On the last 2 Bombcasts, both Jeff and Brad have made references to there being standout "HOLY SHIT" moments and the game "going far deeper than you thought it went". While there have definitely been "oh hey, that's clever", "ohhhhh now I get it", and even a few "go fuck yourself, Jonathan Blow" moments, I can't think of anything that quite match up to Jeff & Brad's descriptions.

I'll put parts that I THINK might be the moments in spoiler tags, but let's just assume that this thread will be anything goes when it comes to spoilers.

What I think might be Jeff's "OH SHIT" moment: The sound stuff in the Jungle area? Do you think the sequence where you're solving puzzles that require listening to ambient bird noises and then the game starts playing phones ringing was the moment that Jeff talked about as "not something that other games HAVEN'T done, but something wild that he didn't expect this game to do"? Similarly, toward the end of that area when it starts playing an audio clip from a nature documentary or something. I say "or something" because I happened to completely coincidentally have the same surprise happen outside the game at the exact same time. I had a window open with a Twitch stream that hadn't started yet, but RIGHT as the surprise nature documentary clip began, the stream started to play techno dance music. I didn't even realize until later that the music WASN'T part of the game. I still think "bird, bird, bird, Euro-dance beats" is funnier than "bird, bird, bird, documentary"

What I think might be the "this game has more than you thought": Maybe they're talking about the environmental pattern things (the "+__" stat)? That stuff is certainly fun to look for, and was cool to discover, but I don't know if it's as "next level" as whatever it is they were describing.

Something that could be THE THING but I haven't seen all of it yet: The motherfucking Hall of the Mountain King area. I've gotten TO the area, and I've banged my head against it for a few hours (which may itself be "the moment). But I haven't beaten it yet. So maybe whatever you get or learn for beating that gauntlet of puzzles is the huge revelatory moment.

My moments (so many spoilers):

And, of course, The Pee Jar

Before I start, I should note that I'm like a year behind on the Bombcast, so I don't know what they've said about the game or how they conveyed it.

Definitely all of these for me. I think the first environmental puzzle is a great one too, but I actually saw mine and had that moment while watching the QL the day before the game came out, not in the game itself, so I went and confirmed it within the first 10 minutes of me playing the game. It was actually completely crazy to me to see people getting 150, 200, 300, even 400 puzzles into the game and saying "Yeah, my save file says I'm up to 323 puzzles, but I don't know what this +10 stuff you guys are on about is."

A lot of the panels/areas have clever or interesting tricks to them that they deploy just when you think you've finally built solid ground in the ruleset; so many so that it would take entirely too long for me to list all of them.

I think realizing the nature of the lake was a fun one. I know it's been done in games before (Dark Souls 2 comes to mind immediately, though it's certainly not as detailed as the one here), but I'm a sucker for that concept.

Personally, I actually really, really liked the credits/secret ending sequence. It was nothing mind-blowing, but it helped me put into words something that's probably gone through my mind a few times. I also thought the audio logs in the challenge area did a great job of re-framing all of the other quotes and videos in the game. They went from philosophical musings from Jonathan Blow (which I thought were easy enough to ignore but wasn't annoyed by or anything) to something much more.

Again, it wasn't a HOLY SHIT moment, but I was really captivated by the 4th video in the theater (the one you get from the challenge area). It made me reminisce about my time in college, listening to lectures/guest speakers. It made me think about wanting to search out other talks and lectures; not necessarily to expand my worldview or anything, but just because the concept of caring and being so passionate about something that you're willing and eager to spend time to structure and memorize a public lecture about it is fascinating to me. Certainly not a message that the game is trying to convey, but I guess the game and this section were more of a catalyst to help me explore my thoughts internally. 99% of the games I play, shows or movies I watch, books or articles I read, lectures or talks I've heard, etc., never really speak to me enough to make me want to actually pause and reflect on them or their message during or after the fact; generally I'm just along for the ride. Maybe that's part of why I like this game so much; not only are the gameplay design, mechanics, and sensibilities so totally, exactly what I want out of a game, but the game actually caused me to want to think about the nature of things a lot more than pretty much any other media I've ever consumed.

You have to understand the sort of vacuum I was playing this game in, having gotten a review copy two Fridays before launch when there was effectively zero information available about what was in the game. So every little discovery felt like it opened up a huge range of new possibilities, since I had no sense whatsoever of the game's boundaries and limitations. (I didn't even talk to other reviewers about it until I was close to the endgame.) As such, things that seemed enormously profound to me at the time may have come off as a bit more rote for people who were playing it after release, once the collective information about the contents of the game were starting to coalesce. Hard to say at this point.

@brad: I totally get that. I hope I didn't come off sounding overly critical or dismissive of you guys (that certainly wasn't my intention). It just sounded to me like there might have been one or two specific moments you guys had in mind that I hadn't found yet.

I'm still a little curious about the moment Jeff talked about last week (well, a week and a half ago at this point).

@brad: I was so far ahead of all my friends that I was effectively in the same position.

I'm still well past them, and can't even talk to them about why In the Hall of the Mountain King will probably send me into a rage the next time I hear it.