Free-lude: The Talos Principle - Sigils Of Elohim

'Free-lude' - a terrible term never to be used again in reference to a prelude given away for free. Sigils of Elohim is just such a thing, being a puzzle game that you can download and play right now without spending a penny. The video below does a good job of explaining the format of the puzzles, which seem easy enough but will undoubtedly cause me to pummel my keyboard with my fists as they become increasingly complex. I've got about as much spatial awareness as this chap. Success with the sigils will "unlock helpful items and relics within The Talos Principle", which is the philosophical first-person puzzler due from Croteam later this year. Crap at puzzles I may be, but I'll be playing for the writing of Tom Jubert and Jonas Kyratzes, and hoping to blunder through.

You may know Jubert from his work on FTL and The Swapper, while typo-tempting Kyratzes is the writer and co-designer of the Lands of Dreams games, among other things.

That's Elohim, which you can have a bash at right now should you so desire. The main course is below.

It looks exquisite and sounds like it might be a corker.

Assume the role of a sentient artificial intelligence placed within a simulation of humanity’s greatest ruins and linked together through an arcane cathedral. Players are tasked with solving a series of increasingly complex puzzles woven into a metaphysical parable about intelligence and meaning in an inevitably doomed world.

'Increasingly complex puzzles' might well thwart me but I live that metaphysical parable every day. But only after coffee and a cigarette, ensuring that my inevitable doom shall come before that of the world around me.