the binary puzzle, the reason it also Used those other two was similar to the binary section below the snow area between Binary and Trees. That had lines without the dot. Although I do agree that the game did not do a good job at showing you how to handle it

If you're a fan of Zelda type games there's this really cool one I played recently called Tunic, the main mechanic is picking up pieces of an instruction book to learn more about the world and yourself, the "final" secret puzzle was one of my favs I've ever done in a game, the combat might not be your Forte but there's an ez mode if you wanna focus on exploration

such a bittersweet finale. i absolutely loved the game and your series on it. the bitter part is, well, it ended. thank you very much for the experience tyler! excited to see what series comes next!

looking it up, the rule for the black and white blocks seems really cool to me, it's a shame it wasn't explained very well

I completely agree with the assessment of the binary puzzle. I'm also confused when I see those 2 rows without the dots... At last I was like f it just try with those 2 in and it's solved... Thanks for introducing this game. Although it's not perfect, I do thoroughly enjoyed my time with it.

Great job at editing this video!

The game gave you the “incorrect solve” sound when you ascended to become a rainbow, perhaps because you didn’t 100% complete at that time. Do you get a different ending if you tried after completing them all?

Loved this series. Will need maybe 5 years or so to forget the specifics before I can play it, and cannot wait for it.

Those final boss puzzles reminded me so much of the ending of Understand! I loved this video series!

34:54 well, that was quick "thank you"

This was a great game and a great playthrough! Well done You and Metthew VanDevander. One of the greatest puzzle games and environment since a long time.

Thanks a lot for letting me know about this game! It is surely one of the best games I have played recently. I wish more cool games inspired by the Witness existed :)

Tyler, your gameplay of Taiji has inspired me to play the game myself! I'll be using your puzzle recreation grids for the true ending puzzle grids, as I'm not that investigative.

Can't wait to see what's next for this

If you think about it, the flower petals in Taiji is kinda similar to doritos puzzle

the editing in this video is so perfect

Beautiful and smart game. Loved the gameplay. :)

My thoughts about the binary section is that Tyler was used to see puzzles EVERYWHERE because of (or thanks to) The Witness, while Taiji had the tombstones that were clearly 1s and 0s and he searched for anything that could look like a puzzle, he went in too deep. I actually also had an issue when I first played it : I saw the tombstone and tried to solve it without taking the points into account because I'm blind/dumb. Anyway, awesome game, but there are some solutions that felt far fetched.

This game was fun. I loved some of these puzzles, especially the ones involving the diamonds and flowers. I would recommend you all to buy this game, but if you watched the whole series, then I'm pretty sure all of the puzzles got spoiled. However, in the Taiji subreddit, it looks like someone made a Taiji puzzle editor for windows, so feel free to take a look and maybe make your own puzzle. Honestly, I haven't looked at it so I don't know how it works, but if you can make and share Taiji puzzles then that'll be incredible.

How fitting that the last two ones were the tutorial(I think) Excellent series

Great vid honestly. I definitely have watched the whole thing

This game just made me discover my love for environmental puzzles, and I now want to make similar puzzles like this.

Very great series

For the dots environmental puzzle, the darker lily pads are supposed to indicate the grid. Great series though, love all the puzzle games you play! Keep up the great work!

I found your channel from the Backpack Hero videos. Love the content. I finished all The Room games over the last couple months. I'm going to have to see how you work through them. I'm surprised you haven't tackled Return of the Obra Dinn on here yet.

yo always wanted to say your vids are amazing

Usually I’d rate your videos 10/10, but I think its more fitting to rate this one 445/445!

Great game and great video series

Hey Tyler, the puzzle that gets you to the secret under the starting mountain is solved by observing the shape of the island next to the switch (Dark inverted L, implying that the bottom left two are lit)

the 3 extra binary puzzles, the bigger ones further down the mountain, had already clarified, that if a line is mirrorable, it dosn't require a dot. The 2 gravestone lines without dots were indeed mirrorable, therefore having valid dot usage.

it's time to W I D E N our knowledge -Tyler

About 13:07 (Dots Meta Puzzle) You can notice that some pods on water is darker shade than others. And if you look how are they placed you can notice that they actually make grid

Graphical quality may be lacking(360p), but I remain in watchtime to pump those algorithmic numbers up

amazing game, great series

Wow the inspiration to end the game at the starting position is bone-chilling

For the dots, the grid is the entire lake

Nice puzzles solving

I love this channel

those solar panels triggered Tyler's ptsd

12:47 some of the lilypads are darker than the others and make a grid

12:50 The darker lilly pads seem to make out a grid. But probably hard to see if you don't see color very well

It would be really sick to see you make a teir list of puzzle games.

The amount of heads and faces within the environment

I'm watching your videos for a while now, and I'm also watching some old series like Inscryption and Baba is You. I want to say that for me, that don't have English as my native language, you speak in a way that is SO easy to understand

28:50 brother it took multiple episodes for you to get back to it and understand 😂😂😂 this was hilarious considering you edit 2 EPs ago saying: bet how long it wi take me. Lol

Somebody goes to the palace with fine art, somebody goes to the mine. Business as usual.

Anyone else's stuck in 360p? I'll still watch it don't get me wrong lol

“The middle absolutely represents the middle” even if it’s not about the puzzle, that’s just straight up facts

I just realised that in the dot section, the lily pads tell you what the gird is. The dark lily pads tell you where the squares are

The environment on the 31 minute Mark looks like the top of a head

If even Tyler has trouble with it then say bye bye to my brain

dang the 360p goes crazy

i just fucking lost it and im only at the tree splitting part, that is insane!

6:34 it does not matter if those 2 rows have or not a dot, since those are both symmetrical... :)

Now I need to know the rules of those black and white block puzzle, and if it's to observe something, where? I don't think Tyler ever mentioned the rule explicitly?

you have/ are a wonderful editor

Gotta say, ironically enough, the binary section feels kinda like decoding binary. A little complicated to figure out how to do yet once you understand it, it's basically the same thing every time, no problem solving needed. Unlike the binary section though, decoding binary has a vast array of applications, for example ascii encoding, logic gates, binary addition, floating point algebra etc. but the only interesting quirks present in the binary section were triple (or higher if you include the secret) stacking, overlapped characters and the dot thing which, as you said, isn't even consistent in the secret. It feels like they're could've been so much more added to it like more rows for different rules, different dot symbols for when a row was meant to be counted twice, numbers in hints hidden and you have to figure out what the numbers would be using, for example, diamond symbols on the answer grid. They could've even made a meta mechanic where the answer row itself is a hint for the solution. Instead it kinda just feels like a mechanic that had so much potential but didn't really go anywhere and dragged out its path as long as it could.

full map puzzles. wow

In the Dots area the Lilly pads showed you the grid layout

At the dots with the house: the darker boards and lily pads and rocks created the grid

Therapist: Long aliensrock can’t hurt you Long aliensrock: 21:32

In case you were wondering how to tell the rows of the shrine puzzle... ...you can see the grid lines in the dark green lilypads

Good video, watched on 500x speed

and thus, the souls have returned to their places as they are freed once again

26:08 There are faces everywhere in this game it seems.

Reading the binary puzzles as “oh just count the 1s in each column” isn’t really doing it justice. The way I thought of it, which while technically equivalent was quite a different perspective, was to toggle each cell corresponding to a 1, and repeating that for each line. Ofc i eyeballed it mostly because i thought through and realized the odd number of 1s thing or whatever. But it helped a lot in making the hard puzzles more sensible. I also didn’t struggle nearly as much at seeing the intended environmental puzzle solution. I knew I was looking for lines of 8 gravestones, and while the top 2 didn’t have any dots, while I was trying to figure out which side they’d be on I realized they’re both symmetrical - it wouldn’t matter either way. With all perception puzzles ofc the ease of coming to that sort of thing isn’t really something you can have any control over ofc, and I do agree that there were better ways the EP (and the section as a whole) could have been done, I was in no way disappointed by it

16:50 great editing but note to the editor that there is a difference between "blank space" and "4 purple petals" (what you call "zero" in this clip). Without this detail the puzzle doesn't make sense