Understand

It's okay, but I tapped out midway through stage 4-6. It starts out strong, but becomes less about "understand" and more about "guess".
So The Witness is what you're going to compare it to. There's two goals in that game.
1. Understand the rules
2. Solve the puzzles given your understanding of the rules.
But in The Witness, the rules stay the same the whole game and you get the satisfaction of solving puzzles. In Understand, the rules change every single stage. The intro levels to each stage are minimal and follow a pattern that is set up to deceive you. Then by the 5th board comes the predictable curveball "Aha, you actually *don't* understand the rules for this stage!". So you go back to the intro levels to see what incorrect assumption you made, but the intro levels are so tiny there's not much room to experiement or learn more. You eventually do guess correctly and you get the privilege of solving one or two *actual puzzles* before moving on to the next board, with all fresh rules, and the guessing process begins all over.
And to be fair, some of these rules are pretty goofy. The prime number one I actually did get, but god that was a slog. Counting out free spaces on a 8x10 board isn't very fun either.
I like solving puzzles and guessing at rules, but the balance is all out of whack. A game 25% of the length with consistent rules would have been a better choice IMO
One possible course of action is to read the level guide that gives you the rule hints for each stage, and then you can simply enjoy the puzzles. I considered this. Maybe I'll come back to it later.
Overall it's a neat game, and you can't go wrong with the price. I got my money's worth. It's not a bad game, it just overstayed its welcome for my personal taste.

Difficulty : 4.5/5 (Extremely Hard)
Global : 4/5 (Great)
Curator page : Anokturnus
Understand is a minimalist rule-discovery puzzle game inspired by The Witness, the goal is to trace one of the possible correct lines in every puzzle.
The game is divided into 12 worlds, each having its own theme. The levels are sets of puzzles in which you have to figure out how everything works through trial and error. The first puzzle of a level is free, its solution is always indicated in order for you to start making hypotheses right away.
The few puzzles following the first stay small and basic, it's easy to brute force them and they allow you to really start studying the hidden rules. These rules are displayed as dots on the bottom of the screen; when the line you trace respects a rule, the corresponding dot activates.
The puzzles gradually become harder and harder until brute force becomes impossible; the last level always hides the dots, meaning you never know what you did wrong : you always have to understand all the rules if you want to complete a level.
Studying the rules requires you to do a thing that pretty much no other puzzle game asks of you, that is to say to make mistakes on purpose. While it's true that trial and error is a part of this game, this is a different kind of trial and error that rather tests your creativity.
You know the theme of the world, the rules of the previous levels and the solutions of the first few puzzles so you're never trying blindly.
Understand is a very hard game, it will inevitably get frustrating and reaching 100% completion is hell. The game really likes to misdirect you, lots of puzzles are made so that you can't really grasp the subtleties of the rules easily, you often end up "understanding" 80% of a level until it suddenly stops working.
Some puzzles are also purely hard, understanding the rules doesn't mean the level becomes easy... far from it. And that's what's great about this game, it's not just about discovering the rules.
You can get stuck on easy levels because you don't understand the rules, but you can also get stuck on hard levels even if you understand everything.
A simple but extremely effective gameplay, very challenging levels and a wide variety of mechanics, Understand has everything that makes a great puzzle game.
Highly recommended.

If you like The Witness, and you also like puzzle games that are 100% puzzle and 0% presentation, then this will be right up your alley. At times it's a bit more obtuse than The Witness, I found myself getting more stuck. But since there isn't a story, I'm not too annoyed if I can't solve every puzzle. It's fun to keep chipping away at.

Before you start the game, I recommend that you start taking notes on the rules. You don't need notes to play, but I think it helps organize your thoughts, and it feels good to catalog all of the rules.

There's a few later puzzles that took ages to figure out or were maybe a bit too convoluted (like it was easy to stumble into correct solutions to the earlier puzzles in the segment without really learning how to solve the later puzzles in the segment), but besides those this is a pretty solid puzzle game with simple mechanics.

Currently halfway through the game. Actual playtime is 19 hours; I accidentally left game on in the background overnight.

I like how individual puzzles are of medium difficulty and take about 15 minutes to solve, so I can play a puzzle during a short break. Chapters are independent of each other, you don't need to master one thing in order to progress. Level design is very elegant; I like how each chapter has the same number of puzzles and commits to its theme.

Extremely concentrated version of The Witness. Good stuff.

Have you ever taken an online IQ test and then when the test was over instead of wanting to know your score, you were upset because they took your puzzles away? If so, then you are the ideal player for this game.
There are no instructions but it is easy to figure out what the game wants from you. Some levels will come easily and some will stump you enough that you'll need to come back weeks or months later. I wish certain levels weren't way harder than the rest, but maybe a different person would struggle with different ones.
I like the clean design with nothing extra or wasted. The sounds effects are perfect. No complaints.