The Witness

Very good game made by horrible person. Jonathan Blow is not a good person. Look up his views before buying the game. The game itself is very good but pretentious. Great art style and puzzles and exploration. The puzzles are not difficult. Be aware that you will spend a lot of time looking at puzzle boards. It's pretentious because the dev thinks the gameplay has some philosophical teachings, it does not. It has philosophical texts and recordings but they have not much to do with the game. Imagine if someone created Tetris and added philosophy texts to it and pretended the game taught philosophy.

This is my favourite puzzle game of all time (I've played this game a lot on GOG, so ignore my hours on Steam). When asked what I would choose to forget if I could forget one thing, it would be The Witness, so that I could experience it for the first time again, and then read this review to get an idea of what I'm getting into. All in all, I feel like the Witness is a video game that tries to teach you logical thinking from the ground up in a very interesting way. The first few hours of this game feel very confusing, and like you're missing the instruction booklet. What makes The Witness so interesting is that if you keep exploring instead of bashing your head against the wall at puzzles with strange symbols you don't understand, then you'll likely find out what the symbols mean through little 'tutorial' sections that let you guess the answer to puzzles with only 2-3 answers, and then ask yourself "Why did that work?" It can be quite a frustrating experience, and there are certain puzzles (the ones on the beach with the birds) that I still really struggle with despite knowing how they work. The way this game uses it's knowledge of how you likely solved the previous puzzle in an area to then force you to change your solution to the next one can really make it feel like the developer can see into your head and has purposefully tried to make your life more difficult. However, it's also incredibly rewarding when you figure something out. Sadly I didn't understand that when I first played, so I ended up looking up what some of the symbols meant without realizing I was meant to be able to figure them out on my own, and I feel like I robbed myself of a very unique experience. There are quite a few hidden puzzles and secrets, but unlike something like Lingo, travelling around tends to be quite straightforward with beautiful scenery and there's not really any running around in circles for hours trying to figure out one little thing you missed that will open up a whole new area. I don't believe this game is for everyone, and similar to Dark Souls, there will be times where you get frustrated and stuck. Sometimes puzzles feel impossible or hurt your head from thinking too hard. I find some people in the community get rather pretentious about The Witness being a flawless game and if you don't get it then it's because you're stupid or some such thing. Not everyone is going to like this game, and not everyone's brain is going to work the way this game tries to guide it into thinking. However, I do think with enough patience and thought, anyone CAN beat this game without any kind of guide or help. But not everyone has the time to put themselves through that, and I don't think anyone should be expected to do that or be made to feel bad for valuing their time more than thinking of possible solutions to puzzles or what rules mean. I do really recommend trying it out and giving it a fair shot without help for as long as you can stomach though! It's a beautiful game and after playing it I always want to look for other games that give me that same satisfying feeling from figuring things out, such as Lingo or Return of the Obra Dinn!

As someone with a background in education, the way that this game is designed so you intuit the rules of the various puzzles without any written instructions or guides can be breathtaking at times. Jonathan Blow is a terrible person but he made a fantastic game here, The Witness isn't any more opaque or pretentious than Myst it just quotes real world texts instead of fictional ones.

I can't remember the last time I played a game that made me use everything I know and have learned. This game made me use everything. I have achived end of the game and I am the only witness to this success.

呕吐解谜神作之一，当年玩了20分钟就成功地让我再也不敢玩任何3D游戏，晕3D慎入。 一开始觉得地图很大不知道怎么玩，后来发现就是传统的解谜游戏结构，分为几个区域，每个区域有一套规则，或者是几套规则的组合，打完各个区域学会了全部规则就可以前往结局。谜题都有循序渐进的教学（可能要找），一旦投入进去做题就很爽，找不到题到处跑的时候会可能比较迷茫。 至于设计好在哪里，最好还是在没有剧透的情况下自己体验。 通关后一个很大的感受是，确实只有靠3D才能呈现出这样的创意，并且考虑了很多细节来维持题目的准确，整个游戏都是精巧设计过的空间，并不是我以为的对现实世界规则的复刻。让我对3D游戏有所改观。有时看到一些游戏为了实现理想中的创意不得不牺牲一部分体验，难免会觉得有些无奈，比如这个呕吐神作，再比如一些独立游戏创意很好但让人玩得很累。但话又说回来，坚持做自己想做的、做别人没做过的，这才是我喜欢的独立精神啊。 《见证者》推出转眼已经过去了十年，希望吹哥可以不忘初心，继续带来优秀的作品！

REALLY cool game so far. $40 seems far, far too high. Wait for a sale. Worth it though REVISION POST COMPLETION: The ending is awful. the gameplay through it is good and enjoyable for mindless time kill and puzzles, but the ending is really bad. once you complete the far too drawn out ending "cutscene" the game save you have is reset. I love achievement hunting and i was intending on completing the extra areas and the secrets i hadnt yet gotten to. but NO. the game ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ RESETS IT without asking you or warning of any kind. What a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ waste of time. Now I have to replay everything just to find the little extras I was looking forward to finding. The game is fine, the price is outright insulting and the ending is a waste of time. just play the game for fun while on sale, do NOT finish it until youre ready to delete the game.

For a game called The Witness, I spent most of my time wondering what exactly I was supposed to be witnessing. The first impression is excellent, at least visually. The island is gorgeous. Bright colors, striking architecture, peaceful landscapes. It looks like the kind of place you could happily get lost in for hours. Unfortunately, getting lost was exactly what happened. Just not in the good way. There is almost no story setup, no clear objective and very little sense of purpose. You arrive, start drawing lines through puzzle panels and slowly realize that nearly the entire game revolves around learning increasingly complex variations of that same basic idea. To its credit, the way The Witness teaches these rules can be clever. Instead of explaining anything directly, it gives you simple examples and expects you to recognize the pattern. There are some genuine “aha!” moments when everything suddenly clicks, and I can understand why that process is so satisfying for many players. The puzzles themselves were mostly fine. I did not find any that I absolutely loved or hated. The bigger problem was the question that kept returning after every solved panel: why am I doing this? There are audio logs scattered around the island that hint at philosophical themes, but they felt too obscure and disconnected to give the experience any real weight. I understand that the vagueness is probably intentional. The game wants you to interpret things for yourself. For me, it did not feel profound or mysterious. It just felt vague. TL;DR: The Witness is visually stunning and contains some clever puzzle design with satisfying moments of realization. However, its lack of story and meaningful motivation made the experience feel hollow. I understood the puzzle language it wanted me to learn. I simply never found a reason to care. 4/10.

Одна из тяжелейших головоломок в индустрии Проходил когда-то на пиратке и потратил ОЧЕНЬ много времени, но даже второе прохождение растянулось не на всего несколько часов воспоминаний, а реально пришлось даже некоторые элементы понимать с нуля. Здесь нет как такового геймплея, сюжета - только ты и красивый разнообразный остров, напичканный задачками. То, как со временем растёт сложность, заставляет тратить на некоторые загадки дни, а то и больше, но в конечном итоге даёт ощущение победы. Важно учесть, что эта игра СТРОГО для любителей жанра: любой другой почти наверняка бросит прохождение спустя несколько часов из-за тягомотины и долгого отсутствия прогресса. Визуально и по части звукового сопровождения это очень приятное приключение, предоставляющее достаточно разнообразные головоломки и испытания, которые заставят реально посвятить себя этой игре, чтобы справиться.

This is a puzzle game. And a thinking game. And a bit of both at the same time. It presents itself as a simple line puzzle idea, which expands quite a lot during the playthrough: new rules get added and taught to you, sometimes in ways you never expect; new environments expand ways you can interact with puzzles, forcing you to find solutions to what looks impossible at first (or even second) glance. The process of completing this game is a pleasant experience. There is always a rule to follow, even if you don't see or understand it at first. It heavily rewards observation skills and attention to details, which is (mostly) the point of this game, but it does not disregard logic. Like in any puzzle game, you won't make it far without analyzing what you can and cannot do. You will probably still be able to complete it though. And it will still feel like a [b] good [/b] puzzle game! What I mean by "making it far" is what I think the developers intended to be the [b]core[/b] experience of this game. Going further when the game wants you to think that it is over. You would not simply call a game "The Witness" if you only wanted players to draw a bunch of squiggly lines, right? I think that Jonathan Blow used this medium to show players a bit more than what a video game is able to. Thinking "outside the box" is the common term used to (usually positively) describe puzzle games. It is a hard thing to achieve as a developer and leads to a great puzzle design. What if we go [i] up in the hierarchy? [/i] Making players think "outside the game" leads to [b]great[/b] game design. And The Witness made me feel that it is true. It made me think outside the game, and, I am afraid to say, out of my own consciousness. The bears might not exist, but the pursuit of finding them gave me a lot of food for thought. I couldn't have imagined before that a video game can provoke my brain to think about art and religion, or the anthropic principle, or about afterlife, or the [i]ability to understand anything.[/i] It's a shame that most people will never experience this game to the fullest. So, if you are considering buying and playing it, do so, and after completing it, spend a bit more time to witness what developers really wanted you to. They didn't make this [b]experience[/b] solely by themselves, but they wanted to share what they feel is valuable to any human. Jonathan Blow might not be a genius, but he for sure knows what it is to be one.