The Talos Principle
Third party DRM: Steam
This game requires a free Steam account to play.Description
"Best described as Medieval Portal with a deeper narrative, The Talos Principle is able to provide a challenge for veteran and rookie puzzle-solvers alike." [- Hardcore Gamer ]
"The Talos Principle is a philosophical puzzle game that’s as smart as it is beautiful." [- Gamespot ]
"The Talos Principle feels inspired, a calm, thoughtful experience in the midst of the same sorts of video game madness we’ve always had." [- GameFront ]
The Talos Principle is a philosophical first-person puzzle game from Croteam, the creators of the legendary Serious Sam games, written by Tom Jubert (FTL, The Swapper) and Jonas Kyratzes (The Sea Will Claim Everything).
As if awakening from a deep sleep, you find yourself in a strange, contradictory world of ancient ruins and advanced technology. Tasked by your creator with solving a series of increasingly complex puzzles, you must decide whether to have faith, or to ask the difficult questions: Who are you? What is your purpose And what are you going to do about it?
Key Features:
Overcome more than 120 immersive puzzles in a stunning world.
Divert drones, disable turrets, and even replicate time to prove your worth - or to find a way out.
Explore a story about humanity, technology, and civilization. Uncover clues, devise theories, and make up your own mind.
Choose your own path through the game's non-linear world, solving puzzles your way.
But remember: choices have consequences, and somebody's always watching you.
Customer reviews
96
Puzzles, Meta-Puzzles, and Philosophy
storm84 | Aug. 18, 2015 | See all storm84's reviews »Inevitably, any puzzle game these days is going to be compared to Portal. But where Portal zigs, The Talos Princple zags. Like Portal, you are led through a series of puzzles by a strange voice from above. But while Portal goes the comedy route, The Talos Principle uses the setting to throw some serious philosophy at the reader. A surprising amount of the game is taken up by reading fragments of documents on mainframe terminals, and arguing with an AI over the philosophical consistency of your position. Why be good? What does it mean to be human? What is consciousness? There's plenty to ponder while you go from puzzle to puzzle. Some of the puzzles are a little tedious (they require a lot of walking back and forth), but most are challenging and so rewarding to finish. And if the 100-and-something puzzles aren't enough, there's even extra puzzles around and outside of the areas which are much harder to recognise - let alone solve. But there are a couple of issues. For one, the puzzles don't always explain their mechanics. Solving the puzzles are hard enough without also having to factor in how to use the tools to solve the puzzles. This isn't always an issue, but it can be a drag that a few puzzles seem downright impossible. Another issue is the sheer length of the game. While it's great there are so many puzzles, some of them feel like filler that's filling an already oversized game, and the coherence of the story suffers. But these are generally minor faults. One final note is that Elohim comes across as self-important, and really an annoying distraction. Getting the Serious DLC and using the Sam voice gives the game an irreverency a meditation on human nature deserves!
60
Good puzzles, let down by the storytelling
LonM | April 28, 2015 | See all LonM's reviews »The talos principle is a game that has good puzzles, but unfortunately the storytelling lets it down. I should say that I'm not really one for abstract stories. And this game plays heavily on that. The story is told through access terminals, in chunks of text files that have degraded. If you like the sort of slow release story that this mechanic facilitates, then you may well enjoy this game, however it was far too abstract for me. In many situations this story telling method often made the game feel extremely lonely, which is probably what was intended, but similarly, this atmosphere was not for me. If the game had told the story in a slightly more obvious way, and a bit faster, I would have probably quite enjoyed it, because the possibly apocalyptic(?) story that I did manage to piece together seemed quite intriguing. The puzzles in this game, on the other hand, are fairly good. There is a variety of different tools that you can unlock as you progress, and this keep the game moving forwards. There comes a point though, after you unlock all of the tools and play many levels with them, that I found the game began to drag on a bit and the puzzles became very difficult with solutions becoming harder and harder to find. Some of these I solved in a manner that seemed like cheating. And this is of course the point when you must "climb the tower" and move the game on, to keep things interesting. The graphics and sound design in this game are very good. They do a good job of setting the atmosphere and making the environment interesting. There are far too many "minimalist" puzzle games out there, and this game does a good job of breaking that up, while still using simple puzzle mechanics. This game plays well with either a keyboard and mouse or with a controller. The movement, particularly the fast forward, is useful as the environments are very large. Jumping can be tricky as some surfaces seem to just slide you off, when the models don't look as if they should do that, but these are only in edge cases and don't affect the main gameplay. All in all, this is a fairly good game when it comes to puzzles, but the story just lets it down as far as my tastes go.
92
What is life?
riseup | March 10, 2015 | See all riseup's reviews »I was given the chance to review The Talos Principle and right away I asked if this had anything to do with Bethesda’s franchise, The Elder Scrolls. Alas, it didn’t and this set the course for a rather nifty experience with The Talos Principle. I was way off course with my guess by the way! This game labels itself as a philosophical puzzler and right away, I do notice this. There is so much more to this game than meets the eye. Croteam is back after Serious Sam 3 with something far different from Serious Sam. You start off in a garden and you hear the voice of Elohim – the God who has created you. Elohim goes on about what you must do. Your purpose is to solve each puzzle and get the corresponding sigils to unlock tools and new areas within. Taking influence from the excellent series, Portal, the puzzles in The Talos Principle are smart and worthy. The puzzles begin simple enough and slowly become more intricate as you progress through the 15-20 hour campaign. Each and every thing you accomplish in this game comes with a feeling of satisfaction. There were times when I was truly stuck and couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to progress to pick up the next sigil and would have to proceed to something else and let it simmer in the meantime. You are encouraged to come back to puzzles when you’ve cooled off and thought the process through. After solving these puzzles, I noticed visual cues that made things blatantly obvious in how to solve them after the fact. One thing I loved, is how Croteam doesn’t reward you for solving each puzzle. I don’t need to feel rewarded for accomplishing something I’m already doing and that takes away from the task at hand which is trying to solve these puzzles because I want to, not because I want a sense of reward. The Talos Principle tells a tale with some very Biblical undertones and you will learn much if you pay attention to the terminals in place throughout the world. Each terminal reveals something else that will put the bigger picture in place and make sense of what you’re doing in this world. Through emails, MSDOS prompts and questionnaires the story is given to you to digest in just the right amount. After spending time with The Talos Principle, I hope developers take note and borrow influence from this game. I haven’t enjoyed a good puzzle game in a long time and something this fresh and smart I hope will be a benchmark for future titles. The Talos Principle is a lovely surprise coming at the end of 2014. This game world will pull you in and keep you there until the end. I felt completely satisfied finishing this game and putting it to rest at the end of 2014. The Talos Principle is one of my favourite games of 2014 and I recommend it to everyone, for it is a gem to play.
90
Like Portal without the portals!
aiat_gamer | Jan. 31, 2015 | See all aiat_gamer's reviews »From the outset, this game seems very much like Portal. You wake up in an unfamiliar environment surrounded by puzzle rooms with an omnipresent voice cryptically speaking to you. What this game does not have the charm and the comedy of Portal. This does not mean the story is bad though, it is a very deep and philosophical story covering the mere meaning of existence and being alive. The puzzles are really well done although there is no clever mechanics like portals but other than that, they work pretty well. They ramp nicely and new mechanics are gradually introduced. There are some annoyance here and there where the game does not explain some of the mechanics and leaves them for you to figure out but overall, they do a great job of flexing your brain muscles and giving you a great sense of accomplishment when solved. The game runs pretty good, the graphics are really nice to look at, but the music while good, gets repetitive and can get annoying in the long run so I suggest you listen to your own music. If you are a fan of puzzle games, you owe it to your self to play this game, even if you are not, this could be a great entry to the genre!
78
PUZZLES!
Kane987245 | Dec. 7, 2014 | See all Kane987245's reviews »You like puzzles? You like good graphics? Well, this game has got over 120 FREAKING PUZZLES! You'll be spending hours upon hours trying to figure all of this out and all the while giving your brain time to grow it's problem solving skills! You win, your brains wins, the creators make some money, heck EVERYONE WINS! So, do the right thing and challenge you brain today! Pick this fun game up and FEEL the brain grow inside your cranium!