Filament

Filament is a pathfinding puzzle game set aboard a deserted spaceship. Before their mysterious disappearance, the crew assembled multiple puzzle rooms, where you’ll be pulling a continuous thread around deviously positioned pillars. The game packs a staggering number of challenges, along with a carefully crafted sci-fi atmosphere.

The Alabaster is a research flagship navigating a remote part of the universe. It’s supposed to be operated by a six-person crew, but upon boarding it, you cannot find anyone. You’re only greeted through the intercom by a woman asking you to help her out of a locked compartment. To do so, you interact with “anchor” devices, which give you control of a small robot in self-contained miniature rooms, from a top-down perspective.

The robot rolls out a wire, which needs to be wrapped around every pillar in the room, one by one, in order to unlock the exit. The main restriction is that you cannot cross previously rolled-out wire, so finding the right path around the pillars and the surrounding obstacles can become unexpectedly tricky. On top of that, the game may throw in additional rules, like pairing up pillars of the same color, or coming into contact with a pillar a specific number of times.

This wiring logic is quite unique, and it comes with a sense of open-endedness. Since it’s hard to predict from your first moves whether or not you’ll be able to clear all the pillars, tackling Filament puzzles often involves some trial and error, and the progressive uncovering of a working solution. As you get familiar with this system, you should pick up a few general strategies, slowly building your way towards wrap-around proficiency.

Some of the hard rooms may require a lengthy amount of thinking, however several puzzle series are available from the beginning of the game, so the chance of ending up stuck is rather low. An optional hint system is provided as well, guiding you towards a valid route one pillar at a time. And if you’re searching for distractions besides the anchor rooms, the Alabaster also bears a wealth of hidden codes…

Clearing puzzles unlocks bits of the story, in the form of short email archives or voice recordings. While there are no major events happening up until the end of the game, the narrative design is actually quite rich. The research endeavor recounted in the logs, combined with the detailed, vivid spaceship environments, gives shape to a convincing world. At the same time, the character-focused nature of the retrieved emails brings about a feeling of intimacy with the crew.

This description was written by Oriane Tury.