When Alice Bee selected thriller-puzzler The Tartarus Key as this month’s RPS Game Club pick, I naively signed up for it thinking I’d be fine tackling a game where most puzzles can’t be solved with a few trigger pulls. So, I did the smart thing and roped in my pal Ed. Yes, my pal is also called Ed, so parts of this post sound like I’m referring to myself in the third-person. This isn’t the case, but if you’d like to imagine that I, in fact, solved the puzzles myself, then please feel free to do so.
My pal Ed is very smart and enjoys puzzlers, so I manned the controls while he watched through a Discord live stream. And we had a grand time! I genuinely believe – other than myself having to do minimal work – that puzzle games set in escape rooms are secretly/absolutely the best co-op games around.
One of my favourite things about playing a puzzler with a pal is gaining a better understanding of how clever they actually are. I mean, I knew Ed was a bright spark already, having been friends with him for well over a decade. But it’s quite something to wander into a puzzle and just not understand how it works at all, then either hear Ed slowly piece it together or, following a period of silence, say, “let’s try this” – only for it to be the correct solution. Sometimes, I am just a disembodied collection of limbs puppeteered by Ed’s suggestions.
Perhaps the most rewarding thing is stepping into a puzzle where you’re able to contribute, or at least chuck some suggestions into the shared mind attic you’ve filled with clues up to that point. The Tartarus Key is a great sequence of underground labs or suspect libraries where, more often than not, you can get into a rhythm of scanning a room for notable objects, popping them in your inventory, giving them a twirl or a flip, then seeing how they fit into the solution as a whole.
And while many of the game’s puzzles are absolute nails, I would say some of the finest solutions lie in cracking (getting Ed to crack) the very trickiest of the bunch. Mainly because the toughest puzzles don’t always have the most obvious connections, and the game doesn’t help you out, really. The room might contain a keypad, a grid under a rug, some cocktail recipes in your backpocket, and some symbols etched into wood. The game is happy having presented you with all the tools and just as happy watching you squirm. What makes it a co-op dream is the constant veer from X to Y, and having a clever soundboard for your thoughts who might respond with something you would never have thought of.
Having Ed there also forced me not to quit like a big baby, because there was an unspoken understanding that we were hanging out playing a game together. And I’d be lying if there wasn’t a part of me that was worried The Tartarus Key would either be too tricky or just plain boring, to the point where I’d have to break the news to Ed that I really wasn’t invested in it and he’d have to endure me exiting Steam and like, engaging in actual conversation with him. Nope, my worries were unfounded, as the game genuinely had me hooked from the beginning – and we’re already planning our next sesh.
