The Long Gate from Inductance and David Shaw is a first-person puzzle game on Nintendo Switch. Check our The Long Gate review!

 

The Long Gate from Inductance and David Shaw is a first-person puzzle game on Nintendo Switch. There’s not much of a story for The Long Gate, and the game won’t be holding your hand during your journey, even in the easiest setting. You’ll have to make good use of any knowledge or skills you might have that can allow you to use binary and decipher puzzles that rely on an interconnected web of equations. Is a door closed? Then you need to make a change so that the circuit reads differently, so that, say, the output matches the required binary setting so that a switch is moved onto the on setting. This sounds simple at first, but as more variables are introduced and puzzles ask that previous puzzles in the array are solved before you can even try to comprehend what it’s asking of you, it becomes clear this one won’t be for everyone.

 

The game offers three difficulty settings so that more gamers can take it for a spin. The Normal difficulty is the standard option that balances things out for you to take on a good challenge. If you, for some reason, feel this is not hard enough, you can bump things up to Engineer, which will almost require you to have proper knowledge in the field to reach the end credits. It’s probably more likely that you will – at times – feel that the game requires you to use skills and knowledge you do not possess, so you can select the Extra Nudge difficulty setting, which will add some gentle tips here and there to, well, nudge you in the right direction.

 

Since this is a first-person puzzle experience, you’ll walk around with the left analog stick or the D-Pad, moving the camera as needed with the right one. If you want to run, you can press in on the left analog stick. You can jump with the B button or crouch with the Y button. To interact with objects and puzzles, you will need to press the L or A buttons. For some objects, you can trigger a secondary interaction by pressing the R or X button, usually only when holding an object.

 

The difficulty will ramp up at a steady pace, with new elements added at a steady pace. Sure, you might feel smart enough when you push a switch here, use an AND or an OR block here and there to set how the circuit will work, but when you need to take into consideration the binary for different switches that must be powered, one after the other depending on how each of the block variables is used and how you extend the power range of some circuits with other parts. Not all puzzles will need you to use all of the objects in the area, so you’ll also need to pay attention to the visual cues in each location.

The Long Gate is either going to click with you, or it’s going to feel like an overwhelming puzzle experience. There is, unfortunately, no middle ground for this one since it’s a very challenging puzzle game, even in the easier setting. The Portal-like gun you get at the start of the game – which does not perform in the way the Portal gun does – has a bunch of zeroes at the beginning of your journey, but it won’t stay that way forever. Some puzzles will require that you change the numbers on this attachment to a specific binary sequence that will then be used to solve the next set of puzzles, so you’re either going to get and love this one, or you’re going to be left scratching your head. The Long Gate is out on Nintendo Switch with a $14.99 asking price.

Disclaimer
This The Long Gate review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy provided by Inductance.