It must be hard to create a "parody video game." Everyone's done the easy jokes, even games that are supposed to be serious po-faced prestige games. And pastiching a particular game is a lot of trouble to go to, since you've got to recreate the look, the style, the mechanics... No wonder we haven't got "The Worst of Us: Part 2" or something.

But the Witness, now there's a good target, right? It's beautiful, but not overtly difficult to recreate the style of. It's clever, but also takes itself a bit too seriously. And the central mechanic is flexible enough that even if your jokes don't land, you can actually create a pretty good puzzle game just by riffing on it.

So that gets us The Looker, which is, for the low low price of free, far better than it has any right to be. Not every joke lands, but there's enough that you'll probably be tickled by a few of them. And it uses the player's assumed knowledge of The Witness to further twist that game's mechanics - I particularly enjoyed the clever little pirate ship puzzle.

This is worth an hour of your time whether you loved or hated the Witness. If nothing else, you get to experience some of that game's wonder without giving any cash to old Blow.

the thing that you dont do when making a parody is posit the worst traits of the original property with zero self awareness. the triangle puzzle and the painting puzzle posits the worst traits of the original game with zero self awareness, in a game that makes jokes about obtuse puzzles by not "wasting your time" (a la giving you a shotgun to blow away door puzzles or just letting you draw around the solution), it proceeds to waste your time with two puzzles that are practically unsolvable unless you are to get a walkthrough or waste the next 30 minutes brute forcing it.

oh yeah and its all for a cock joke. despite this being only an hour or two to play, it runs out of steam within 30 minutes as it just plods along with boring walking around solving boring puzzles. jonathan blow is a pretentious twat but this sort of thing deserves either a more biting critique or an even dumber game.

The Looker gives the player a unique experience, and answers an interesting question: what would it be like to play The Witness from the perspective of, say, Egoraptor?

I learned of this game (as many others have) from Dunkey's video. From what I saw in that video I assumed that this game came from a relatively incurious perspective on its source material, and while I don't think my first impression was entirely wrong I will admit that The Looker did win me over pretty quick. I had already seen the useless hint button gag. What I did not expect was to find a second useless hint button, rusted over, sitting in a garbage can, smoking and drinking, with a story to tell.

The moments in which this game is overtly making fun of The Witness are without a doubt its worst. From the second that you see the first puzzle the fact that the simple abstract symbols of The Witness have been replaced with familiar words seems to completely undermine any meaningful comparison with what the original game is actually doing. Frankly there were times that I thought the game was going to pull the rug out from under me and it didn't. I thought for sure as I was writing down the sequences of the book puzzle that at the end the solution would be a non-sequitur and the game would make fun of me for taking notes; it did not. The beeping puzzle is obviously making fun of the audio puzzles in the original but it's so much worse of a puzzle that the joke completely falls flat.

The best moments of the game are when it genuinely provides interesting mechanical explorations beyond what The Witness's self seriousness would have allowed. The cannon puzzle, the snake game, and the rail shooter game are truly interesting evolutions of elements of this game's inspiration, integrating the perspective shifts and maze-solving in ways that make The Witness only look more clever, if less complete.

And that's kind of the be-all and end-all, being derived so closely from The Witness, all of The Looker's best elements, even the ways in which it builds on that game, are so tied to it that any joke at the original game's expense holds little weight. In what seems to be an attempt to reveal the apparent vapidity of The Witness, The Looker only reaffirms that the original game was a worthwhile effort.

I love The Witness, I don't hate The Looker. It's humor is generally entertaining, if disappointing and predictable. I kind of wish that an actual score attack game similar to the rail shooter segment existed on its own.

Playtime : 2+ Hours
completion : 90 %
Lore 0/5
Gameplay 3,5/5
Visuals 3/5
Music 0/5
Replay value 0/5
Overall 2,5/5
Notes : Pretty funny if you know the witness

This hysterically funny free parody is pure catharsis if, like me, you cannot stand The Witness, or anything Jonathan Blow has ever done, or even if you can find the irony in it despite being a fan of his work.


It mercilessly lampoons its pompous, pretentious writing, its puzzle design, visual style and even the build-up to the big (predictable) reveal.

It doesn't limit itself to spoofing Blow either, taking the whip to other tropes of the indie game scene, most notably the horror walking simulator genre in one of the most hilarious segments.

It would be absolutely perfect if only it didn't take its "let's be irritating on purpose" approach to puzzle design to an uncomfortable extreme: it's fine to demand the player think illogically in order to proceed, not so to force guesswork while simultaneously contending with finicky controls and poor color contrast, making one or two late puzzles absolute chores.

Still, this is an outstanding game that shouldn't be missed.