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.)