Quick Look: Mind: Path to Thalamus

This really opened my eye to what makes him tick.

I had to take a massive hamster ball into the darkness this morning.

IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. ...Because, uhh, I don't.

"rhombus is a shape"

Looks neat, but that voice acting is... ooof.

I need a Drew endurance run for Riven soooo bad.

How can they not know the thalamus is a very important part of the brain?
How can they not recognize the body (soma) of a neuron in the "hamsterball"?
How they not recognize that the bramble are axons and dendrites (dendros = tree)?
How can they not recognize the tree-lady (daphne)?

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!

Is this the Kingdom Hearts for a Western audience?

Sometimes watching Quick Looks makes me mad when they just don't get what they are supposed to do in the game. ._.

Are the people talking in the background part of the game or is that from their office? It's weird, first time I really noticed in anything.

Yes!!! Drew and Dan are at it again!

When they were walking on the synapses and Drew asked "So Dan, you ever take any uh. . ." I thought he was going to ask about drugs, not college courses haha.

I have never seen Twister.

"Rhombus is a shape."

I'm already in stitches.

is it a rule that giant bomb can only hire people who are completely defunct at puzzle games

Team Double D is on the case again!

Dan and Drew are proving to be the new QL power team. Also this game looks really cool.

This game is like walking through some Progressive Rock artwork.

Dan and Drew are quickly becoming my favorite Quick Look team.

Haha they could've gone a bit further but I know GB staff and puzzle games are not the best. Dan always surprising, him being into psychology like me. I'm much farther, and there is more weather and day/night shifting stuff. More open areas. The views are just so breathtaking and the puzzles get trickier.

Here is where I'm at.

I'm assuming the hamster ball needs to be left in the grass so the glowy thing stays at the end of the platform for you to pick it up.

I was actually super impressed by how good this game looks (fantastic intro), but the utterly boring cave part and the overall depressiveness killed all my early excitement for this game. It looks really cool and inspiring, kudos to the developer, but carrying a glowing hamsterball from point A to point B (in order to progress) isn't really that interesting to me.

The part with the mirrors was okay, but I feel like this game would be even better without the puzzles. Some games don't need gameplay just for the sake of it. I think this is one of those games.

I am all for this new trend of "Drew and Dan play some weird game they found".

Gorgeous.

I'm getting really bored of PC indie game Quick Looks.

It's always fantastic to see work by animators and designers who understand that the visual work they do does not need to be constrained by the limitations or expectations of a normal, physical world.

I just wish the narration weren't holding it down; it seems like the game's mind trip would be much more powerful and engaging if it weren't so grounded by a fictional person's straightforward thoughts about his own life and history. Grounding and somebody else's very rational thoughts are just about the last things I want from surrealist exploration.

Sure, because we are smack right in the middle of a furious release season with a ton to play....

Please. What could possibly be wrong with getting a look at some of the creative and crazy things that are coming out that wouldn't normally get the time of day? If you're tired of it don't watch it? Seems pretty simple.

The art in this is amazing, but I don't like the puzzle design or the narration.

This game looks like its a mix of the sort of atmospheric walking simulation of Dear Esther with the abstract puzzles of MYST

Hey I hear Drew's never been to Spain, but has he been to Oklahoma?

Between this and the discussion of Keats in the Eidolon Quick Look, I feel like Giant Bomb's really been educational software all along. GIANT BOMB IS THE MATH BLASTER OF WEBSITES

@antime said:

Yes, thalamus is a real thing.

See, this person gets me. Fuck, I feel like playing some Retrograde now.

Drew dropping that Dude, Where's My Car knowledge :D

Rush Album Covers: The Video Game

Drew and Dan yet again make a great video. They're an awesome pair for anything weird or terrible.

The game looks very cool, but the self-indulgent nonsense being spewed out as "story" or "character development" is awful. There are infinitely better ways to tell a story than have a voice actor read vaguely philosophical tripe a paragraph (or ten) at a time.

Just leave the ball in the grass and go pick up the other one that appears on the bridge. Took me like a second to figure it out. The game is awesome. I recommend it if you're a puzzle game fan. You need to be patient though because you spend a lot of time walking around in order to figure out the puzzles.

Tongue taco, eh?

@assinass: The trailer you posted on the Eidolon QL got me interested in this, and now this QL (well, with the exception of that last bit...) has me really interested. I liked the part where they had to look at the reflections to see where they could actually walk.

Quick Look: Movie References!

As incredibly pretty this game is, I can't shake the feeling that it's just Dear Esther with considerably worse writing. And when I talk about Dear Esther, I only talk about the writing.

Those visuals are pretty damn incredible. It's a shame that the narration is so overbearing and poorly voiced. The reflection stuff for the earlier puzzles seemed neat but I'm afraid the game might end up boiling down to being very straight forward in its puzzle design. Hard to keep that level of originality of the first puzzle through variation later on. Still, props to the single guy who is responsible for this.

All the references to Twister and the reference to Fight Club make me love this QL even more.

well why not enlighten us with the explanation?

"Rhombus... is a shape, that's not part of your brain" Never change Dan <3 Super funny in this.

Drew and Dan working hard and doing a great job. Enjoying this combo playing weird games.

I really like Dan / Drew quick looks. Also I was in one of those giant hamster balls in water at a fair last weekend.... continuously ate it. I have no clue how people can control them.

Dan Ryckert's understanding of Plato isn't all the way there but it's better than I expected.

Why isn't Jason ever in the quick looks for real? :[

Maybe he doesn't want to be?

@sleepydoughnut said:

Yeah, maybe.

"If you put the hamster ball in the true detective it made the dome go away." - Dan Ryckert

Zoltan is the chameleon guy from GI Joe...

As I was typing this, Dan got it.

No wait... Is he "Zoltar"?

Wait, bouncy castles? I thought Americans called them bounce houses.