It ain't even got no point to the game, you just walk around drawin' lines on shit.
jonathan blow knows so much less about art than he thinks he does
If there's one thing creator Jonathan Blow is good at, it's rubbing gamers up the wrong way. It's quite evident he's an intellectual, and boy does he want you to know it.
At the heart of his games are some impeccably crafted puzzles - a simple mechanic that builds and builds to baffling, but logical, levels of complexity.
His previous title, Braid, made inventive use of time manipulation and platforming. It had at least the pretense of a comprehensible narrative, as well as a 'fun' painterly art style.
Years in the making, The Witness feels colder in every way. Between bouts of walking around an island reminiscent of Proteus or something made in Dreams, you spend most of your time on grid sheets, connecting the dots - although only in the literal sense, as any notion of a story is deeply muddled.
The puzzles soon become vastly complex, often to the point of alienating the player with a lack of guidance. No one would blame you for digging up the walkthrough every now and then, but it seems to be a game designed to leave for a while and then revisit over several months.
Vague and frustrating as it is, all the way to the end, the game keeps you coming back. The most intriguing feature is arguably the way the island's strange geography and shape reveal new puzzles, alongside some thought provoking imagery found in reflections, shadows and pathways - there's the sense that Blow has meticulously crafted the island with similar precision to Kubrick's Overlook Hotel in The Shining, to almost the same subliminal effect.
Overall, The Witness seems to walk a thin line between a decent puzzle game and a confrontational piece of interactive art. I would say that Braid is more successful as the former; and while I'm not in a rush to declare this game the latter, some of its puzzles have had a lasting effect. I sometimes lay in my bed, still trying to draw those lines in my head.
At the heart of his games are some impeccably crafted puzzles - a simple mechanic that builds and builds to baffling, but logical, levels of complexity.
His previous title, Braid, made inventive use of time manipulation and platforming. It had at least the pretense of a comprehensible narrative, as well as a 'fun' painterly art style.
Years in the making, The Witness feels colder in every way. Between bouts of walking around an island reminiscent of Proteus or something made in Dreams, you spend most of your time on grid sheets, connecting the dots - although only in the literal sense, as any notion of a story is deeply muddled.
The puzzles soon become vastly complex, often to the point of alienating the player with a lack of guidance. No one would blame you for digging up the walkthrough every now and then, but it seems to be a game designed to leave for a while and then revisit over several months.
Vague and frustrating as it is, all the way to the end, the game keeps you coming back. The most intriguing feature is arguably the way the island's strange geography and shape reveal new puzzles, alongside some thought provoking imagery found in reflections, shadows and pathways - there's the sense that Blow has meticulously crafted the island with similar precision to Kubrick's Overlook Hotel in The Shining, to almost the same subliminal effect.
Overall, The Witness seems to walk a thin line between a decent puzzle game and a confrontational piece of interactive art. I would say that Braid is more successful as the former; and while I'm not in a rush to declare this game the latter, some of its puzzles have had a lasting effect. I sometimes lay in my bed, still trying to draw those lines in my head.
What a chore it is to be an intellectual. Perhaps someday we will discover philosophy. Until then there are only audio diaries.
jonathan blow has never jacked off and THAT'S why the witness is a perfect game #nonutforever #tarkovskyboyz
Jonathan Blow is the Elon Musk of indie games
Gráficos bonitos, belíssimas paisagens, mas se a intenção é disfarçar o estresse dos puzzles, não ajuda muito. Não consegui passar de um hora de gameplay.
I view games as a dialogue between the creator and the observer - and along those lines, I dont think The Witness is a bad game...... I think its a callous and confrontational game that wishes to express its fascinations only to the most patient and accomodating player.
The Witness fold my brain and subsequently rearranged it. I can’t describe this master class of lateral thinking and bustling exploration in any other way. Knowledge is everything.
The progression depends on how many secrets of this island you have discovered. The Witness could’ve scattered its hints scantily. Instead, hundreds of exciting puzzles are lined up in every corner.
The minimalism of many line puzzles should be a matter of taste, but I am beguiled by the elegance with which The Witness rebuilds such a simple scaffolding every minute — in shapes that surprise for many hours of gameplay.
The progression depends on how many secrets of this island you have discovered. The Witness could’ve scattered its hints scantily. Instead, hundreds of exciting puzzles are lined up in every corner.
The minimalism of many line puzzles should be a matter of taste, but I am beguiled by the elegance with which The Witness rebuilds such a simple scaffolding every minute — in shapes that surprise for many hours of gameplay.
On the one hand, the puzzles in this game are really good. There's a lot of very clever design and well-engineered moments that make you go oh. But on the other hand, some sections of the puzzles have accessibility issues that make them incomplete-able (for certain types of colorblindness or anyone hard of hearing). When asked about the accessibility problems, Jonathon Blow said something along the lines of 'you don't need to play the entire game' which is a pretty shitty and casually ableist thing to say. Just add some options, dude, it's fine. It won't ruin your stupid game.
There's also the problem that Jon Blow is kind of shitty. Remember that time he said women aren't as good as men at programming because of some kind of horseshit biological reason? Yeah, the dude sucks. Anyway, ignore all the audio logs and weird philosophy videos in the game and just do the puzzles. Or maybe play other puzzle games, I dunno.
This game does have some of the prettiest video game trees, though.
edit: docking a star for Jon Blow continuing to be a real piece of garbage, seriously fuck that dude and get vaccinated
There's also the problem that Jon Blow is kind of shitty. Remember that time he said women aren't as good as men at programming because of some kind of horseshit biological reason? Yeah, the dude sucks. Anyway, ignore all the audio logs and weird philosophy videos in the game and just do the puzzles. Or maybe play other puzzle games, I dunno.
This game does have some of the prettiest video game trees, though.
edit: docking a star for Jon Blow continuing to be a real piece of garbage, seriously fuck that dude and get vaccinated
The Witness is a game where you are thrown into a beautiful world of wonder without any explanation other than how to control your movement and how to use your mouse on the puzzles.
It's a game of puzzles that leave you scratching your head more than once, some may take you ages to figure out and some you get done quite fast. The game uses it's environment, among other things, to bring you these puzzles and it uses clever ways for solutions all the way to the end.
Whenever it gets too tough or even boring, you can just walk away and come back later! It's genius how you can just leave and visit another area to clear your mind, then come back to where you were stuck last time and figure it out finally with a clear mind.
The Witness is certainly an experience. A unique and refreshing one. If you're a fan of abstract puzzles and problem solving, there's much to love here, as I certainly enjoyed it. I just caution that a lot of what makes this game satisfying comes from your interpretation of it, not necessarily through the game itself.
It's a game of puzzles that leave you scratching your head more than once, some may take you ages to figure out and some you get done quite fast. The game uses it's environment, among other things, to bring you these puzzles and it uses clever ways for solutions all the way to the end.
Whenever it gets too tough or even boring, you can just walk away and come back later! It's genius how you can just leave and visit another area to clear your mind, then come back to where you were stuck last time and figure it out finally with a clear mind.
The Witness is certainly an experience. A unique and refreshing one. If you're a fan of abstract puzzles and problem solving, there's much to love here, as I certainly enjoyed it. I just caution that a lot of what makes this game satisfying comes from your interpretation of it, not necessarily through the game itself.
Jonathan Blow's shitty attitude towards women is outweighed only by his shitty pretentiousness.
Jonathan Blow strikes again! The Witness is the most meditative gaming experience I’ve had in a long time, and I’m sure it’ll have me dreaming about drawing lines on little grids for weeks.
It feels like a game designed for gamers and non-gamers alike. There’s no friction here – the only challenge comes from the puzzles themselves. At the outset, you awake on an island and almost immediately you’re solving your first puzzle – the first of many. The Witness’s puzzles involve drawing lines on grids to fulfill certain requirements. Some puzzles require you to draw Tetris-like shapes; others make you draw lines that separate white squares from black ones. Certain puzzles even incorporate the elements of the local environment into their solutions – light and shadow, soundwaves and reflections. I wish I could say more but I feel like I’ve already said too much.
The world design is also top notch. The island you’re stuck on is big but not too big. Navigating the environment is relatively straightforward; natural signposts are abundant and if you ever feel lost you can always hike to high ground and reorient yourself. Each section of the island has a different feel. Swamp, desert, jungle, derelict ship – though these environments are all interconnected, each functions as a discrete area, with puzzles that revolve around unique mechanics. Moreover, the openness of the environment meant I rarely got stuck. If one puzzle had me stumped, I could go work on another. This also led to plenty of “eureka!” moments, when I’d come back to a previously indecipherable puzzle with new knowledge and crack it immediately.
When I say this is a game for non-gamers, I really mean it. I suspect if I let my father, who hasn’t played a game seriously since the Atari 2600 days, take a crack at it, he could work his way to the end with minimal guidance. The underlying game design is quite basic and it makes no assumptions about what knowledge and experience the player may or may not have. The only assumption it makes is that the player is capable of recognizing patterns and extrapolating solutions from them.
After I’ve heaped all this praise on the game, why am I not giving it a perfect mark? The primary reason is the limitations inherent in the design. While the puzzles employ many different sets of rules, solving them always comes down to drawing lines on a grid. This isn’t bad – in fact, I enjoy it immensely! But I wouldn’t give a book of Sudoku puzzles 5 stars, and the same goes for The Witness. (And yes, I know there is more going on here than meets the eye. But the scavenger hunt aspect doesn’t particularly excite me.) Additionally, a few of the puzzles felt gimmicky rather than smart. A few unskippable late game puzzles feature intensely flashing lights. I’ll confess that I looked up the solution to one – just one – because my eyes were tired of looking at flickering neon colors. The rest of the 300+ puzzles I encountered in my playthrough I solved without the help of a guide.
No moon logic. No assumptions. No gamerisms. Just a collection of (mostly) no-nonsense puzzles spread across a lovely environment that’s easy to navigate. It’s not the be-all-end-all of video games, nor does it aspire to be. It’s a game that scratches a very particular itch and scratches it thoroughly indeed. While not flawless, The Witness is a very successful marriage of pure vision and clean design. If I had the opportunity to remake it, I would change nothing. (Well, nothing besides the obnoxious disco lights.)
It feels like a game designed for gamers and non-gamers alike. There’s no friction here – the only challenge comes from the puzzles themselves. At the outset, you awake on an island and almost immediately you’re solving your first puzzle – the first of many. The Witness’s puzzles involve drawing lines on grids to fulfill certain requirements. Some puzzles require you to draw Tetris-like shapes; others make you draw lines that separate white squares from black ones. Certain puzzles even incorporate the elements of the local environment into their solutions – light and shadow, soundwaves and reflections. I wish I could say more but I feel like I’ve already said too much.
The world design is also top notch. The island you’re stuck on is big but not too big. Navigating the environment is relatively straightforward; natural signposts are abundant and if you ever feel lost you can always hike to high ground and reorient yourself. Each section of the island has a different feel. Swamp, desert, jungle, derelict ship – though these environments are all interconnected, each functions as a discrete area, with puzzles that revolve around unique mechanics. Moreover, the openness of the environment meant I rarely got stuck. If one puzzle had me stumped, I could go work on another. This also led to plenty of “eureka!” moments, when I’d come back to a previously indecipherable puzzle with new knowledge and crack it immediately.
When I say this is a game for non-gamers, I really mean it. I suspect if I let my father, who hasn’t played a game seriously since the Atari 2600 days, take a crack at it, he could work his way to the end with minimal guidance. The underlying game design is quite basic and it makes no assumptions about what knowledge and experience the player may or may not have. The only assumption it makes is that the player is capable of recognizing patterns and extrapolating solutions from them.
After I’ve heaped all this praise on the game, why am I not giving it a perfect mark? The primary reason is the limitations inherent in the design. While the puzzles employ many different sets of rules, solving them always comes down to drawing lines on a grid. This isn’t bad – in fact, I enjoy it immensely! But I wouldn’t give a book of Sudoku puzzles 5 stars, and the same goes for The Witness. (And yes, I know there is more going on here than meets the eye. But the scavenger hunt aspect doesn’t particularly excite me.) Additionally, a few of the puzzles felt gimmicky rather than smart. A few unskippable late game puzzles feature intensely flashing lights. I’ll confess that I looked up the solution to one – just one – because my eyes were tired of looking at flickering neon colors. The rest of the 300+ puzzles I encountered in my playthrough I solved without the help of a guide.
No moon logic. No assumptions. No gamerisms. Just a collection of (mostly) no-nonsense puzzles spread across a lovely environment that’s easy to navigate. It’s not the be-all-end-all of video games, nor does it aspire to be. It’s a game that scratches a very particular itch and scratches it thoroughly indeed. While not flawless, The Witness is a very successful marriage of pure vision and clean design. If I had the opportunity to remake it, I would change nothing. (Well, nothing besides the obnoxious disco lights.)
Would it kill you to put on some music?
My favorite puzzle game of all time and the most satisfying Plat I've ever gotten. This game fits so perfectly with how my brain operates and scratches an itch that no other game has managed to satisfy since. It's quite literally the perfect puzzle game for me and if I could wipe it from my brain so I could do it all again, I would.
Disclaimer: These are my brief thoughts based on my memory of playing this 7 years ago:
Disclaimer: These are my brief thoughts based on my memory of playing this 7 years ago:
I wish I hadn't been The Witness to Jonathan Blow being a COVID truther. Or pro-Blue Lives Matter. Or anti-'cancel culture'. Or an advocate of political horseshoe theory. Or his belief that women aren't genetically suited to tech jobs.
In most cases I can forgive and forget the machinations of a creator's mind and create some mental separation between art and artist. However, The Witness is so inextricable from Blow's self-aggrandizing bullshit that it's impossible here. The notion that the search for truth is an everlasting but uncompletable journey is noble in theory and when not spouted by a QAnon nutter. This isn't even me imposing some sort of negativity onto Blow and his work with seven years of retrospect; Blow ousted himself as a misogynist loon in late 2017, only a few months after The Witness released on iOS. Should we even be surprised at this though? As Leigh Alexander put it, "he's that guy who made the Mario about women running away from him right"?
Blow's masturbatory belief in his own superiority, as a man, as a white man, as a right-wing white man, as a right-wing white male programmer taints his messaging to the point of it becoming an insurmountable task to read certain moments of The Witness as anything but Blow blowing himself. Good on him for making puzzles inaccessible to the deaf and hard of hearing, how great for Blow that he wasted at minimum an hour of many people's lives as they traced that fucking moon across a screen. Wow, after playing The Witness I see patterns in everything just like the creator, bra-fucking-vo. And it's a shame because the puzzles are fine and most of the game is serviceable. Everything surrounding it coalesces though and you realise it, well, blows.
At least its better than that game Soulja Boy laughed at.
In most cases I can forgive and forget the machinations of a creator's mind and create some mental separation between art and artist. However, The Witness is so inextricable from Blow's self-aggrandizing bullshit that it's impossible here. The notion that the search for truth is an everlasting but uncompletable journey is noble in theory and when not spouted by a QAnon nutter. This isn't even me imposing some sort of negativity onto Blow and his work with seven years of retrospect; Blow ousted himself as a misogynist loon in late 2017, only a few months after The Witness released on iOS. Should we even be surprised at this though? As Leigh Alexander put it, "he's that guy who made the Mario about women running away from him right"?
Blow's masturbatory belief in his own superiority, as a man, as a white man, as a right-wing white man, as a right-wing white male programmer taints his messaging to the point of it becoming an insurmountable task to read certain moments of The Witness as anything but Blow blowing himself. Good on him for making puzzles inaccessible to the deaf and hard of hearing, how great for Blow that he wasted at minimum an hour of many people's lives as they traced that fucking moon across a screen. Wow, after playing The Witness I see patterns in everything just like the creator, bra-fucking-vo. And it's a shame because the puzzles are fine and most of the game is serviceable. Everything surrounding it coalesces though and you realise it, well, blows.
At least its better than that game Soulja Boy laughed at.
One time, back when this came out, I was playing it while my new girlfriend was over at my place. She sat down and watched quietly for a little while, and I said, genuinely, "Here, I'll turn this off so we can do something else."
She replied, "No, keep playing. I like watching you be smart."
I beat this game 100% without looking anything up. We're married now.
Five stars.
She replied, "No, keep playing. I like watching you be smart."
I beat this game 100% without looking anything up. We're married now.
Five stars.
The Shitness
cera's review DIRECTOR'S CUT:
this is one of the most beautiful games i've ever played, not just in aesthetics but in what it teaches the player. don't get me wrong, there are things that i actively hate about this game, as well as some of the outside factors surrounding it (if you know you know). but the truth of this is that the game is still so good that it blows past all of that and makes it seem like trash littered around the most gorgeous hike you've ever taken: the bad things are mere footnotes in comparison to what you can see.
people will tell you the witness is a game about puzzles. it's not. it's about linguistics and semiotics and meditation. it's about observing.
all of the best art in the world is art that acts as a mirror for us to see parts of ourselves in. sometimes good, sometimes the things we fear, but the most powerful thing is when it allows us to see things about ourselves that we didn't understand in the first place, the things we couldn't put into words but knew were true.
the answers you needed were always right in front of us, you just didn't know it. we were just looking at the wrong things, at what people told us were important. stop looking. stop.
this is one of the most beautiful games i've ever played, not just in aesthetics but in what it teaches the player. don't get me wrong, there are things that i actively hate about this game, as well as some of the outside factors surrounding it (if you know you know). but the truth of this is that the game is still so good that it blows past all of that and makes it seem like trash littered around the most gorgeous hike you've ever taken: the bad things are mere footnotes in comparison to what you can see.
people will tell you the witness is a game about puzzles. it's not. it's about linguistics and semiotics and meditation. it's about observing.
all of the best art in the world is art that acts as a mirror for us to see parts of ourselves in. sometimes good, sometimes the things we fear, but the most powerful thing is when it allows us to see things about ourselves that we didn't understand in the first place, the things we couldn't put into words but knew were true.
the answers you needed were always right in front of us, you just didn't know it. we were just looking at the wrong things, at what people told us were important. stop looking. stop.
The Witness. Been sitting with this one for a while, trying to think about how best to tear it a new one. I think I'm finally ready to collect my thoughts in a review.
The Witness is aimless, purpose-devoid postmodernism. It takes the worst aspect of that era's fiction - its tendency to navel-gaze - to a new extreme.
If you have seen the ending (which I will not spoil, but will nonetheless warn you about), you know that this game holds no deeper meaning. The brunt of its intended message is: "Woah, isn't it weird how this video game absorbed you so much? WoaaaahhhH the way the human brain learns is SO COOL, line puzzles are everywhere now!" Except they aren't. Their importance starts and ends with the playtime of this game. It is not useful to you to learn how to navigate the complex rule set of these puzzles in your real life; learning them is a time bandit, nothing more.
The Witness is one thing: Line puzzles. Both gameplay-wise AND narratively, that is all it is. And that is the long and short of it.
The worst part, however, is that it tries - and succeeds! - in convincing you it is about more than just itself for the majority of its 20 to 40 hours. Quotation is abundant in The Witness: Audio diaries, movie and documentary clips; all of it feels like it's pointing to something deeper going on under the surface that is simply not there.
Lastly, I want to touch upon Johnathan Blownathon's blind spots in design that he fails to interrogate or amend: Accessibility design in The Witness is at an all-time fucking low. A lot of puzzles basically say "FUCK the hard-of-hearing LMAO", and basically all puzzles fail to account for colour blindness, or even offer an optional colour-blindness mode. Also, the FPS mechanics in this game make you motion sick incredibly quickly, which is an issue I really thought games at large had solved by this point in non-VR titles.
I 100%ed the Witness back in 2017, when I was at my most suicidally depressed. Its sound design, and environmental design are good; I have to give it that. It provided a steady and, at that point, needed dopamine drip-feed that kept me going for a while. I'm also grateful to it for introducing me to a myriad of more interesting media than itself, such as Andrey Tarkovsky's filmography and Italo Calvino's "The Invisible Cities". But that's where my praise wanes.
In the end, finishing The Witness is like eating handfuls upon handfuls of junk food with an intricately beautiful, "really-makes-you-think" art piece on the packaging. It's a binge-and-purge game that takes a lot of your time and leaves you with nothing.
3/10.
The Witness is aimless, purpose-devoid postmodernism. It takes the worst aspect of that era's fiction - its tendency to navel-gaze - to a new extreme.
If you have seen the ending (which I will not spoil, but will nonetheless warn you about), you know that this game holds no deeper meaning. The brunt of its intended message is: "Woah, isn't it weird how this video game absorbed you so much? WoaaaahhhH the way the human brain learns is SO COOL, line puzzles are everywhere now!" Except they aren't. Their importance starts and ends with the playtime of this game. It is not useful to you to learn how to navigate the complex rule set of these puzzles in your real life; learning them is a time bandit, nothing more.
The Witness is one thing: Line puzzles. Both gameplay-wise AND narratively, that is all it is. And that is the long and short of it.
The worst part, however, is that it tries - and succeeds! - in convincing you it is about more than just itself for the majority of its 20 to 40 hours. Quotation is abundant in The Witness: Audio diaries, movie and documentary clips; all of it feels like it's pointing to something deeper going on under the surface that is simply not there.
Lastly, I want to touch upon Johnathan Blownathon's blind spots in design that he fails to interrogate or amend: Accessibility design in The Witness is at an all-time fucking low. A lot of puzzles basically say "FUCK the hard-of-hearing LMAO", and basically all puzzles fail to account for colour blindness, or even offer an optional colour-blindness mode. Also, the FPS mechanics in this game make you motion sick incredibly quickly, which is an issue I really thought games at large had solved by this point in non-VR titles.
I 100%ed the Witness back in 2017, when I was at my most suicidally depressed. Its sound design, and environmental design are good; I have to give it that. It provided a steady and, at that point, needed dopamine drip-feed that kept me going for a while. I'm also grateful to it for introducing me to a myriad of more interesting media than itself, such as Andrey Tarkovsky's filmography and Italo Calvino's "The Invisible Cities". But that's where my praise wanes.
In the end, finishing The Witness is like eating handfuls upon handfuls of junk food with an intricately beautiful, "really-makes-you-think" art piece on the packaging. It's a binge-and-purge game that takes a lot of your time and leaves you with nothing.
3/10.
Blowheads can’t stop catching W’s
the bitchless
The Witness is a single-player game in an sandbox world with dozens of locations to explore and over 500 puzzles (they all consist of tracing a path on a grid). Finally soft-locked myself today, I could possibly backtrack the 40 last puzzles to get out of this pickle (the game only has auto-save and it triggers every 60 puzzles done) but I'm tired, boss. This is the best intrisically and expertly designed worst game I've played to date. I believe it's a great work that aligns perfectly with what I've seen was the devs' vision. If I were to rate it as my own experience, however... if the naysayers shall brace for the pearly gates count me as one of those. I am not outright saying the game is too repetitive, too bloated and too sluggish... no, you are only reading between the lines...
I got to say that the utter lack of accessibility options is based. Anyways, using the environment for puzzles is more often than not smartly executed. It's just a matter of the game's essence filtering me once again. I solved a puzzle once and listened to a lady's documentary for 10 minutes her voice was very soothing and charismatic I give her a Backloggd 5 star rating pepega
I got to say that the utter lack of accessibility options is based. Anyways, using the environment for puzzles is more often than not smartly executed. It's just a matter of the game's essence filtering me once again. I solved a puzzle once and listened to a lady's documentary for 10 minutes her voice was very soothing and charismatic I give her a Backloggd 5 star rating pepega
for jonathan blow's next game, it's just tetris except the board is upside down. when you reach speed level 5 a bertrand russell video plays behind the board where he debates god's existence on a single shot for 40 minutes. then when you hit level 20, the game pauses and Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916) plays for three and a half hours over the top with an ending questionaire about how it made you feel. once you hit level 50, the game ends. the amazing twist is revealed that it was a pov shot of a man playing the game on a screen the entire time. he looks to the left and gets hit by a truck. metacritic 95
Most of the people who tell you they want games to be seen as art are lying.
I don't just mean in the sense that "gamers want games to be art but complain when people critique their problematic elements". That is true, but moreover, another side mostly composed of quirky indie fans often gets ignored. Most of the people who talk about "games as art" are really talking about "art as games". People have ideas about what makes great art: stories, characters, music, atmosphere, visuals, animation, setting; this is what a game needs to be great art, it needs to have the same elements that make literature great, or film. Most of these people will say that in order to be art, games have to "more than just games". Some will even say that games need to stop being games altogether.
The Witness may be the single greatest game as a piece of art yet, and it may never get the credit it deserves simply because it is a video game, and it isn't trying to be something else. The way it so totally and coherently expresses itself through its communication and psychology, through its singular mechanic of movement. Navigation in macrocosm and microcosm. It's a game you play on a virtual island, a game you play on a screen within a screen, a game that you play in your head.
I don't just mean in the sense that "gamers want games to be art but complain when people critique their problematic elements". That is true, but moreover, another side mostly composed of quirky indie fans often gets ignored. Most of the people who talk about "games as art" are really talking about "art as games". People have ideas about what makes great art: stories, characters, music, atmosphere, visuals, animation, setting; this is what a game needs to be great art, it needs to have the same elements that make literature great, or film. Most of these people will say that in order to be art, games have to "more than just games". Some will even say that games need to stop being games altogether.
The Witness may be the single greatest game as a piece of art yet, and it may never get the credit it deserves simply because it is a video game, and it isn't trying to be something else. The way it so totally and coherently expresses itself through its communication and psychology, through its singular mechanic of movement. Navigation in macrocosm and microcosm. It's a game you play on a virtual island, a game you play on a screen within a screen, a game that you play in your head.
I am trapped between two worlds
World 1) my partner walked in on me playing this. "it's a puzzle game," I said, remembering how much he enjoyed playing through return of the obra dinn with me. "you like puzzle games. do you want to try this together?" anyway, he sat behind me for a total of five minutes before throwing up his hands in despair and walking out. "I'm not gonna fucking sit here and watch you play snake for hours," he said.
World 2) My friend, who recommended I play this, is very excited to watch my progress as I make the way through; this has been a harrowing experience where he makes soft noises of disapproval as I attempt to lizard brain my way through the puzzles. it is destroying my self esteem and it's not like that was in a good place to begin with
so like, i'm not at a point where i can review this but: please send help
World 1) my partner walked in on me playing this. "it's a puzzle game," I said, remembering how much he enjoyed playing through return of the obra dinn with me. "you like puzzle games. do you want to try this together?" anyway, he sat behind me for a total of five minutes before throwing up his hands in despair and walking out. "I'm not gonna fucking sit here and watch you play snake for hours," he said.
World 2) My friend, who recommended I play this, is very excited to watch my progress as I make the way through; this has been a harrowing experience where he makes soft noises of disapproval as I attempt to lizard brain my way through the puzzles. it is destroying my self esteem and it's not like that was in a good place to begin with
so like, i'm not at a point where i can review this but: please send help
Was doing most of the puzzles without thinking, then I got distracted by a hill and found a bunch of of audio logs in which an American talks about...nowt. After that I came down the hill somewhere else and didn't understand the puzzles at all. I would have gone somewhere else but the movement is tedious as hell, couldn't be bothered. Canonically died of boredom.
Jonathan Blow is a trash man with garbage opinions, but this game is a good puzzle game.
This review contains spoilers
Shapes, colors, and lines are the primary language of The Witness. It is incredibly interesting to see a game convey all its core mechanics with zero textual explanation, and even more so for a puzzle game. Such a slow and guided design philosophy is probably the most notable thing about game and serves to make it an incredibly memorable experience.
At its core, The Witness is fundamentally about doing line puzzles on mazes. Its stated that there are nearly 600 of these little things strewn across the island although that estimate seems like a little much in my mind. The numerous transitory gate puzzles and single line activation puzzles likely served to inflate that number but despite that there is a healthy helping of varied and unique puzzles to solve. At a cursory glance it may seem strange that a game that is as visually interesting as The Witness, paying homage to Myst and other classic pc adventure games that I’ve never played, is filled to the brim with puzzles that require such an aesthetically bare interface. The truth is that the world is presented in the way that it is to create space for a bevy of environmental puzzles that take advantage of all sorts of visual elements from shadows, architecture, and flora. The world’s design also helps contextualize individual puzzles themselves as part of a greater puzzle in a particular area. The most common way in which the game does this is having the player follow a wire from one puzzle to the next but the ways in which puzzles interact with exploration creates some extremely fun reveals as the game continues.
When it comes to these line puzzles themselves there is also quite a bit going on there as well. The extremely minimalist gameplay style may seem off-putting, especially in comparison to Jonathan Blow’s previous title Braid but it should not be confused with minimalism. The Witness is minimalistic by design but by no means a minimalist game and by stripping down nearly all other superfluous mechanics of modern games, Blow and his team have quite purposely designed one of the most maximalist puzzle games ever designed. It is hard to write prose about the particulars of this game’s design but rest assured, even after seeing most of the game, I am in awe of how many different puzzle interactions come together. This unfortunately leaves a caveat that if you are not very good at these kinds of puzzles, or if the game’s slow paced meditative gameplay does not really appeal to you, then there really is not much for you here.
Meditation is one of the primary themes of The Witness. We meditate on puzzle solutions, the numerous audio logs and quotes strewn throughout the game ask us to meditate on broad philosophical ideas, or simply just to meditate on… what it means to meditate. Only slow and thoughtful eyes can identify the numerous environmental puzzles strewn about the game and solving the puzzle screens themselves engender a meditative contemplation. The Witness is a hard game but the key to beating it is to not get frustrated. Its to focus on the information you need and simply figure out what you need to make of it. The open world structure is there so that if any one puzzle presents too much of an obstacle then there is no shame in moving somewhere else and coming back at a calmer state of mind. Anyone can beat this game, just take it slowly and focus.
At its core, The Witness is fundamentally about doing line puzzles on mazes. Its stated that there are nearly 600 of these little things strewn across the island although that estimate seems like a little much in my mind. The numerous transitory gate puzzles and single line activation puzzles likely served to inflate that number but despite that there is a healthy helping of varied and unique puzzles to solve. At a cursory glance it may seem strange that a game that is as visually interesting as The Witness, paying homage to Myst and other classic pc adventure games that I’ve never played, is filled to the brim with puzzles that require such an aesthetically bare interface. The truth is that the world is presented in the way that it is to create space for a bevy of environmental puzzles that take advantage of all sorts of visual elements from shadows, architecture, and flora. The world’s design also helps contextualize individual puzzles themselves as part of a greater puzzle in a particular area. The most common way in which the game does this is having the player follow a wire from one puzzle to the next but the ways in which puzzles interact with exploration creates some extremely fun reveals as the game continues.
When it comes to these line puzzles themselves there is also quite a bit going on there as well. The extremely minimalist gameplay style may seem off-putting, especially in comparison to Jonathan Blow’s previous title Braid but it should not be confused with minimalism. The Witness is minimalistic by design but by no means a minimalist game and by stripping down nearly all other superfluous mechanics of modern games, Blow and his team have quite purposely designed one of the most maximalist puzzle games ever designed. It is hard to write prose about the particulars of this game’s design but rest assured, even after seeing most of the game, I am in awe of how many different puzzle interactions come together. This unfortunately leaves a caveat that if you are not very good at these kinds of puzzles, or if the game’s slow paced meditative gameplay does not really appeal to you, then there really is not much for you here.
Meditation is one of the primary themes of The Witness. We meditate on puzzle solutions, the numerous audio logs and quotes strewn throughout the game ask us to meditate on broad philosophical ideas, or simply just to meditate on… what it means to meditate. Only slow and thoughtful eyes can identify the numerous environmental puzzles strewn about the game and solving the puzzle screens themselves engender a meditative contemplation. The Witness is a hard game but the key to beating it is to not get frustrated. Its to focus on the information you need and simply figure out what you need to make of it. The open world structure is there so that if any one puzzle presents too much of an obstacle then there is no shame in moving somewhere else and coming back at a calmer state of mind. Anyone can beat this game, just take it slowly and focus.
That island sure was lovely, and the puzzles were pretty good! I think this jonathan blow dude has a bright and promising career ahead of him!