Individual puzzles in each area range from boring and stupid to revelatory and awesome (usually averaging out to be pretty good), but take up so little time on average that they kind of go in one eye (or ear, should be so unlucky) and out the other. The (attempted) interesting part of The Witness is the use of space and ways the spaces the puzzles inhabit “bring it all together" with the walks between the maze screens presenting their own complications, and often times resulting in a sort of "final boss puzzle."

When looking back several months to when I first played the witness, this part of the game completely dwarfs individual puzzle experiences in my mind. I’m pretty sure I didn’t care for the individual puzzles in the treehouse level but who cares, the bridge puzzle is the coolest thing in the game. I vaguely remember liking the individual puzzles in the hedge maze fort, but who cares the final puzzles are stupid time wasting memorization. I absolutely hated the individual mazes that incorporated the tree branch shadows, but loved the way they synthesized both themes for the final puzzle. The greenhouse color puzzles were kind of cool at first, but the final elevator was so dumb that I can only look back on the area in contempt.

The volatility of this dynamic defined my emotional experience with The Witness, as the conceit of the game’s world is that it was solely and specifically constructed for the puzzles. When the environments fail to significantly enhance the puzzles, or use their teachings in interesting ways, they have nowhere to hide like they do for me in a Myst, a Riven, or an Outer Wilds, with their Lewis and Clark-sy fascinations with exploring the details of their own worlds. In The Witness, more than all of the aforementioned games, the trees, mountains and rivers are nothing more (outside of a not insignificant aesthetic appeal) than extensions of those puzzle boxes. When The Witness’s world and environments fail, it's a total failure, and to me, The Witness totally failed with disappointing frequency.

Final note: this game didn't Tetris Effect me at all, like not one time did I see a circle or line out walking around and think of The Witness. This kind of makes me really hate the final cutscene, it called its shot and missed really bad.

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.)

This game is amazing but I am never finishing it.

As far as puzzle games go this game has some extremely good ideas that makes for really enjoyable puzzles ramping up in complexity, and the simple choice to force you to figure the puzzle mechanics out on your own gives you a deeper engagement with the game that makes it fulfilling in a big big way.

... and I really just wish they were put into a more accessible game. For as much as I love it I just keep getting gated by that one puzzle that hits my brain limit. Some particular points are too insane for me and I keep finding a point like that no matter how many times I try to come back to this game, so it's a shame that I have to say this game as much as I enjoyed it isn't one that is getting finished. Like I said, I hope more puzzle games take inspiration from this one just more accessible, I may unfortunately have been too dumb for this one.

Played this with my girlfriend. We made it probably 5 or so hours in and then had to give up out of frustration/boredom.

I'm already not particularly much of a fan of puzzles in games, and this is strictly puzzles. I thought I'd try it out anyways due to peoples general praise of it.

I see why people love it, but at some point the puzzles just become too annoying to care anymore.

I will say some of the things that we did figure out we felt pretty great about. It's just that those great moments were surrounded by moments of wandering and confusion.

A more accurate title for The Witness would be 'the marmite game', because you're going to either love it or hate it.

I've tried multiple times to get into this game and just can't, so I don't think it's fair to really give it a rating.

I can acknowledge that its a really good puzzle game, just not the type of game for me.

Maybe I'm just stupid, idk.