Viewfinder

Legendary Photographer

What an amazing game, incredible story, incredible graphics. 100% reccomended

Viewfinder review Got this game during the steam summer sale as the central gimmick looked interesting, having now played it i can with certainty say that it is. For me personally this game is about an 8/10, mostly because I wish there was more of it, and that is genuinely a good problem to have, anyway, let’s get into a short description of the game, and then my positives and negatives. Oh and there will be spoilers for puzzles in the video, so feel free to just listen to the review. So viewfinder is a puzzle game where the central gimmick is that you can take photos (or art) and turn it into real things in the game world, in its simplest sense this essentially works like a 3d copy and paste function, but they do add a lot of fun spins on the formula as the game progresses. There's also a story here about people trying to find solutions to their environmental problems, and while I found all the voice acting good, I'd be lying if I said I was invested in the story. Anywho, onto the bad and the good. bad. slightly too short. while i usually try not to ♥♥♥♥ on indie games being on the shorter side. with this one it really feels like it wouldn’t hurt to have one or two more hubs, or maybe some more challenge levels. it’s somewhat compensated if you want to try for all the collectibles, but all in all i was left wanting more when it finished. And while they did get to some of the puzzle gimmicks I expected (like photographing yourself). I felt like an opportunity was missed by not doing mirrors. I am however certain that the developers would have thought of this and deliberately opted to not put it in, so maybe it didn’t work as well as i imagine it would. your mileage may vary but actively playing the game took me about 4-4,5 hours. difficulty Same as with my review of the room, it feels like most of the puzzles were pretty easy. The extra puzzles you get are slightly harder, but i didn’t need to use any of the menu hints this game provides, so i cant speak to whether they are good or not, but puzzlegames having built in hint systems is in my opinion always good. Combined with the short length this adds to the feeling that the game should have more to give, and while the game tries to up the difficulty with a time trial at the end, all this really does is add some more steps to the trial and error of the previous levels. it also annoyed me that the rewind function wont rewind the timer in this level,which feels somewhat contradictory to how you’d think it would work. good samey environments A lot of people might think this is a negative, but for me it’s absolutely a positive, for anyone who have played portal 1 or 2 you know the importance of clearly signposting puzzle element, in this game it’s done by environments having “two” colours, one for things that will stick on film/be affected by placing photos, and one colour for the things that won't. While this leads to a visually simpler design, it also means that there is never any ambiguity regarding how certain parts of the environment will work in a given puzzle the cat There's a cat in this, you can pet it…. nuff said…. also he adds to the experience by giving out words of encouragement as well as lore, all in all i loved the character and i liked that he chatted with me during the tram rides. rewind function The game allows you to rewind whenever you think you might have done something wrong, either by continuous rewind, or by jumping back to the last world interaction you did. This skips having to restart levels to reset puzzle parts, something that usually plague these kinds of games. music The music isn’t the best I've heard, but it adds to the experience and the otherworldlyness of the world you explore. All in all I think this is one of those short but sweet kind of games. they normally charge 25 euros for it, and i’d say it’s worth that price if you are a fan of the genre, for anyone else i’d say get it on a sale as it’s well worth it and won't take up too much of your time. I got it for about 9 euros at a sale, and at that price it’s absolutely worth it. All in all, i think this was a great game, i’d rate it 8/10 and it really reminded me that i should go back and finish the talos principle at some point, as that game gave me the headscratchers i felt this one was lacking.