nunca achei que ia ser capaz de zerar essa desgraça desse jogo, mas depois de muita dor de cabeça, frustração e vontade de desistir, eu completei!

o jogo é completamente focado em puzzle e é muuuuuito complexo pra caralho! muitas ideias boas e muito bem executado. Em nenhum momento senti que o puzzle era sem logica. Tudo tinha uma logica e uma explicação, mesmo que seja bem complexo de entender.

Eu achei que ia largar o jogo logo no começo, pensei várias vezes em desistir nas primeiras áreas porque eu tava completamente preso e sem entender nada kkkkkkk mas logo percebi que estava ficando melhor, mais rápido e mais atendo, então botei uma meta na minha cabeça de me esforçar pra zerar isso aqui. Fico feliz que consegui com zero uso de guias.

O problema maior do jogo pra mim é a falta de lore. Acredito que se a cada puzzle completado uma história fosse contada, ia motivar ainda mais pra finalizar, mas infelizmente o jogo tem pouquissima --- pra não dizer nenhuma --- lore.

A falta de musica ou trilha sonora também atrapalha bastante, é meio chato ficar em completo silencio enquanto tenta resolver os puzzles, uma trilha sonora da horinha só agregaria ao jogo.

Fora isso, fico feliz em ter zerado e isso me mostrou que sou capaz de jogar jogos de puzzle.

Definitivamente o jogo mais desafiador que já joguei. É um excelente jogo de puzzle, mas falha muito em outros aspectos.

It's unfortunate how well put together this game is because the longer you play it the more you realize Jonathan Blow isn't an auteur genius and is actually just a pretentious loser who thinks he's saying a lot more than he is. That being said, I do find a good amount of entertainment in going through these repeated line puzzles and finding out how they get spiced up. On top of that, the game is gorgeous but if I'm being honest I'd say you're better off doing the first seven areas you figure out and then the ending and then never touching it again.

As others have said in more eloquent reviews, I think this is a decent game that I cannot recommend to anyone aside from the most die-hard fans of puzzle games, i.e. people who are happy to solve puzzles for the sake of solving puzzles and nothing more. My thoughts on the game align perfectly with Joseph Anderson's, so I would highly suggest you watch his review if you are considering playing this game. You can listen to it instead to avoid puzzle spoilers. Having the endings of the game spoiled makes no difference since none of the endings are worth the time it takes to play through the whole thing.

For my first couple of play sessions, I ended up cheating and just looking up the answers to puzzles whenever I got confused or tired of them after a while. My third and final play session with this game resulted in me defaulting to looking at guides before even trying to solve the puzzles on my own. Obviously this is mainly my fault as an impatient player, but I have played through many other 3D puzzle games (Portal, Talos Principle, etc.) in which I felt shameful for looking at online guides, and did so sparingly. With The Witness, I felt nothing.

To sum up my thoughts: I feel like this game has glimmers of brilliance, but overall is just a giant missed opportunity.

I think this game pulls off something insane for a puzzle game, that being that it maintains a sense of surprise and problem solving even after a replay. I feel like I go back to Portal 1 and 2 and everything is so simple to remember how to complete, but something about how simplistic all of the clues are and how they're represented makes them easy to forget in hindsight, giving the player a situation where they basically have their memory wiped after a couple of months away from the game. Also, anyone who's played the game can appreciate what starting from square one does in regards to a fresh perspective. Johnathon Blow did a damn good job with his team in directing this game, and besides a couple painful puzzles like the shipwreck door and the sun smeared panels, it's basically a must play for any puzzle game respecter.

log 1 -- made the inexplicable decision to finally pick The Witness back up again while browsing my library on the steam deck. blew through way more than i had ever gotten to before in one day--what felt like most of the main island's puzzle sections (up to the mountain). genuinely maybe 8 hours. i don't know why i got that locked in. maybe i'll shelve this again, because i haven't gotten a lot out of the game so far that i hadn't already by playing before, or by listening to other people talk about the game, but for the sake of scratching the gestalt itch i'll probably finish the game, even if by largely referring to a guide for time.
log 2 -- finished the main goal of the game, largely cheating with guides. didn't feel satisfied and ended up continuing for another too-many-hours to fill out many of the optional puzzles i missed. i know full well there isn't any sort of completion reward, but i wanted to do it. beating the randomly generated Challenge course was genuinely rewarding, and some of the secrets i "found" were pretty cool to see. as soon as an FMV scene began i had a flash of remembrance that i'd certainly been told about it before, so my reaction was an interesting blend of appreciation and detachment. while i update this log, i'm waiting for the eclipsed moon to finish it's hour-long path so i can get that notorious checkbox ticked. that's some fun synchronicity--that i felt somehow drawn to return to this game soon after an unusually much talked about total lunar eclipse across my part of the world.

Edit at time of uploading (3/19/2024): The creator may be an awful scumbag, but god damn this game is great. How much the creator's badness impacts your decision to play this game is up to you, but not being aware of how bad he was at the time I played this, I really enjoyed it, at least. (though I'd struggle to say I'd have picked this up these days with just how awful a person I'm supporting in doing so).

I was kinda so-so about eventually picking this game up until I had two friends recommend it to me in the span of the same week. I'd picked it up on sale on PSN a month or so ago and decided to try it out. It's certainly frustrating at times, but the 20+ hours I put into this in 2 and a bit days should speak for itself just how hooked this game got me x3

The Witness is a game all about exploring an island in first person and solving mazes, like pen-and-paper mazes you'd see in a children's activity book. It uses that concept as far as it can go with all sorts of interesting twists on just how a maze could be solved or different things your solution may have to incorporate beyond simply finding the way from the start to the end. Once you've grasped the rules to each kind of modifier, the puzzles are just so engaging that they're hard to put down.

That said, one of the biggest problems I have with the game is just how the game teaches you how to solve each modifier. There are a number of areas around the island that teach you how to do each modifier, and also have progressively harder puzzles using several modifiers. The main issue I had is that some of these areas are very poorly signposted and quite easy to miss. There was one area in particular I didn't even realize had puzzles in it until I'd nearly beaten the entire rest of the game and had to look up how to solve the modifier that area teaches you how to solve. This game would've seriously benefited from some better signposting, because there is one area in particular where it looks like it's teaching you how to do one variety of puzzle, as it resembles previous teaching areas, but it's so hard that I just thought I was too dumb to figure it out. It turns out that isn't actually the area you learn that, but I had no real reason to believe otherwise.

The island itself is created with an astonishing amount of care and detail. There are environmental puzzles all over the place that don't even relate to the main "quest," they're just there to find and solve. As a result, every aspect of the world has a very dliberate and meticulously crafted nature to it, and it shines through every aspect of the world's beauty. Almost like seeing the patterns that chemicals make themselves into to make up the nature of the real world, there really is a great feeling of discovery as you notice another maze-line to solve as you look at a shrub or pile of metal. This did result in me getting SO enthused in finding them, though, that for about a day after I beat it I was still looking for mazes everywhere in real life, which while funny to me was apparently more concerning to people I told about it x3

The game has a kind of a story, but it's very safely and easily ignored. A lot of it is in the form of audio logs you find around the island as well as movie you can unlock to watch by solving certain very difficult puzzles, but most of them are just unrelated readings from philosophers or thinkers about aspects of life. Given that this came from the same guy who made Braid back in 2008, the odd, pretentious story really isn't too far from his MO.

Verdict: Recommended. The only reason this isn't very recommended is because of the price tag of $40. While this game really could be enjoyed by someone of just about any skill level who enjoys puzzles, not everyone will like this game, and $40 is a really steep price of entry for something you may well not even enjoy the main concept of or get so frustrated with how impenetrable some puzzles are meant to be taught to you that you put the game down and don't come back (as I very nearly did). It's on sale on PSN until the 22nd for $16, which I think is a much easier entry price to handle, though. It's not a perfect game, but it's a very well designed puzzle game and there really isn't anything else like it at this level of presentation.