Proverbs at 25%
I've been playing a lot of Proverbs, a sort of minesweeper variant where you complete small puzzles which, together, form the 200+ sections of a single large puzzle grid.
Each section reveals a fragment of a single large pixelated version of the 1559 painting Netherlandish Proverbs, by Bruegel the Elder, a guy I had to learn about in college. That original painting is itself a bit of a stunt - it's covered in images which represent individual proverb phrases, and the viewer is supposed to be guessing which proverb each little person or situation in the image represents.
The game is also a kind of stunt. It sells itself as a casual, time-wastey puzzle game:
Whether you're engrossed in your favourite podcasts or listening to your favourite tunes, Mega Mosaic: Proverbs serves as the perfect backdrop to enhance your experience. Or choose from the soothing built-in lo-fi or renaissance soundtracks.
Dozens of Hours of Addictive Gameplay: Get ready to lose yourself in hours of simple, calming but addictive puzzle-solving, with over 90 achievements to collect!
...but the experience of playing it does not feel particularly simple or chill to me. The image is extremely large, and after 8 hours I'd only completed 25% of it. It's not a Sisyphean task, since you make constant meaningful progress... but it's certainly a preposterously enormous task. The labor of chipping away at it adds a certain edge to the ancient proverbs it's constantly showing you.
The meat on the spit must be basted - Certain things need constant attention
The pig is stabbed through the belly - A foregone conclusion or what is done can not be undone
The proverbs all come with a sort of translation sentence. Sometimes, they still carry an obvious meaning to a modern person, but other times they rely on imagery that is unfamiliar to me, or difficult to clearly parse. Sometimes the explanation sentence is itself so oddly phrased that I'm not sure I fully feel the impact of the proverb myself.
Here hangs the pot - It is the opposite of what it should be
Is it really so strange to hang a pot?! I hang one of my pots sometimes!
There's something fun and cool about how the people of the past can feel simultaneously both very familiar and very alien, and these oddly-phrased proverbs strike very directly at that feeling. The game presents you with one proverb at a time whenever you clear a region containing the main figure or object the proverb refers to. It feels like a minority of the separate puzzle regions contain proverbs, so it's always a bit of a nice surprise when you get one.
Playing this game feels like some kind of bizarre peasant punishment [agreeable]. It feels very fitting that while you're scouring away at a grid with 54000 squares in it, the grid should be chiding you with a constant stream of confusing, half-felt remarks about foolish people being taken for all they're worth, destroying their own wealth, wasting their time, and so on.
It really does feel like the game has tricked you into taking part in some kind of performance art.
But also... it is a relaxing, time-wastey puzzle? For a moment I was shocked to see the Steam page text pitching the game so intently as a casual relaxation puzzle, because the experience of playing it felt so odd to me that I had assumed the developer was in on the joke of its oddness. Upon looking at their other games, however, I'm not sure that's the case.
The dev has released multiple other games with the exact same mechanic as Proverbs, but - as far as I can tell - none of the bizarre edge. There's one themed after Ancient Egypt, with a predictably insistent soundtrack. There's one themed after... the major news stories of 2024?!
For some reason, while I was playing Proverbs, I'd kind of assumed this gameplay was designed in concert with the theme. Want to complete the biggest puzzle grid in the world?! Well, I will torment you with wry head-shaking lessons while you do it. The proverbs themselves are kind of mean. The game is kind of mean?
But it is also just a big pile of numbers meant to give you something to do with your eyes and your hands while your ears are occupied. And I do mostly play it when I need to be at my computer and need to focus on my ears only. If I don't give myself something to do with my hands, I won't be able to concentrate. Over the last month I've been in some very long calls which required sustained, quiet listening from me. If you have for any reason recently called me to tell me about something very complicated going on in your life, I was absolutely playing Proverbs while you told it to me.
I think the lessons here for me are:
a) It is not possible to waste one's time ironically.
b) The dev is not always in on the joke with me.
c) I will continue playing Proverbs.
I read the RPS review after already getting into the game, and it's worth a read. I, too, cannot recommend you play this game. But I simply have no plans to stop.