Proverbs at 65%
I wrote previously about the preposterous puzzle game Proverbs, a gigantic grid of 54,000 squares which, when solved, gradually reveal a pixel art version of Bruegel the Elder's "Netherlandish Proverbs".
I've now completed 65% of the puzzle. Here is my work so far:
I don't play this game as often as I used to, because I'm extremely busy these days working on multiple games at once. However, it remains an interesting time-sink for me when I'm looking for something to do with my hands and half of my brain.
The experience of playing it remains a strange kind of performance-art-esque endeavor. I still routinely uncover proverbs which feel like an insult, or which are so strange I don't fully understand what they're meant to communicate.
I do fully expect to finish this game at some point. Having taken four months to complete this much, I can't recommend doing it any faster than I'm doing it. The RPS review I mentioned in my earlier blog post now stands out as a particularly deranged [complimentary?] text, because anyone who played as much of it as quickly as Graham did must either be in a dark place mentally - or be about to enter one, as Graham describes!!
It's been over a month since I finished Proverbs and I'm better now. Would I recommend anyone play it? I don't know! It is £7.49 for 35 hours of smooth-brained entertainment and/or makework, depending on your perspective. It's an anti-social jigsaw, a craft project that is not an act of creation but of erasure, a time skip to Monday morning. I don't know if I should recommend Proverbs to you or warn you to steer clear and to avoid flowing away forever.