The Witness

This game is weird, which usually I would really enjoy. In this game though, it's weird in a really pretentious and boring way. The game itself is really pretty, and the setting is quite lovely. It's so peaceful and at times cryptic that I kept expecting something spooky to jump out at me, but it never did. I think the first two hours or so of gameplay are the most magical and exciting. Learning the basic mechanics and exploring the vast island were incredibly fun and engaging for me. The experience did go downhill, though. This game really thinks that it has a lot to say about the meaning of life, but it really really doesn't. The setting wants you to explore and find hidden things, but often when you do you are rewarded with audio logs of a person reading a "meaningful" quote that can often go on for ages. Like, 3-7 minutes, with no indication of how long it will be before you start it. It absolutely destroyed the flow of gameplay for me, as sometimes I would stumble across one and stop to listen to it, only to find myself listening still, five minutes later, having forgotten what it was I was trying to do when I found it. This can be fine in some cases, but if you're pondering a puzzle when you find one it can completely interrupt your thought process. Coming back to listen to them later can be rough as well because they are often quite hidden or out of the way. The puzzles are all interesting, and they intend for you to learn their mechanics through completing easy puzzles and slowly increasing the difficulty. This is fine in some cases, but there were a few areas where the puzzle mechanics were completely lost on me, even when I would leave and come back after a few days with a fresh mind. In these cases there is not much you can do other than brute forcing or keep coming back with fresh eyes if you don't want to look up a guide. it can be quite frustrating. I tried my best to play without any walkthroughs so I kept leaving and coming back to the puzzle areas that I didn't understand. This meant that the last chunk of the playthrough naturally became the most frustrating and unfun, because I was left struggling with nonsensical (to me) puzzles that I absolutely couldn't wrap my head around for the last few hours of the game. I finished the game feeling annoyed and unsatisfied after struggling with one of the puzzles in the final sequence of the game, which completely ruined any atmosphere built up. I do think that this game overall does a good job of creating many different puzzle variants using the same base mechanic of using the grids, but the nonexistent guidance of the game can become frustrating when you feel like you've exhausted every solution or strategy to solving them. I often found myself having to retrace steps and re-explore areas over and over just to find one thing that I happened to miss on my first go-through of an area. This frustration absolutely detracts from the experience, and there was truly nothing more irritating than spending half an hour wandering and searching for some kind of small missed detail only to be met with a four minute audio log philosophizing about God. I really wish that you could pick up the audio logs and keep them in a notebook or something and listen to them at your own pace. Overall the experience ended up feeling very tedious and frustrating, and the sheer volume of puzzles became somewhat exhausting. It would take many many hours to complete every single puzzle in the game, but a lot of that time comes from the kind of hidden puzzles that expect you to keep a left click going for almost an hour. I think maybe if you played an hour or two per day over a period of weeks or months, it would be a better experience, but I don't know how realistic it is. I think that overall I would give this game a 4.5/10 that can be fun if you ignore certain aspects like the audio logs, but especially with the creator being a crazy pro-trump nut I think that I would give this game a pass.

Le jeu est pas si mal mais à certains gros probleme qui le rendent énervants chose qui est aux antipodes de ce que l'ont recherche dans un jeu de puzzles , de plus les puzzles vers la fin sont compliqué mais de la mauvaise raison , par exemple mettre des puzzles aléatoire avec un timer , c'est une très mauvaise idée et certain puzzles dans leurs réalisation sont soit épiléptique soit donne envie de vomir . tout de meme un 15/20 mais j'peux pas le conseiller à des gens qui serait + la cible . ah est d'ailleurs ca vaux pas 40 euros dutout , j'lai eu sur un bundle et j'suis Choqué du prix , c'est abusé la vie .

TLDR: I can just picture the cinema villain leaning forward into a pool of light, the ember of their cigar flaring as they suck on it and then whisper in a cloud of smoke “ … No witnesses. Ya hear?” [b][u]General Thoughts/Overview:[/u][/b] The witness is a walking simulator puzzle game. It feels like it aims to be myst, but doesn’t manage. Are we the witness? Who knows. What have we witnessed? Not sure. Walk around, drag things to form patterns. Work out how the patterns are meant to be drawn from the surroundings, add up bits as you move around the island, learning new mechanics and getting more skilled so you can back track and do more puzzles. Unlock extra patterns to get video clips, find Dictaphones here and there to get random quotes with no context, and drag the terrain to unlock piles of tyres. [b][u]Pros:[/u][/b] [list][*] Solving the puzzles feels really good at first, and solving a puzzle that’s been bamboozling you for a while feels fantastic. [*] There are a lot of puzzles to solve, if volume is your thing. Most of them aren’t particularly inventive, but oh boy are they voluminous. [*] There is no hand holding. Either you work it out or you don’t. (Or, you use a guide.) [/list] [b][u]Cons:[/u][/b] [list][*] The repetition is murderous. The critical path puzzles don’t iterate at all, once you’ve solved the basics its rinse and repeat 5ish more times for the base area, then remember the solution, and exceptions, to use in conjunction with other puzzles. If you’re REALLY lucky you get an uno reverse card set of puzzles to worth with too. [*] With a massive open island you can easily get lost when trying to find the next puzzle, or miss puzzles, or miss areas you needed to go. There’s no easy way to navigate, so you have to find everything again. Which is an absolute ball ache. The fixed point fast travel system helps a little, but navigation is painful. [*] Once the ambiance wears off, it becomes tedious. Everything in the game is monotonous, from the puzzles, to the art, to the quotes and clips. It’s just all so very dull. [/list] [b][u]Suggested improvements:[/u][/b] [list][*] A map. If not for fast travel, then for us to leave markers for ourselves. [*] A more defined critical path, so we don’t have to do some much back tracking with different puzzle combinations once we’ve learnt the basics. [*] More puzzle variety. It’s almost all the same tired stuff. [/list] [b][u]Overall Recommendation:[/u][/b] I know the exact moment the witness lost me. It was in the mountain as I felt I was about to finish, but then a bunch of the puzzles began to move around. Little did I know I had a hundred million or so more puzzles, but I said “no” and began using a guide to blast through the end of the game. I probably cut a third of all the puzzles in the game inside that mountain, and I never went around solving the myriad of environmental puzzles either, because I was just bored and done. This game is for people who really like drawing patterns. It’s for people who want a lot of the same sort of thing, but slightly different this time. It’s for people who really enjoy taking their time and thinking about things. I have multiple pages in my notepad, and a bunch of envelopes from post covered in my chicken scratches where I’ve tried to work out puzzles, and the only way I could do it was by making shapes and trying different combinations (sounds stupid, but it massively cuts down on iteration time.) The fact I got bored and just wanted the game to end means it’s a no from me. I’ve eaten muesli for breakfast every day for a decade, I’m fine with the same thing over and over, but even I had had enough of this inside 10 hours, and I [i]like[/i] these kinds of puzzles. [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44852412/]My curator page[/url] with reviews by genre. In case you want to find more games, or even reviews, like this one.

A very heavy focus on puzzling leaves this in a hard area to give a flat recommendation to, especially with how specific a few are and how much you will be in scratching your head over them, something which is done better by other games in its class. Still, the general design is great, the game looks gorgeous and the sound design compliments everything very well. Definitely a game to pick up on sale if you like a good puzzle game (while this is a "MetroidBrainia" like outer wilds/chroma zero/tunic/animal well etc. the self discovery does take a back seat to the puzzling and compared to those games feels very underwhelming), otherwise buy at your own risk. (This is a mixed review, however for the point of how specific the target audience is it's a not recommend.)

解密类又菜又爱玩选手觉得非常好玩！！！ 现在还是打折拿下的，结尾还有一点点的meta（指结尾关游戏） 好玩！！！

“It will be something wonderful. Something terrifying. Something awe-full.” The Witness is certainly clever. But, for me, never quite awe-full. I could spend hours listing its shortcomings, but The Looker has already exposed them so brilliantly that there is little left for me to add. I would still recommend completing both games. Together, they make for a fascinating lesson in video game design.

The Witness felt like a really good book that you've spent a lot of time with and after finishing it, you feel a bit sad that it's over because it touched you deeply. I definitely want to play it at least one more time when I get better graphics hardware because the world is just so beautifully crafted. Although the most important part would be not the one that you can see...

Very interesting game with a lot of cool puzzles. Too full of itself all of the time (I'm including the long times to do ANYTHING in this as well), but well-worth it. Do play the excellent (free) parody game the looker as well, really enhances both gameplay experiences to play the both!

Сами головоломки не так ужасны. Но тут частично нелинейный мир и тебе может сильно не повезти — попасть к какому-то типу головоломок до того, как тебе на простых примерах объяснят их суть. Но перемещение по острову идёт медленно и на своих двоих, хотя удобнее было бы иметь карту и быстрое перемещение. Но мир ужасно ограничен: ты не можешь выйти никуда из многих коридоров, подняться по склону или упасть в воду. Но это всё мелкие недостатки, которые не вызвали бы у меня большого отторжения. Самое ужасное здесь — кассеты. На них записаны разнообразные "мудрые мысли". И выглядит это не как цитата. И не как длинный текст, который можно пробежать глазами и подтвердить. А как медленное извержение чужих плохопереваренных мыслей вам в уши. И только вы надеетесь, что конец очередного предложение означает точку в этой пытке, как вы слышите начало новой фразы — и вот уже новая струя философских пошлостей льётся в вас.

Such a fantastic game. No hand holding, constant progresson and intelligent design, exploration and hidden secrets. Could not rave about it enough. One specific section made me almost go insane but I'm happy to be past it and still with so much of the world left to explore and complete. Don't want the journey to end but stoked I found this game and got to enjoy the experience. Go in completely blind and don't look up spoilers. Stretch your mind and experience everything as it's designed.