The rest of the game throws in variations on this idea, while many puzzle types, especially those that use environmental cues, eschew this format entirely. These require you to move your way from a starting point to an end point. The puzzle that serves as a foundation for the majority of the game is the maze. From this point on, I was constantly viewing the island as a puzzle itself.Of course, if you are looking to be shown every solution, check out our walk through guide.īasic Mazes || Small Hexagon Dots || Black and White Squres || Symmetry || Multicolor Squares || Suns || Tetris Shapes || Environmental Cues || Triangles Sure enough, I clicked on the area that seemed like it would be a “starting point,” only to find that I was able to draw a line on the environment itself. It was here that I noticed a path along the ground bore a striking resemblance to the lines I’d been drawing to solve my panel puzzles. I was able to climb up on top of a rampart and get a nice view of the island. I found my first one after I decided to head back to the opening area and see if there was anything I may have missed. Scattered throughout the island are environmental puzzles that take shape when viewed at just the right angle. By the end, it genuinely felt like I had learned an alien language filled with colorful lines, segmented grids, and distinct patterns.īut the true magic of The Witness doesn’t fully kick in until you discover one of the countless puzzles that exist outside of the prescribed panels. It doesn’t straight up tell you any of these rules, instead trusting you to figure them out through context clues and the gradual building of puzzle difficulty. But then it introduces grammar into the equation, forcing you to figure out how to combine the separate rules you’ve learned into fully functional sentences. The game begins by teaching you the basics of its nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Ignite enough turrets, and the light eventually opens up the mountain, revealing the final area of the game.įirst and foremost, the puzzles of The Witness are a language. Each area is packed with puzzle panels that lead towards powering up a large turret that fires a beam of light towards the top of the mountain at the center of the island. Once you get through the brief introductory section, you’re free to explore the island at your leisure - from its abandoned village, to winding hedge mazes, to desert ruins, to strange bunkers. The Witness is a first-person puzzle exploration game set on a sprawling and colorful island filled with a dozen different unique and fantastical biomes. And ever since its release, I’ve been searching for another puzzle game to come along and completely take over my life with the same spell that it did. The Witness gripped me tight with its world, puzzles, and mysteries - inside the game as well as out. However, upon finally having the opportunity to immerse myself in the game, it became clear it was so much more than the sum of its parts. On its surface, it had a lot of stuff directed exactly at my tastes - a mysterious island to explore a la Myst, a bright and beautiful color palette, and the same quasi-pretentious philosophical musings of Braid that I actually quite liked. As a massive fan of Braid, I followed the development of The Witness for years leading up to its release. It was the long-awaited follow up to Jonathan Blow’s wonderful Braid, which in itself was one of the early indie hits of the Xbox Live Arcade era. 26, 2016, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. It’s been five years since Thekla’s The Witness came out on Jan. And when you lay your head down at the end of the day and close your eyes, you see flickers of the game dancing in your mind before you fall asleep. You find yourself bringing it up in conversation, excited when you discover that somebody else has played it. Have you ever played a game that you just can’t stop thinking about? Even when you put down the controller and walk away from the screen, it seems to follow you around.
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