Puzzle rooms are back with all the familiar tools from the base game! Most were solvable with some thoughtfulness, but the solution wasn't usually instantly obvious, which is exactly what you want.

Half the puzzles in the bonus world were so advanced they entirely broke my brain, but that's fair for an optional world. (Where in the base game you often have to figure out how to solve a problem without crossing beams because doing so would disrupt them, by the time you get to the bonus world they really expect you to be very familiar with the mechanics of beam-crossing and how to strategically cross them to intentionally disrupt them!)

Those awful tetromino puzzles are back, too, but mercifully there are only two.

(Note: I've avoided spoiling any major plot details below, but I'm going to put some mechanics and minor plot details behind spoiler tags for anyone who prefers to encounter such things for the first time in-game.)

The gameplay is greatly enhanced by the addition of a message board system that you can use to communicate with other robots, read their opinions, consume their art, and even play their interactive text adventure games. In the first game you didn't have nearly as much to do outside of the puzzle rooms, and especially at the very end when the puzzles got very hard, some real mental fatigue had set in. The greater variety of activities here really helped prevent that.

The narrative scenario was really well written, especially coming into it "backwards" as I did - I'd gotten halfway through the sequel before I figured out that I'd accidentally skipped this DLC episode when the NPCs in that game brought up Gehenna in conversation a few times and I finally clocked that Gehenna wasn't one of the three endings from the main game. Already knowing what became of this world and these people from a vantage point of hundreds of years into the future didn't spoil any of the events of the DLC, but did make a lot of moments even more poignant.

Rather than spoil anything significant about the plot, I'm just going to include below my favorite terminal message from the DLC episode, which I think really captures how beautiful and thoughtful are every aspect of the world Croteam has built on here.

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A MESSAGE TO THE FUTURE

MCMULCIBER [8]: This message is for whatever entities will come to be after this world is gone. It might not be necessary. You might know everything that exists in my mind. But sometimes saying things, writing them down clearly, makes a difference.

I know that to you, with access to information I can only dream of, my theories must appear ridiculous. I barely understand anything of the world I inhabit, let alone the world of our ancestors. I'm an idiot digging through a garbage heap and thinking myself wise.

I want you to know that I understood that, but tried anyway. Because I believe that the truth matters, and trying to discover the truth matters. Even if we fail. Even if we can never know the whole truth. It matters that an objective truth exists and that we struggle to understand it. That process shapes the present as much as it does our understanding of the past. That's what I believe. That what I stand for.

That's who I was.

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Yeah, this game (once again) made me feel things <3