Knotwords analysis

Unlike video games, condemned to an ambiguous existence and in constant struggle, hobbies can stick to their nominal value. As the openings, they have the luxury of conforming to serve for what their name indicates: spend time, kill a ratillo, occupy a space of time that cannot be conquered by other more important or urgent matters. It could almost be considered a revolutionary act to be more than a hobby, now that every minute of the game seems an opportunity for monetization: through Twitch, through YouTube, through the dark honey of that play to earn that threatens fall on our heads. Zach Gage and Jack Schlesinger have already explored the hobby with Good Sudoku, a game that Knotwords could even be continuation; Or spiritual sequel, as they say now.

As Good Sudoku, Knotwords starts from the crossword and gives him a small turn. The grid is divided into different sectors, delimited by a discontinuous line that encloses a certain number of boxes; In the first box of each sector there are several letters, which are the ones you have to place to form, in each vertical and horizontal, valid words. Each puzzle has a single solution; Although in the process of solving one you can reach many words that seem correct, as you get to the end you discover, with joy and surprise, that only one can be left, as in The immortals, and it is not always the one you thought or the one that seemed.

That is Knotwords: a hypervitaminated crossword. He could, following the wake of the previous work of his creators, to be called Good Crossword, and track. It is Solo that, and that is why it is amazing: the beauty and interest of Knotwords come from the very fact of how words cross and collide, how horizontal form other verticals without you intervene or disagree, how some words prevent the I pass others or reach dead ends that force you to rethink the entire board. Facing the blank puzzle is always an exciting experience; Anything can happen in the next three, four, ten, fifteen minutes. It is a hobby and does nothing to camouflage it; Nor does it carry it with pride; It is simply.

That does not celebrate its category does not mean that there is nothing to celebrate, or that it is neglected or notice little. Nothing is further from reality: it is, like Good Sudoku, a pleasure to manipulate Knotwords, notice its vibration in the fingers, get headed in the magnificent environments that the soundtrack creates, irresistible. He has some charm normcore of Jupiter's Picross and some of the friendly and playful design of Nitrome or Part Time Ufo games; Touching the menus buttons is glad, but above all it is interacting with the board by placing letters through its simple interface, to the Wordle (I imagine that replicating that success would be welcome; the creator of Wordle is one of the aforementioned On Knotwords Steam page, in fact), and seeing how the game gives us the words with a flash or encourages us to continue looking for a blunt but never definitive red tachón. (It is also possible to play without any indication, but in general I think they are doing well; they are very well integrated in the flow most tangible experience of scribbling the role of a newspaper or those self -defined magazines that we take to the beach, giving a very interesting physical presence to the grid.

There is something like a monetization system, very little aggressive but somewhat more complex than that of Good Sudoku. The download is free; You download it and now. (The Steam version is paid: ten euros.) This basic download gives you access to thirty puzzles that are renewed month by month; To the elderly, there is a daily puzzle, something more complicated and that can only be played in the day. There is a pro version that you can subscribe for five and a half euros, which are paid annually. This subscription gives access to thirty additional monthly puzzles, another newspaper and the archive of all puzzles that have been published so far, which are already a few but will be more over time. Five euros with something is not a lot of Good Sudoku; The subscription is a very unnecessary headache, yes, which can be fled paying the eleven and peak that unlock the full version, a unique payment that gives you access to all Knotwords, now and forever.

I, for closing, stay with the free version. Moreover, if there were a more limited, stricter in its narrows, I would go for that. One that only lets me play a puzzle a day, as in Wordle. I would do it throughout the morning, maybe I would end up after eating and then I would spend the whole afternoon thinking about the words I have crossed, the right ones but also the wrong ones. It is not very different from what I already do, in fact. The other day I arrived, by mistake, the silly word; Obviously it was not correct, but I put it for the laughs, in case the developers were seeing me for a little hole and let out a laugh like me. (I don't think they speak Spanish; the game, by the way, is in English.) Once I got together in the same horizontal ah, eh and oh, which may seem the same but they are not. (In the end it was He.) Navigating the definitions of the unusual words that appear in Los Puzzles is a pleasure in itself, of course. Once I formed the word rappe, and it was sincerely uncomfortable to meet her in a hobby like this; It turns out that it is also told the rapeseed, the rape, although in the end the correct word was another. Anyway. Nothing that goes beyond the tiny, of the private, of the anecdotal, but the feeling of completing one of these Knotwords Puzzles (knotters?) It reminds me a lot of solving a picross board and seeing how the Drawing: It is not much, but at that precise moment there is nothing in the most important and crucial world, more definitive and divine than that piece of sushi of ten by ten pixels that a second ago was a knead of points and now you can almost get into in the mouth. The same goes for the letters, which can be anything but are specified in a few specific words, those and not others; It is a miracle that we give of course, and that is why there is no more than games that put it in front of us, like Knotwords. That beauty is not seen if you are looking for it: you have to catch your time, killing a ratillo, doing nothing important.

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