Although it's tempting, this is a game you really don't want any spoilers about (if you are ever going to play it). Vi Hart, who has been playtesting the game for months, said:
> Tips for playing The Witness: give yourself a week or two, no hints, no reviews. Sleep on it. Take breaks. It's a big game. Nothing like it.
> If you can't spend all day every day playing The Witness, give yourself months. Engage deeply with The Witness and it will stare back.
> Don't watch twitch streams or look at screenshots or read reviews. Just play it, seriously.
> ...this is a game you really don't want any spoilers about...
I couldn't possibly agree more. But, just so others don't end up making (or not making!) a blind purchase, I present a spoiler-free summary:
It's a puzzle game. I'm likely not nearly done with the game and the puzzles have ranged from trivial to really, really, rather hard. The guy who made Braid is the designer of and one of the programmers of this game. It's also rather pretty, and the art (and foley) directions [0] are solid.
I'm a few hours in and have already had so many moments of pure euphoria. It is a full sensory game. It uses my whole brain. Aesthetically, intellectually, even spiritually.
A quote in one of the audio logs is so exquisite that I just have to share.
One nature perfect and pervading circulates in all natures
One reality, all comprehensive, contains within itself all realities
The one Moon reflects itself wherever there is a sheet of water
And all the moons in the waters are embraced within the one moon
The Dharma body [the Absolute] of all Buddhas enters into my own being
And my own being is found in union with theirs
The Inner Light is beyond praise and blame
Like space it knows no boundaries
Yet it is even here, within us, ever retaining its serenity and fullness
It is only when you hunt for it that you lose it
You cannot take hold of it, but equally you cannot get rid of it
And while you can do neither, it goes on its own way
You remain silent and it speaks, you speak and it is dumb
The great gate of charity is wide open, with no obstacles before it.
As someone who is colorblind, I've been happy to see many games come out with options to enable filters for one or more types of colorblindness. It's disappointing that such a feature isn't present in this game.
Some of my absolute favorite memories are playing Myst as a kid with my family. We'd huddle around the computer, take notes, kibitz about where to explore, be amazed at the visuals (those gondola-style rides were breathtaking at the time!). Riven might have been the high point of the series for us with the feeling of exploration it had being so great and involving.
I wish modern exploration/puzzle adventures in the Myst vein were made to be more easily navigated by my parents, who just can't handle FPS-style controls, quick action, jumping puzzles, etc. So I can't have them try Braid or Fez or most other modern games despite having some great puzzles. Machinarium worked great, Her Story was good but quite different, but other than that we'll probably never get to share that same Myst-style experience again. At least Cyan is working on a Myst-esque game again, Obduction.
>The bulk of the game feels like taking an IQ test.
This is from a negative (but helpful) review of this game and it echoes exactly how I felt about playing Braid. His games feel like they're constructed so everyone will admire the genius of the creator for thinking up these kinds of interesting puzzles. And if the player ends up enjoying the game while they're admiring its creator, well that's an added benefit I guess.
I've tried hard to like Braid despite it being a platform game (Flashback (1992) is the only game in that genre that I've enjoyed so far).
It's gorgeous, clever and polished, yet it felt pretentious to the point where it would distract from the beauty of the game.
And I didn't know anything about the creator of the game before trying, so that couldn't have been personal bias (not implying that would have been the case otherwise).
I was rather struck by this game. The puzzles are indeed clever and was immediately enamoured with the combinatoric spaces and visual appeal. Perhaps it is my experience with Go as a "conversation with hands," that drew me in to The Witness as a "conversation with the designer."
I hope Jonathan feels very lucky to have made this game. It is great and I find myself envious and over-joyed that he has had the time, privilege, and skill to build it (and many thanks to the team behind it as well).
JBlow is featured in the documentary Indie Game[0][1] which follows the trials and tribulations of development and launch of two indie games Super Meat Boy and Fez.
It's surprising how similar the whole experience is to launching a startup!
Indie Game: The Movie is one of the best documentaries I've ever seen. The cinematography is amazing, and they tell a great story about each of the dev teams they follow. Definitely worth a watch.
I feel like it's hard to launch a game as an MVP. You can try it out, but actually selling it without having all the aspects of the game (sound, graphics, performance, etc) might be hard.
That movie is really unfair to him. It more or less mocks him and paints him as this out of touch primadonna instead of focusing on his work. I feel it was very unfair to him and dramatized for the audience at his expense.
Although I have a backlog of unplayed games which could last me for an eternity or two, I will probably buy the game regardless at full price now, instead of waiting for the inevitable sale a few months down the line.
While Jonathan's opinions can be a bit divisive, he is obviously a passionate programmer and gamer, and he financed the game from the sales of Braid, without kickstarter shenanigans.
(And of course the game appeals to me regardless as an old-school adventure games lover).
It looks great and I would definitely be playing it this weekend, but Windows-only is a nonstarter. I'm rather surprised to see an indie title like this not support OS X.
It is interesting that the game's rating is very positive but no one recommends it if I read the reviews. It seems that this game is not like Myst but a sterile puzzle collection without a story. Did I miss something?
I think the default sorting for Steam reviews is by how helpful a review was.
Looking through some of the positive and negative reviews, it seems like the positive reviews are fairly short and don't say much about the game, while the negative reviews are longer and the reviewers do mention what they thought did and didn't work about the game, so the longer reviews that have a negative opinion end up being the most helpful. Just telling someone you liked something isn't going to cut it for everyone.
I can only guess that everyone who wanted to write a more in-depth positive review was just so keen to get back to playing the game that they cut their review short ;)
If you don't like something, you are much more likely to vent than when you like it. Besides, it's a new release, so those who like it are still busy playing it.
I think posting a review of a game after playing it for 1 hour is awkward. But what is more awkward is upvoting reviews of other people that played it for 1 hour.
The hype machine around this is strange - tons of superficially positive reviews but without a whole lot of passion behind them.
Does anyone else smell something off about the response to the game so far? Have people convinced themselves that this is a great game before they started enjoying it?
It's just very difficult to explain what is so good about the game without spoiling the heck out of it, and since a big part of the experience is discovery, people that really like the game will hate do not want to spoil it for new players.
I play puzzle hunts, and have played a whole lot of puzzle based games over the years. I do not like Braid that much. However, I think The Witness is, gameplay wise, better than Portal, Talos Principle, Myst, 7th Guest or anything from the Professor Layton series. The puzzles get to be very hard, but they never felt unfair.
If anything, the negative reviews come from how the very beginning of the game starts too slowly, making sure you understand a little piece of the game, when, in practice, there's a whole lot more to it. The tutorial area is simple and generic, on purpose. Right afterwards, you get to an area that is just confusing, with puzzles you really shouldn't even attempt. Go anywhere else though, and the real game opens up, and it's wonderful.
> Have people convinced themselves that this is a great game before they started enjoying it?
Quite possibly. While it is an excellent game, the hype train has been rolling for so long that by this point it can't be seen as anything less than excellent.
See also the review cycle around the similarly hyped and long-awaited "That Dragon, Cancer".
I don't know what you are seeing, I'm passionate about it. There are really only one or two puzzle games of this caliber every year, if that, and for me this is the best one in many years. The superficial similarity of the puzzle design to some popular iphone games, combined with a higher price than indie games typically have, seems to be putting people off.
It's also a very simple game. There isn't a lot someone who likes it can say about it without spoiling anything. There are puzzles. They are good. The island is also a puzzle. It is fun to solve puzzles. Yeah, I can't really go on that way for very long, can I.
I think that is normal - Jon Blow has a big online presence, lots of fans due to Braid...
I upvote edw519 before I finish reading his comments all the time...
Wow, back in the day I loved Atlantis the lost tales [0], this definitely has that feel. I would have bought it already if I had more than just Linux at my disposal...
With the Steambox/machine now in production I thought the divide windows/Linux was shrinking rapidly. I'm not at all a gamer though.
I absolutely love the game, but for the sake of discussion, I have to admit that I'm slightly disappointed by the puzzle-paneliness of it all. I didn't read many spoilers over the 8 years of its development, but Jonathan Blow always made a point to emphasize the epiphany-based nature of the game. I took this to mean that as you gain knowledge from the panels, you slowly begin to understand how to use them to engage in more interesting ways with the world. Instead, the opposite is true: the world simply provides different kinds of masks to solve the puzzles with. In other words, the panels are still the beating heart of the game, while the world is mostly static.
To me, this goes against what I like most in games. I find that one of the primary advantages of this interactive medium is the ability to solve puzzles by intuition. Braid was particularly good at this: instead of having to stand in front of a challenge and reason it out in your mind, you could dive right in and play around with the mechanics until your mind took on the solution all on its own. Over time, you acquired a feeling of natural mastery over these new elements. The Witness does not feel like this; more often than not, you have to logic out the puzzles in your head or on paper, and it never feels as good as using the game world to interactively solve a problem.
(Yes, I'm aware of the obelisk puzzles, but it seems they still follow more or less the same formula. But I haven't gotten very far in that direction, so we'll see.)
The game also makes me think about the problem of hidden knowledge in open-world games. Most metroidvania-style games gate the player with keys or abilities, but a few are starting to add paths that are closed solely based on the player's knowledge. One of the first games I remember doing this is Super Metroid: the wall jump and high jump allowed you to get to a lot more places, but they were nearly impossible to discover without the bird helpers. Fez did this with its Tetris language. La-Mulana did it with its obscure inscriptions. And The Witness does it with the ruleset of its various puzzles -- more completely than any other game before it. Still, I wonder if there's a better way to stash away that kind of knowledge. The puzzle panels are a bit too abstract for my tastes. I'd love to see a game where the hidden knowledge you find is entirely ability-based, but not obscure like in Super Metroid.
Again, The Witness is a masterpiece and one of the few games I'd gladly call art. It would be worth $40 just for the opportunity walk around the incredibly beautiful world. Just some food for game design thought! :)
I can kind of see where you're coming from. I think it might be because the puzzles don't seem to produce much if any overall progress and there's no real indicator of the bigger picture you're trying to achieve (though in some ways you may argue this is also one of its strengths).
Look at a title like Talos Principle for example, which while not a like for like comparison has a quite clear sense of an overarching story and progression.
Interesting that you mention Super Metroid - I have some of my strongest and fondest memories with the things you mentioned, the wall jumps, blowing up the glass with the Power Bomb, etc. Things that felt surprising, not like deus ex machina, but which felt like genuine discoveries that made sense.
I think the Witness has these, but at a much smaller level. Discovering the rules for a particular puzzle gives that huge rush for me, but I haven't seen it translate to the game as a whole.
I was going to buy this game until I read the steam reviews. If you're considering this purchase I highly recommend reading the top-rated helpful reviews. They changed my mind, they might change yours.
TLDR for the reviews - Only buy this if you like puzzles for individual puzzle's sake, not as means to unlocking a larger story.
Nice to have an indie developer exposed by HN. Sad to see there are no other cases.
Blow had its relevance due to XBOX but many indies have been out there before on PC, so it sounds unfair when you think in the whole scene
Oh goodie, he's moving complaints and unfavourable opinions to "Dumb Internet Questions". I recommend reading the reviews, especially the longer ones, before buying.
Windows and PS4 huh? As the exclusive owner of Macs and an Xbox One, that's little irritating. I'd at least imagine a Windows to Xbox One port to be reasonable.
They have a timed exclusivity agreement with Sony, hence PS4 first.
"It will be released on the PC and the PlayStation 4 on January 26, 2016. The game will come to iOS some months after that, and other platforms a bit later." (http://the-witness.net/news/about/)
Fingers crossed for a Linux port at some point! For Blow's last game (Braid) I think the Linux port was done by a third party.
Or maybe it's time to get a copy of Windows and set up a VM with GPU passthrough...
Well, I was about to add it to my Steam wish list until I read this. My only non-work computer is a Mac, so I guess I won't be playing it until it's released there.
[+] [-] nailer|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sp332|10 years ago|reply
> Tips for playing The Witness: give yourself a week or two, no hints, no reviews. Sleep on it. Take breaks. It's a big game. Nothing like it.
> If you can't spend all day every day playing The Witness, give yourself months. Engage deeply with The Witness and it will stare back.
> Don't watch twitch streams or look at screenshots or read reviews. Just play it, seriously.
[+] [-] tobr|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simoncion|10 years ago|reply
I couldn't possibly agree more. But, just so others don't end up making (or not making!) a blind purchase, I present a spoiler-free summary:
It's a puzzle game. I'm likely not nearly done with the game and the puzzles have ranged from trivial to really, really, rather hard. The guy who made Braid is the designer of and one of the programmers of this game. It's also rather pretty, and the art (and foley) directions [0] are solid.
[0] Yes, plural.
[+] [-] lgieron|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moultano|10 years ago|reply
A quote in one of the audio logs is so exquisite that I just have to share.
One nature perfect and pervading circulates in all natures
One reality, all comprehensive, contains within itself all realities
The one Moon reflects itself wherever there is a sheet of water
And all the moons in the waters are embraced within the one moon
The Dharma body [the Absolute] of all Buddhas enters into my own being
And my own being is found in union with theirs
The Inner Light is beyond praise and blame
Like space it knows no boundaries
Yet it is even here, within us, ever retaining its serenity and fullness
It is only when you hunt for it that you lose it
You cannot take hold of it, but equally you cannot get rid of it
And while you can do neither, it goes on its own way
You remain silent and it speaks, you speak and it is dumb
The great gate of charity is wide open, with no obstacles before it.
- Yung-Chia Ta-Shih
[+] [-] muraiki|10 years ago|reply
As someone who is colorblind, I've been happy to see many games come out with options to enable filters for one or more types of colorblindness. It's disappointing that such a feature isn't present in this game.
[+] [-] tgb|10 years ago|reply
I wish modern exploration/puzzle adventures in the Myst vein were made to be more easily navigated by my parents, who just can't handle FPS-style controls, quick action, jumping puzzles, etc. So I can't have them try Braid or Fez or most other modern games despite having some great puzzles. Machinarium worked great, Her Story was good but quite different, but other than that we'll probably never get to share that same Myst-style experience again. At least Cyan is working on a Myst-esque game again, Obduction.
[+] [-] danso|10 years ago|reply
http://mollyrocket.com/casey/stream_0015.html (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7692332)
[+] [-] remybach|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hoorayimhelping|10 years ago|reply
This is from a negative (but helpful) review of this game and it echoes exactly how I felt about playing Braid. His games feel like they're constructed so everyone will admire the genius of the creator for thinking up these kinds of interesting puzzles. And if the player ends up enjoying the game while they're admiring its creator, well that's an added benefit I guess.
[+] [-] eamsen|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agentultra|10 years ago|reply
I hope Jonathan feels very lucky to have made this game. It is great and I find myself envious and over-joyed that he has had the time, privilege, and skill to build it (and many thanks to the team behind it as well).
[+] [-] myth_buster|10 years ago|reply
It's surprising how similar the whole experience is to launching a startup!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indie_Game:_The_Movie
[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1942884/
[+] [-] hnal943|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seivan|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drzaiusapelord|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kurtz79|10 years ago|reply
While Jonathan's opinions can be a bit divisive, he is obviously a passionate programmer and gamer, and he financed the game from the sales of Braid, without kickstarter shenanigans.
(And of course the game appeals to me regardless as an old-school adventure games lover).
[+] [-] mrmondo|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baddox|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cstuder|10 years ago|reply
Currently Windows and PS4 only.
[+] [-] Narishma|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edem|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clentaminator|10 years ago|reply
Looking through some of the positive and negative reviews, it seems like the positive reviews are fairly short and don't say much about the game, while the negative reviews are longer and the reviewers do mention what they thought did and didn't work about the game, so the longer reviews that have a negative opinion end up being the most helpful. Just telling someone you liked something isn't going to cut it for everyone.
I can only guess that everyone who wanted to write a more in-depth positive review was just so keen to get back to playing the game that they cut their review short ;)
[+] [-] abcd_f|10 years ago|reply
If you don't like something, you are much more likely to vent than when you like it. Besides, it's a new release, so those who like it are still busy playing it.
[+] [-] saluk|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mahn|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moultano|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tdsamardzhiev|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] no_wave|10 years ago|reply
Does anyone else smell something off about the response to the game so far? Have people convinced themselves that this is a great game before they started enjoying it?
[+] [-] hibikir|10 years ago|reply
I play puzzle hunts, and have played a whole lot of puzzle based games over the years. I do not like Braid that much. However, I think The Witness is, gameplay wise, better than Portal, Talos Principle, Myst, 7th Guest or anything from the Professor Layton series. The puzzles get to be very hard, but they never felt unfair.
If anything, the negative reviews come from how the very beginning of the game starts too slowly, making sure you understand a little piece of the game, when, in practice, there's a whole lot more to it. The tutorial area is simple and generic, on purpose. Right afterwards, you get to an area that is just confusing, with puzzles you really shouldn't even attempt. Go anywhere else though, and the real game opens up, and it's wonderful.
[+] [-] s_kilk|10 years ago|reply
Quite possibly. While it is an excellent game, the hype train has been rolling for so long that by this point it can't be seen as anything less than excellent.
See also the review cycle around the similarly hyped and long-awaited "That Dragon, Cancer".
[+] [-] saluk|10 years ago|reply
It's also a very simple game. There isn't a lot someone who likes it can say about it without spoiling anything. There are puzzles. They are good. The island is also a puzzle. It is fun to solve puzzles. Yeah, I can't really go on that way for very long, can I.
[+] [-] swah|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teekert|10 years ago|reply
With the Steambox/machine now in production I thought the divide windows/Linux was shrinking rapidly. I'm not at all a gamer though.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYlzsZcuVkY
[+] [-] eridius|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] archagon|10 years ago|reply
I absolutely love the game, but for the sake of discussion, I have to admit that I'm slightly disappointed by the puzzle-paneliness of it all. I didn't read many spoilers over the 8 years of its development, but Jonathan Blow always made a point to emphasize the epiphany-based nature of the game. I took this to mean that as you gain knowledge from the panels, you slowly begin to understand how to use them to engage in more interesting ways with the world. Instead, the opposite is true: the world simply provides different kinds of masks to solve the puzzles with. In other words, the panels are still the beating heart of the game, while the world is mostly static.
To me, this goes against what I like most in games. I find that one of the primary advantages of this interactive medium is the ability to solve puzzles by intuition. Braid was particularly good at this: instead of having to stand in front of a challenge and reason it out in your mind, you could dive right in and play around with the mechanics until your mind took on the solution all on its own. Over time, you acquired a feeling of natural mastery over these new elements. The Witness does not feel like this; more often than not, you have to logic out the puzzles in your head or on paper, and it never feels as good as using the game world to interactively solve a problem.
(Yes, I'm aware of the obelisk puzzles, but it seems they still follow more or less the same formula. But I haven't gotten very far in that direction, so we'll see.)
The game also makes me think about the problem of hidden knowledge in open-world games. Most metroidvania-style games gate the player with keys or abilities, but a few are starting to add paths that are closed solely based on the player's knowledge. One of the first games I remember doing this is Super Metroid: the wall jump and high jump allowed you to get to a lot more places, but they were nearly impossible to discover without the bird helpers. Fez did this with its Tetris language. La-Mulana did it with its obscure inscriptions. And The Witness does it with the ruleset of its various puzzles -- more completely than any other game before it. Still, I wonder if there's a better way to stash away that kind of knowledge. The puzzle panels are a bit too abstract for my tastes. I'd love to see a game where the hidden knowledge you find is entirely ability-based, but not obscure like in Super Metroid.
Again, The Witness is a masterpiece and one of the few games I'd gladly call art. It would be worth $40 just for the opportunity walk around the incredibly beautiful world. Just some food for game design thought! :)
[+] [-] kayamon|10 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=084BUNlI7Gk
[+] [-] joshschreuder|10 years ago|reply
Look at a title like Talos Principle for example, which while not a like for like comparison has a quite clear sense of an overarching story and progression.
Interesting that you mention Super Metroid - I have some of my strongest and fondest memories with the things you mentioned, the wall jumps, blowing up the glass with the Power Bomb, etc. Things that felt surprising, not like deus ex machina, but which felt like genuine discoveries that made sense.
I think the Witness has these, but at a much smaller level. Discovering the rules for a particular puzzle gives that huge rush for me, but I haven't seen it translate to the game as a whole.
[+] [-] iandanforth|10 years ago|reply
TLDR for the reviews - Only buy this if you like puzzles for individual puzzle's sake, not as means to unlocking a larger story.
[+] [-] taloft|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jslakro|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krige|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] donatj|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fulafel|10 years ago|reply
"It will be released on the PC and the PlayStation 4 on January 26, 2016. The game will come to iOS some months after that, and other platforms a bit later." (http://the-witness.net/news/about/)
Fingers crossed for a Linux port at some point! For Blow's last game (Braid) I think the Linux port was done by a third party.
Or maybe it's time to get a copy of Windows and set up a VM with GPU passthrough...
[+] [-] mwill|10 years ago|reply
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/09/how-sony-snagged-jonat...
[+] [-] chrismbarr|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abrkn|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] archagon|10 years ago|reply