Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will have challenging puzzles, but also a creative hint system through Indy's camera: 'We don't want you to go to YouTube to look up the solution, because that's immersion-breaking and bad'

In addition to improvisational brawling and sneaking, there's another pillar of the Indiana Jones experience MachineGames wants to lean into with the Great Circle: Puzzle solving. Giant stone gears turning improbable ancient machinery, assorted cups and whether a carpenter would be caught dead holding them, I would expect no less from an outing with Dr. Jones. 

In a conversation with PC Gamer global editor-in-chief Phil Savage at Gamescom, MachineGames creative director Jens Andersson explained how these puzzles will challenge us, but ideally not send us to our phones to Google the solution.

«We need these puzzles to be challenging,» Andersson explained. «We don't want to dumb them down into this kind of cinematic set-piece: You pull the lever and the old mechanics release, it needs to be proper puzzles.»

According to Andersson, the Great Circle will have a large variety of those proper puzzles, which hopefully means we won't get that «ugh, this again» feeling of Half-Life Alyx's hologram minigame or BioShock's blasted pipes. The goal was «finding the balance to make them challenging, but not blocking you,» and Andersson even declared that «Players should never get stuck in this game⁠—then we have failed.»

It's a thorny balance: I like a good puzzle, and I love when a game surprises me, but we've all run into games that are so obtuse, or bring the pacing to such a grinding halt, that scampering off to a handy guide or Reddit thread just makes sense. To head that behavior off, The Great Circle will have optional in-game hints accessible through Indy's camera.

«We have it as a hint system, so if you do get stuck, we don't want you to go to YouTube to look up the solution, because that's immersion-breaking and bad,» said Andersson. «We want to keep you in the game. But we do recognize that skill levels vary. So you can snap a photo of the puzzle, and Indy will help, give you a suggestion, you can keep going if you need more information.»

I like the sound of this