The Order of Giants Features My Favorite Indy Puzzle of All Time

I’ve always been a bit hot and cold with puzzle games. While I absolutely love games like Portal and Viewfinder, I just couldn’t get into the likes of Blue Prince or The Witness. I think a large part of my enjoyment of a puzzle game comes down to its set dressing, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has some truly excellent set dressing.

The main story of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle contains a plethora of puzzles, from classic ancient tombs that require hilariously convoluted solutions to unlock the treasure within, to smaller two-minute brain-teasers where players need to figure out a safe combination using the clues scattered around the environment. I really liked the vast majority of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle‘s base game puzzles, but the recently released The Order of Giants DLC has just served me my new favorite puzzle in the entire Indiana Jones franchise.

Indiana Jones: The Order of Giants’ Nameless Crusader Puzzle Is My New Franchise Favorite

The Nameless Crusader Puzzle Is Accessible, But Multi-Layered

Appearing around halfway through Indiana Jones and the Great Circle‘s Order of Giants DLC, the Nameless Crusader puzzle sees players attempting to open the tomb of Gibborim, an ancient warrior of the Nephilim Order. Generally speaking, the gameplay mechanics used throughout this puzzle are pretty simple.

Most of the puzzle sees players reading an ancient tome detailing the Nameless Crusader’s life, taking a staff over to the map painted onto the chamber’s floor, and using it to rotate each floor tile so that it matches the directions mentioned in the tome. For instance, the line “the ship at Halygast watches the morning light” requires the player to rotate the Halygast floor tile so it’s pointing East.

It’s a very simple core mechanic, but there’s a really nice progression throughout the course of the tomb raid. After this first set of rotations, a metal gate opens at the side of the tomb, revealing a connected chamber. This chamber challenges the player to sprint to the other side of the room, flip a lever, grab a staff, and avoid the flames that are moving along the floor.

Players then take this staff back into the main chamber to complete a new set of tile rotations that detail the next portion of the Nameless Crusader’s life. This repeats until another chamber opens. Down this pathway lies a new puzzle that tasks the player with pulling a series of levers in an order that corresponds to the Biblical murals on the chamber’s walls. If players make a wrong move, Indy’s burned alive.

It’s far from the most innovative or complicated set of puzzle mechanics in a video game, but Indiana Jones: The Order of Giants‘ Nameless Crusader tomb offers a strong and rewarding sense of progression while still remaining accessible and engaging for players like me who aren’t the best when it comes to long-form puzzles.

The Nameless Crusader Puzzle Lets Its Story Take Center Stage

The simplicity of the Nameless Crusader tomb’s puzzle mechanics also allow the story of the fictional figure to shine. In around 30 minutes, the Nameless Crusader’s entire life is laid bare, all via tomes that the player is actively using to complete the tomb’s puzzles.

The tomes detail the origin of Gibborim becoming the Nameless Crusader, how he was sent to Antioch to retrieve one of the Nephilim Order’s secret keys under the guise of helping the Crusades, and how he continued fighting that same war for years after. It’s also stated that Gibborim managed to find the love of his love, and that she was swiftly taken away from him in a castle fire.

After that genuinely touching revelation, Gibborim’s tomb in the center of the room opens, revealing the Nameless Crusader’s rusty sword. The final piece of the puzzle requires Indy to slot the sword into the statue of Gibborim’s heart, symbolizing the giant’s heartbreak over the loss of his love, and possibly implying that he took his own life in the grief. It’s rare for a video game puzzle to tell such an emotive story in such a short amount of time, and it absolutely blindsided me during my playthrough of Indiana Jones: The Order of Giants.

The Nameless Crusader Puzzle Feels Like an Authentic Indiana Jones Set Piece

The accessibility and gradual build of the puzzle mechanics, the slow unraveling of this deeply personal historical tale, and the general aesthetic of this ancient tomb and its deadly traps all combine to deliver a puzzle that feels truly authentic to the Indiana Jones brand, and the ability to directly interact with it all easily makes it my favorite puzzle in Indiana Jones history.