This means that when you get stuck on one section of the island, you can simply take a break and explore elsewhere. While it’s full of lots of locked doors and blocked off areas, it’s also very open, letting you explore different areas in any order you wish. The island is designed in a way that minimizes a lot of the frustration that comes from being stumped on a particular puzzle. ( The Witness is also a great game to play while someone else watches, as a second pair of eyes is very handy.) I kept a notebook with me as I played, and filled multiple pages with hand-drawn mazes and notes by the end it looked like the furious scribblings of a mad man. The game doesn’t even have music, because it would be a distraction. It’s like the island itself is a puzzle, and every aspect of it is designed with that in mind. I spent more time than I care to admit staring at a tree, trying to see if its branches held the clue to a puzzle I was stuck on. Without spoiling too much - because discovering the solutions is the best part of The Witness - I’ll just say that almost everything you see or hear in the game can be a clue, right down to the blades of grass and broken twigs on the ground. In most games I tend to run through as quickly as possible, letting much of the world breeze past me, but you can’t do that in The Witness. The Witness is about observation as much as it’s about drawing lines through mazes. What makes the puzzle design truly special, though, is the way it reflects the world around it. Discovering the solutions is the best part of The Witness These groups of puzzles tend to follow a standard path: the first one seems too easy, then you have an epiphany when you realize the new twist, and then you scratch your head in bewilderment at the challenge in front of you. Most of the puzzles are grouped together in sections of five or six challenges, each designed to introduce a new idea. That initial panel is just the first example of a puzzle designed not necessarily to challenge you, but to teach you something for when the challenge actually ramps up. Perhaps the most impressive thing about The Witness is how it eases you into its world, teaching you its logic without actually telling you anything explicitly. The earliest section has you tracing those lines through increasingly complex mazes, but the way the game manages to build an entire, massive experience around this initially simple mechanic is nothing short of incredible. From then on, everything you do in the game will be a variation on tracing a line. This door is just the first lesson in The Witness’ masterclass on puzzles. Then, "pop," the door opens and you’re bathed in sunlight. On the panel’s display is a line, and in order to open the door you simply trace the line the game never explains this to you, but it feels like the right thing to do. As you make your way toward the light at the end, you come across a door with a small electronic panel beside it. Those were the ones I couldn’t stop dreaming about. It’s a massive game if you solve everything, you can spend upwards of 100 hours on The Witness’ intriguing island.īut it’s also a game that can be immensely frustrating, with some puzzles so challenging it took me days to complete them. The game manages to communicate complex ideas without speaking a word, and by the end you’ll be solving puzzles that would’ve seemed impossible at the outset. The Witness might just be the most ambitious puzzle game ever made: its large open world is dense with clues and hints, and the hundreds of puzzles each build off of each other in surprising and inventive ways. And while that description is accurate, it also doesn’t do the game justice. The new game, the long-awaited follow-up to the 2008 indie hit Braid, is about exploring a mysterious, deserted island and solving puzzles. I see them when I’m doing mundane tasks, like folding laundry or giving my kids a bath, or when my mind wanders during a meeting at work. For the past week, they’ve occupied a huge chunk of my brain, popping up in the most unlikely places.
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