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Filament is a puzzle game that'll light up your life
J
John Walker
In Filament, you play the role of a silent character who is dubbed “Pluto” by an unseen second voice whom you are rescuing. Seemingly trapped on a large space station, this individual speaks to you over the ship’s intercoms; though she's grateful for your help, she sassily critiques her situation. Your role is to fix a whole bunch of computers by threading wires.
However, it’s much more fun and tactile than that description suggests. While the hub of the game has you moving about the ship, finding special items and piecing together a mystery, the puzzles take place in miniature. Here you take control of a teeny little robot chap, who extends out an infinite stretch of thick wire behind him as you run him around the 3D "rooms." The goal is to have the wire touch every unlit column in a puzzle by looping around them or running past them, but without blocking the path of the robo-dude. Imagine a board covered in pegs where you need to run a string around each without ever crossing your own path, and you'll have a good idea of what this looks like.
God, this is harder to describe than to look at, so look at the above screenshot. It’s that.
Of course, the longer you play, the more complex the puzzling becomes. For the first few groups of levels (most computers, doors, etc, require you to solve five thematic puzzles in a row), you’re simply looking to find a route around the columns that allows you to run the wire against each without blocking the bot from being able to leave the level. But things quickly become more complicated, with new obstacles or requirements introduced as you go along.
Head off down one particular corridor of the ship and you’ll find puzzles that require you to avoid “negative” columns which, if touched, will remove all power from your wire. Choose another direction and you’ll eventually discover some more colorful challenges where you need to light up adjacent columns of matching colors, which make for much more involved patterns.
For me, Filament really shines (sorry) when the puzzles are small but tricky, rather than large and unwieldy. Rooms where there are nine or 10 columns to light up often feel like they demand experimental guesswork rather than cunning deduction. It’s a much more rewarding experience when the numbers of columns are lower, but the means to find a workable route come as a result of thinking hard. Also, an in-game hint system has been added since release, which saves you from crawling shame-faced to YouTube.
It’s a real treat that all these puzzles come with a solid overworld and justification for their existence, rather than just some throwaway story that interrupts your flow. Solving puzzles to open a door to reach a new area—and find more information and story—is extra rewarding. Filament is a step above in every way.
Oh, and that tutorial! There’s a level that explains how the game’s rewind mechanic works, and it does so by crafting a puzzle so clever it absolutely guarantees you’ll make a mistake that needs to be rewound. From that early point, you know you’re in good hands.
Filament is available on the Epic Games Store.