I do love a puzzle game all about learning rules through doing, rather than having thins spelled out to you, and Lingo fulfills the brief for this very well. It's all about words and the (mainly) cubes you have to fill in have a bunch of different rules attached to them based on pretty much everything about them.

Some of the puzzles are a bit hit or miss, either with multiple solutions or answers that don't quite fit the rule but I suppose that's kind of to be expected with around 2000+ puzzles across multiple levels. Generally it's a good time, and presented a number of Eureka moments when away from the game.

The game does have a big downside though and that's the map. Portals I can deal with, non-Euclidean geometry I cannot - too many times you're thrown around in circles or ending up back where you started just from a little exploration, and for me brought about a very uneasy nausea. It's worse in some levels than others (and there's one at the very end that I immediately noped out of) but it left such a sour note as even with basic colour blocks and cubes, I think it would have been a fun map to just be able to explore normally.

Hear me out: this is the best puzzle game of all time

Ok not really. But it is way better than I was expecting. I'm not really exaggerating though - there were times where I felt like it was the best puzzle game of all time. Some of these individual puzzles are blindingly creative and the way all the mechanics work together is incredibly well thought out and fun to decipher.

Heavily inspired by The Witness and Antichamber, but I really wish it was more of the former and less of the latter. I don't think the non-Euclidean layout adds anything to the game and serves only to frustrate the player. It doesn't work with the word puzzles in most cases and just makes it difficult to navigate.

My other big complaint is that your objective is kind of unclear the whole time. You basically spend your entire playthrough running around aimlessly in search of new areas and puzzles, which isn't the worst thing ever, but it's a little worse than if I knew what I was working towards. Compare the lasers/mountain from The Witness; there's nothing like that here, not that clear anyway.

But I seriously can't stress enough how good the puzzles in this are. The extremely simple clue/answer word puzzle format is pushed to its absolute limits and I'm genuinely in awe of the creativity on display. I haven't even really dug into level 2 (a post-release expansion that stands alone from the original game, but is included in it), but what I've seen of it has been very clever as well. I want to try out the community maps too.

If you like puzzles, I really strongly recommend this game. If you liked The Witness, I recommend it even more (but don't expect something quite that good).