So, an update, if anyone’s interested: I’m now down to only four environmental puzzles yet to be found. One is on the town monolith, and appears to be somewhere in the vicinity of the starting area. One is on the shrine monolith, and there’s a very narrow slice of land where it could be, given the facing of the monolith, and given that too far in that direction would put it on the mountain monolith, instead. And two are on the mountain monolith, and appear to be somewhere in the vicinity of the polyomino marsh. There’s one there that I’ve suspected for a long time, but have never been able to get work, and it might just be useless residue from a different puzzle (i.e., the circle is real, and there are two paths from it, but maybe one of the paths just doesn’t lead to a valid endpoint at all). I have no idea what the other one would be.
Of the four panels I’m still missing, presumably three are the three above the timed-challenge vault, that change with the beat of the music (I got the challenge without those due to a bug). Which probably leaves one loose triangle-puzzle somewhere. I did stumble upon a method for finding where unsolved loose triangle-puzzles are, but it’s still tedious to find it and put it in context.
I think I’ll consider myself done once I get all the environmentals, and probably not worry about that last panel (nor about the many, many audios I’ve missed).
So, just to put some closure on this: I looked up hints on the last three environmental puzzles, and of course immediately regretted it, because now there’s nothing left to do in the game. One of them (in the starting area), I probably would have found eventually, if I kept at it. One of the ones in the marsh was based on something that I can’t believe I never noticed, even though I had plenty of opportunity to notice it. And the last one in the marsh, I was correct in my guess of where it was, and on some of the environmental elements that were involved, but I kept bashing my head against it from the wrong vantage point, and the real solution turned out to be related to a puzzle I’d already done.
I dunno; The Witness was great, but since then, Blow has come out as a stark raving looney. And a game ten years in the making is never a good sign. I’ll wait for the reviews on this one.
The most obvious sign was, when Trump was elected, he posted how it was a sign that nature was beginning to heal. Which, yes, one post, but that’s loony on multiple levels.
It’s better. No randomization. Everything is laid out and consistent. It requires a tremendous amount of thought. My wife and I had a notebook to make physical models at one point.