This is a work in progress and might expand to a few more topics.

There are gameplay concepts the game will explain and concepts it will set you up to discover for yourself, but some things, even concepts important to advancing, are opaque.

You can use the reversed gravity mechanic to get to higher (and lower) levels. If you are jumping within the same half of the level, you can only climb one block height per jump.

You can sprint. The game doesn't tell you this, and you don't need to sprint until you've finished the main stages of The Shrine and need to sprint and jump at the left side of the map to go downwards to the reversed gravity part of the map, where you will find the doors to Steel Forest and Dragonfly Sanctum.

After you complete a stage, you can stand in the doorway to see three pieces of information. You'll see your best completion time and the stage's time goal separated by a bar. When you have completion times faster than (probably or equal to) the goal on all stages, you'll trigger the Speed Run achievement. This is likely the most difficult achievement in the game, but analyzing the game's global statistics suggests that an early version of the game was bugged and likely awarded that achievement for beating just one of the goal times (which is reasonably easy on some early The Shrine stages). You will also see a small seer stone icon if there is still a seer stone in that stage. If there was one and you collected it already or the stage didn't have a seer stone, this icon will be absent. When you complete each stage in a world you will get a corresponding achievement, and when you complete each stage and have all seer stones in a world you will get an additional corresponding achievement.

In an early stage of Steel Forest, Assembly, you will be introduced to the companion cubes. There are four variants that respond to gravity differently, but the first one you'll find is the conventional type. There you will learn that you can pick up and drop the cube at the apex to make its trajectory extend a little further above/below the gravity division. This feels like a bug in the physics engine, but major parts of the game are built around this concept.

The most opaque mechanic is what you can do with the companion cubes against a wall. Ignoring travelling across the gravity division, pick up a companion cube and face a vertical surface. Jump while moving against the wall and then rapidly pick up, drop, and pick up the companion cube to climb up the wall. Try this on the wall to the left of Assembly and you'll find a seer stone. Sounds like this will be a trick to find secret items, right? Despite seeming like an unintended bug that got some side rewards thrown in, you'll need to perform this technique to complete stages.

Sometime after you finish the stages of The Shrine and progress to the other worlds a hidden door in the bottom right of the map will open; this is the Dragonfly Sanctum. You'll need to jump down the left side of The Shrine to reach the part below the gravity divide. The path to the Dragonfly Sanctum is the lower/further from the gravity divide, so to reach it you have to jump from a block higher than just falling down. You can then platform on the inverted part of the map towards the right.

Jump down from this position.












This is the door to the Dragonfly Sanctum.












Once you enter the Dragonfly Sanctum for the first time you should unlock
Pretty in Pink
Unlock the Dragonfly Sanctum



In a level of The Shrine you can find a character who will tell you about the dragonflies, but when you first encounter it you won't be able to do anything about dragonflies.

In each world there is one stage containing a dragonfly. When you touch it, the dragonfly will follow you. It will stay with you outside of the level when you reach the golden annulus, but it will disperse if you die whether in the stage or outside. To deliver the dragonfly to the sanctum, you must collect it in the stage, survive to the annulus, then trek to the Dragonfly Sanctum without dying.

The dragonflies are found in the following stages:

• The Shrine - Monkey Temple
  
  
• Steel Forest - Warehouse
  
  
• The Net - Quantum Module
  
  
• Archiac Library - Whispered Chronicles

When you enter Dragonfly Sanctum with the last dragonfly following, you should unlock
A Friend to All Creatures
Return all the dragonflies to their sanctum

This hint won't be very useful for most levels, but there's a chance this could help someone solve a level or find a seer stone.

To preview a level map, right click the game title in Steam Library, select Properties -> Local Files -> Browse Local Files...

Select the \levels\ folder to see small .bmp files for each level. You will be able to discern the outline of the level in red boxes. One pixel represents the starting location, and one pixel represents the golden annulus (or exit door). Other entities such as saws, keys, doors, and seer stones are represented with pixels of a different color, but you can't differentiate between these entities. If you've attempted the level normally, you should be able to figure out what the entities represent, and an unexplained pixel might be a missing seer stone.

How do you know which map is which? Check the \titles\ folder to see the images that splash when you enter a map and match the numbers. For example, Title18.bmp is the image when you load into the Steel Forest level Shipping\Receiving, and map18.bmp is its map. Some levels have multiple maps with the first map ending with a door instead of a golden annulus such as Grinder, map22 and map23, and Incomplete Records, map48 and map49.