Indiana Jones Game Will Let You Shoot Puzzles (With Your Camera) To Solve Them

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is aiming to be an authentic recreation of the archeologist’s globetrotting adventures, and as you’d expect, solving puzzles is a big part of the game. A key element in the films, developer MachineGames has worked on creating puzzles that’ll be challenging but not impossible to solve. For anyone worried about getting stuck in the mandatory puzzle-solving stages, the developer has a novel solution for these sections of the game.

As design director Jens Andersson explained, players can do first-person shooting with Indy’s camera to gain hints that’ll allow them to complete ancient puzzles. This will be available through the game’s “Adventure” difficulty setting, which reduces the challenge of completing these mysteries.

“We’ve taken special care with those since they need to be accessible to all types of players and made sure they support our ‘light’ Adventure difficulty level,” Andersson said to Xbox Wire. “If you play on that one, you’ll still get to experience the fun of solving the puzzle, but it won’t require as many steps or be as challenging as the normal Adventure difficulty level is.”

Essentially, you can take a few photos with your camera and each picture will offer you helpful hints. The more photos you take, the more detailed the hints will be, and Andersson added that this approach allows players to take their time and not have to worry about the game nagging them with tips. This ties into the studio’s goal to help players feel immersed in Indy’s world, giving them space to explore and experiment with possible solutions at their own pace.

Anyone looking for a cerebral challenge can look forward to optional puzzles that’ll require some serious brainpower. Andersson teased that these will be seriously tough, as there won’t be any hints provided to players. Overall, MachineGames still wants players to feel like they’re the famed archeologist as they get a “primal” thrill out of successfully solving a puzzle.

Indiana Jones And The Great Circle launches on December 9 for Xbox Series X|S and PC, and it’ll be available as day-one title through Game Pass. If you can’t wait that long, here’s how you can get a three-day headstart on the game, and for PC players, you can also (technically) grab it for just $1.