Comments on: Thoughts: The Witness https://scientificgamer.com/thoughts-the-witness/ Science, gaming, and all things in between. Sun, 09 Aug 2026 15:10:26 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=3.7.36 By: innokenti https://scientificgamer.com/thoughts-the-witness/#comment-28031 Tue, 23 Feb 2016 10:54:02 +0000 http://scientificgamer.com/?p=4824#comment-28031 It is clear to me Hentzau that you have not read Thomas Pynchon’s work, or everything would be quite clear and apparent.

Ahem.

]]> By: ilitarist https://scientificgamer.com/thoughts-the-witness/#comment-28025 Mon, 22 Feb 2016 11:32:25 +0000 http://scientificgamer.com/?p=4824#comment-28025 I adore the idea of Witness. It looks like the-game-we-won’t-mention but rejects overcomplicated puzzle design requiring you to smoke the same weed as designer to find unpractical solutions to trivial problems. It was a bane of adventure games. I feel you’re wrong about 2 types of modern puzzle games: Infirmatory and SpaceChem would become Portal and Talos Principle if devs didn’t hate your guts and thought you deserve to be happy. Witness is right there with SpaceChem even if it looks like more traditional adventure.

My experience with the game was short. Soon after tutorial I’ve found some big puzzle with black and white square symbols. For some reason I’ve deducted that you have to make your path between symbols of different color and not between the same symbols. And it worked. Then I’ve found the tutorial for B&W symbols and it worked too. Then I’ve found another big puzzle and it didn’t work. I’ve spend good 10 minutes till it has stricken me what I actually had to do. Afterwards I’ve imagined similar thing happened to every other not explained mechanic and decided I don’t really want to play this game.

I didn’t like poor synthesis of great story and great puzzles in Talos Principal but at least it had a story. Witness doesn’t seem to want anything to relate to anything else. Your review does decent job explaining why people may like it but I’d still would advise anyone who wants their brain challenged to go play some good strategy game or well crafted tactics.

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