The Witness

Nice puzzles,nice aesthetics,a masterpiece deserves its place.

Take your time and enjoy the quiet atmosphere. The puzzles are fair and the 100% run is fairly different than a regular run.

The empty island with the trophy and the man reaching for it is one of the coolest moments I've ever had in a video game. There is nothing to interact with there, but everything about the statue and the placement and the island around it adds another layer to the statement it makes about the game as a whole. The game is about witnessing what happens when you play it, and then looking up and using that knowledge in your life around you, and you should not stop playing this game until you understand what I'm talking about. 10/10 would Blow again

not finished the game yet but it has be entranced . this game is enrichment for my brain the same as a puzzle feeder or a snuffle mat for a dog, minus the food reward. gorgeous aesthetics in the world, amazing sound design that makes the world around you sound immersive and peaceful without the use of music to try and oversell the point where it definitely isnt needed.(im very fond of the footsteps as i walk across different surfaces, theyre done in a way that is almost satisfying to listen to lol). some puzzles took quite a bit of time and more guessing than really understanding the mechanics until i was halfway thru that area and its gimmick.. but not in a way that made me enjoy myself less. and discovering that there were environmental puzzles has left me wandering and staring at every tiny branch or shadow in case im missing something. its a very well-made game and i can feel the love that went into it

This game is truly a work of art. In addition to all of the puzzles that can be found throughout the island, there are puzzles hidden all throughout the environment that unveil themselves when looked at with the right perspective. There are also hidden art pieces in the world that can be noticed if looked at from a certain perspective. This is a seriously impressive accomplishment considering just how many perspective tricks are present here.

Hands down my favourite puzzle game of all time. The kind of game you wish you could forget everything about just so you can play it again for the first time.

This game sets out to teach you something about yourself and your capacity to do hard things. Not everyone learns the same way, and so this game isn't for everyone, but personally, I thought it was very successful in what it set out to do. It's one of those rare game experiences where I felt different coming out the other side than I did going in. It has stuck with me for a long time, and I think will for a long time more. The puzzles were challenging, engaging, and deliciously crunchy. Finishing it was bittersweet. It wants you to grow beyond it.

That said, it's not perfect. There are some accessibility issues, and there was one section where the lighting was intolerable. I'm not especially prone to flashing light dizziness, but one area affected me so badly I had to look up what the clue was online because I simply couldn't look at the screen long enough to make it out.

I hope this game eventually gets a remaster that addresses its problems, because the thought that went into the rest of the experience deserves for those other aspects to live up to it.

Exploring the world as well as exploring the puzzle mechanics never feel old, remaining interesting throughout the duration of the game. The way the game requires you to apply what you learned creates a powerful sense of completion after working through some of the more difficult puzzles, and after completing the game.

Im Wootnessing. Wootness me wootness. And then I will wootness you wootnessing me wootness you wootnessing me wootness. Truly.
And thats just about all that I can say on the subject. You might think that I am holding back. That there is something else that I could add to the conversation, but I must assure you that that idea is wrong. This is and always has been everything that I think I could think about when it comes to the idea of this kind of idea. I thought about it longer than I spent spending time thinking about how I would even begin to try and think about how I might say it. And this is the result. Resolute in my statement I would like to add that this did add a good amount of joy to my life. Cant get much more clear than that. Couldnt do it if I tried a hundred more times. And you cant blame me for that. You could try, but It wouldnt amount to much.
And as any good person should, I will say one more thing to tie this back into the initial idea that I put out in this review. It is that I am currently wootnessing. Get wootnessed.

an absolute masterpiece. This game is the epitome of what an "open world" non-linear puzzle game should be. The sense of exploration is out of this world and the puzzles are hands down the best I've ever done in my life.

The game is structured in such a way that you even though you find lots of puzzles early on the solutions will only become apparent once you have gone through the different sections on the map. The game does an outstanding job at teaching how to solve each different puzzle type and I personally never found 1 puzzle too hard.

The end of the game does an amazing job at putting everything you've learnt to the test.

10/10 buy on sale it's worth it

I am fully convinced that Jonathan Blow is a genius, and also that he is a total dick. Beautiful environments and impressively designed puzzles. The ending felt anticlimactic, and I had no energy left for post-game/100% activities. Still, a puzzle game experience I will remember for a long time.

I love this game and would say it's probably my favourite puzzle game I've played. It's easy to be snarky about it and call it pretentious, but you needn't look that deep into it if you don't want to. It doesn't have to be anything more than a bunch of satisfying puzzles with an array of difficulties set in a beautiful environment, that allows you to go completely at your own pace and direction. Hidden under the surface is a bit of philosophical musing on various themes. It *does* come across a little pretentious when you start uncovering the first pieces of this but when you completely discover everything (hard to avoid spoilers here) I'd say it is less so, and more just a nice piece of meaning as to what this island you find yourself on "is" and what you attain from spending your time focused on these puzzles with nothing else to distract you. A meaning you can extrapolate out as a broader commentary if you're so inclined. The fact it almost goes out of its way to make you find this meaning yourself rather than force it down your throat arguably makes it very un-pretentious. Just a shame it's taking so long for another title from Jonathan Blow. Braid and the Witness are amongst the closest any games have come for me to replicating the more purely relaxing and Zen-like state of playing classical puzzle and board games.

The Witness is, at its core, a puzzle game where you literally draw straight (or not so straight) lines to solve each puzzle. And basically, it’s quite a decent puzzle game, I’d say. If you just do the minimum required to finish, it will remain the same decent puzzle game you initially thought it was. The level design is pleasing to the eye, and the ambient sound doesn’t require any additional music; it all plays quite calmly, without unnecessary hurry or nerves. I’ll come back to that last point later.

Now, imagine you’re the kind of player who hunts for all sorts of easter eggs (the game will poke fun at this closer to the end, which I’ll also mention), and you start noticing those very easter eggs that you naturally want to collect. I’ll say right away: if you’re expecting some sort of reward for finding them, don’t bother—this game isn’t about giving you anything for your efforts, because the only ‘reward’ you get is the time you spent.

You’ll start noticing tape recorders scattered around the world that can be activated, giving you monologues, typically quotes from books, lectures, or works that touch on various themes like nature, science, religion, politics, human consciousness, and so on—basically, things fans of ‘truly smart people’ love to emulate. “This game has a deep subtext! We’re talking about the nature of human thinking here!” you might think, and maybe you’d be right. But personally, I couldn’t buy into that idea, and all those scattered quotes felt more like a way to waste the player’s time under the guise of ‘profound ideas,’ because the game doesn’t really make you reflect on anything. It doesn’t give you, as a player, anything to care about; it just reads you these dull lectures from the past. And of course, if you collect them all, you gain nothing except a sense of personal satisfaction that you found them, plus a bit of pseudo-intellectualism or a feeling of emptiness from having wasted your time.

Next, the second thing you’ll likely notice is that there are puzzles lying on the ground that lead nowhere but initially create a bit of mystery that you want to solve. Much later, closer to the end of the game, you’ll encounter fairly challenging puzzles based on a mechanic you’ve encountered all over the place but probably haven’t understood yet, since there was never anything truly difficult in those earlier puzzles to help you gain real experience. And this will come back to bite you.

To top it all off, the entire world itself is also composed of puzzles. That wall over there looks just like the familiar little starting circle for a puzzle, plus a line, and the end of that puzzle. You try to use it…and it works, damn it! Yes, the whole world is filled with puzzles not only on panels but all around you—flowers, clouds, buildings, stones, rivers, and absolutely everything are puzzles, even shadows. And then you become obsessed with finding all of them. To keep you from completely losing your mind, the game provides Black Obelisks in each main location. They give you hints about roughly what these puzzles look like and where you can find them. You figure out the rules of the game and set off in search of them all. In theory, this is a very cool and interesting idea. With great enthusiasm, you roam the world looking for these puzzles, watching each Obelisk fill up, and using the logic the game taught you to track down the remaining ones. And then…you find an Obelisk where you’re missing about five or six puzzles, and you start desperately hunting for them throughout the world. “After all, before I finish the game, I must find them all!” you think, making a huge mistake, because those missing puzzles are hidden at the end of the game, which you don’t intend to reach yet, as you don’t know where the true end is—when should you stop and look around for new puzzles, and when will you solve a puzzle only to be shown “Thanks for playing!” because it was the last one in the game? This is a major design flaw in this mechanic, because on the Obelisk, these puzzles aren’t even placed at the end symbolically, but rather somewhere in the middle, which you’d never expect. And there’s also the fact that some puzzles require you to sit for 15 minutes or so, just watching your screen until the image lines up, while others require you to start the puzzle and only after an hour of real time can you complete it—don’t miss your window, or you’ll have to start all over again and wait yet another hour. Another way to waste the player’s time.

Next, there’s a movie theater in the game where you can watch various video clips. I won’t go into the scientific value they try to convey, but the point is there are supposedly about seven of these clips hidden in the secret corners of the world. Then comes the fourth one… I hope you can guess, from the Obelisk experience, that it’s located in…that’s right, the end of the game, where you’re required to complete a certain ‘Challenge’ to unlock this mid-game video—an hour long—which ties into one of the puzzles in the game and is incredibly frustrating.

Speaking of this ‘Challenge’…it’s a subject of heated debate, but it’s specifically what pushed me to write a negative review instead of a positive one. The Witness is otherwise very calm and measured: you can take a piece of paper and a pencil, doodle, and think things through. But the ‘Challenge’ shatters all that with a roughly five-minute time limit in which you have to solve 14 random puzzles, generated anew each time, leaving you no chance to prepare. “You should have played the game honestly, then you’d have no trouble,” you might think, but 10 of these puzzles are essentially the same ones from the very beginning of the game—anyone can solve them. As for the last four, it’s likely only the second time you’ve ever encountered that type of puzzle, and their difficulty spikes tremendously. Any mistake forces you to start over from scratch, with the same 10 not-too-hard-but-annoying puzzles that you need to clear again just to even attempt training on the last ones. And for training, at best, you have three minutes left if you managed to blaze through the first 10 in two minutes. At that point, it’s more luck than logic: either you somehow solve a puzzle practically without looking, or you get so stuck that it’s easier to restart than to keep wasting time on it. And as someone who doesn’t like time limits, this game-changer really turned me off and left me thoroughly disappointed in the game.

From that, I can say the game might be decent and could keep you busy with puzzles for a few evenings, but going for full completion only leads to disappointment and regret over the time spent. That’s why I can’t recommend buying this game.

A classic puzzle game where you explore a 3d world and try to make sense of its rules. There's thematic areas each giving its own spin to the line puzzles it contains, and everything being immersed in a 3d world gives the exploration a different feel than it would have if everything was presented in a dry grid menu, as the world itself has its secrets to navigate.

Plenty of stuff is optional: getting stuck on one puzzle just means you can leave it for later and explore something else in the meantime.

Story wise there kind of is something, but it's in the background to be discovered and perfectly optional. You don't have to think deeply about any quote you might find read at you, you can just go to the next puzzles and things to discover.

It doesn't have many achievements so not to spoil all you can do in the game; each save file does keep track of how many puzzles you solved though, so if you're wondering if there's yet stuff to find that's an indicator, although it's recommended to avoid googling stuff while you still have stuff you can go check.

Arguably being the father of "metroid-branias", or knowledge-gated progression games, it's a must for puzzle enthusiasts, bringing its own flavor to the genre.

This was one of the best puzzle games I've played with a lot of satisfying realizations to some of the problems and non-linear exploration to the island and its secrets. But with some exceptions where I racked my brain, but just had to look the solution up.
Overall a very well crafted game from passionate devs with care to detail. Can recommend it if you like puzzles and exploring on your own to get all the secrets.

I can play this over and over every few years. Knowing how the puzzles and mechanics work on subsequent plays takes a little away from it but the world, sounds, places, and feelings are still there. And it's something you can put down and come back to later and keep finding more challenges.

Great game, and I hope it ends up with a full VR remake someday.

The Witness is an incredible experience, and I absolutely recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good puzzle. However, you will need mental fortitude to deal with this game's challenges, and for that reason, many will turn their noses up at it. My personal experience with this game was incredible, with the Environmental Puzzles giving me schizophrenia hitherto unheard of. My personal highlight was "The Secret of Psalm 46", a normal lecture with absolutely nothing hidden.

My final solve count is 509;135;6.

Ce n'est pas pour tout le monde, mais si vous voulez réfléchir un max alors ce jeu est pour vous! Des heures de casses-têtes pour votre plus grand plaisir. En bonus une dimension philosophique qui fait se remettre en question, alors qu'on est là pour des puzzles: du génie. Bonne chance à ceux qui essaieront!

I probably wouldn't recommend this. Namely the motion-sickness inducing behavior this game has, something to do with the colors, the motion and movement all give the feeling to people not prone to it. If you do get it, check the field of view, lower your monitor's contrast a bit, take breaks.

It has great puzzles, but they're very logic oriented, but slow-paced even if you're not enjoying them. There's issues with the stimuli of the color puzzles and the audio ones for some people.

An absolute masterpiece of a game that can only be overshadowed by its sequel, "The Looker".

I will waste like 15 minutes on a single puzzle, but it's all worth it when i get the rush of solving it. You just keep on going despite knowing how frustrated you'll get. It's like an abusive relationship, but for puzzle gamers

I've already nearly completed this game on another playthrough and it's one of my favorite puzzle games of all time. I enjoy the intuitive way you're supposed to figure out different mechanics and the lack of written guidance or dialogue for the most part.

Do not buy this game. The developer personally created "Dumb Internet Comments" and "Price Complaints" subforums on Steam discussion page to censor and ridicule opinions differing from his own that he judges as undeserving of attention. Please just pirate it, the dev does not deserve your money.

I agree with a lot of negative comments down there. While the game mechanincs are good and the different environments are visually appealing the game is just too tedious to complete.

This game has altered my brain chemistry. I now see Witness puzzles in everything I see and am terrified of In the Hall of the Mountain King.
Best puzzle game I've played ever and I want someone to make me play it if I develop Alzheimer's in my old age.

The Witness is a meditation on intrinsic rewards. There's no fanfare when you solve puzzles, neither the ending nor any of the secrets turn the game on its head, and there's only a middle finger for anyone with a completionist mindset. You play it to learn its rules, make neat observations in the environment, and absorb the Myst-like vibes of a quiet and lonely island.

My biggest negative in the game is the inconsistency of the biomes. Some areas' puzzles are very quick to solve once you know the gimmick. Others are full-blown gauntlets. The desert area in particular is not hard, just tedious and annoying. Thankfully you don't need to complete every puzzle/area to beat the game.

Outside of the game I can't not make a comment about the head developer, Jonathan Blow. In his public speaking appearances he comes off as a really bright and insightful guy. Unfortunately, in the years since this game's release, he has transformed into (or maybe just exposed himself as) an absolutely terminally online, brainrotted individual. I wouldn't blame anyone who can't separate art from artist for not giving money to someone with dipsh*t views.

I've only scratched the surface of The Witness, but even in my short time with it, it has managed to captivate me with its intriguing design and challenging puzzles. From the moment you step into its mysterious world, The Witness invites you to explore, observe, and engage with its intricate environment in ways that feel both organic and deeply rewarding.
The game's minimalist approach—no dialogue, no hand-holding—encourages players to rely on intuition and pattern recognition. The puzzles start simple but quickly evolve, demanding not just logic but a keen eye for details hidden within the world itself. This level of challenge has made me eager to keep playing and push forward to uncover more of its secrets.
Beyond the puzzles, The Witness's world is stunning. The vibrant landscapes, carefully designed pathways, and sense of solitude create an immersive experience that feels almost meditative. It's a game that doesn't just test your problem-solving skills—it invites you to slow down and truly observe.
While I haven't played enough to grasp the mysteries' depth fully. I can already tell this is a game that rewards patience and curiosity. If you enjoy puzzle games that challenge your mind and invite exploration. The Witness is worth checking out

Possibly one of my favourite games of all time. Be warned that it is very much not for everyone, and what one person loves about it may be the same thing that another hates about it. It almost never directly tells you what you need to do, which can be frustrating, but is ultimately one of its greatest strengths.

My advice:
If you are stuck and cant figure out what to do, leave and come back latter; the various parts of the game can be completed in any order.

There is a lot to discover, and figuring stuff out on your own is an amazing feeling, so try to avoid spoilers.

The Witness is the best puzzle game I've ever played.

*SOME SPOILERS BELOW*

The most standout part of the Witness is the game design of the whole thing. Exploring the island is such a great experience the first time because some areas give a preview of what is to come. While the puzzles seem so simple at first, the game expands in brilliant ways and each mechanic is taught in a way that forces you to understand the mechanic. Getting lucky is not enough. Even when I was frustrated with a puzzle and wanted to give up, taking a break for a while or re-examining my knowledge usually turned out to be what I needed to find a solution. Not many games make me feel so satisfied to finish their challenges, but each solved puzzle in The Witness was a triumph that I have displayed on my save file.

The exploration is the second aspect of the game that ties it together. The world is beautiful with each region standing out in its own way. The art design is simple but effective. But most impressive is how the secrets of the game are revealed over time with exploration. You will find doorways and puzzles with no use until later in the game. But the greatest discovery of all is the environmental line puzzles. I am upset that this part of the game was spoiled for me a few years ago, because the moment on the mountain when you look over the edge to see the river thinking, "It can't be ... right?" is just incredible. It brings a whole new layer to the game that was hidden until that point and you start looking for lines and dots in everything. Despite getting all the achievements, I still need to return to the game to find the rest of these puzzles. I look forward to coming back over time to walk around the world and truly finish.

I'd say that if it would be shorter a bit and more linear in how the game may be progressed I'd like it even more. But despite this the game is cool and I think that in future I would even replay it at some point.

Fiquei simplesmente embasbacado quando fiz o primeiro desenho do sol.
Senti um sensação incrível que só jogos incríveis podem proporcionar.
Recomendo demais!!
Ainda não sei se vou conseguir platinar, mas estou no caminho haha. (sem dicas, óbvio..)

Mind, the game is fun, awesome, it's one of the best puzzle games there are. There's one HUGE problem though. The dev has a huge sack of 🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻 for people who are even a tiny bit hearing impaired. There are quite a few puzzles which are extremely hearing-dependent and there's no way in hell you can solve them without audio cues.

I'm not entirely sure if it's correct to put a thumb down on this review. Unfortunately Steam does not give me any other option and between the two this is the one that suits my experience better. While being careful about possible spoilers, I encourage new players to read thumbs up reviews as well. Also unrelated, my game time is actually way more than 10 hours, I have more than 20 but playing offline on the Deck does not register it correctly unfortunately.

Introduction

First of all, I think this is a puzzle game with one of the best introduction out there. You wake up in a cave, go out and almost immediately you're presented with a seemingly gorgeously designed island, full of places that just beg you to go there and explore. After walking around a bit and clear out the first puzzles, which are rather intuitive and easy, you start catching up with what the game is about. The island is divided in areas and each one has different themed puzzles. You'll know when you cleared the area after you manage to activate a laser beam, which conveniently faces the peak of a mountain, likely the last place you'll need to visit.
Now, there are a couple of problems which come out of what I just explained about the game.

The puzzles and their problem

The first point I want to talk about here is different themed puzzles. The game is actually based on just one type of puzzle, go from point A to point B by tracing a line on a panel and choosing the correct route for it. For each area, the way this route is determined changes, it follows different rules and you have to figure them out by yourself. I think this is an interesting design choice, especially because for each individual (I mean you, the player) the difficulty will feel different based on what kind of reasoning your brain is accustomed to. Now, the problem for me here is that while it's interesting it's not... fun. Each area as a lot of panels to clear and difficulty goes up quite a bit by the end. The puzzle basic concept doesn't change in the end so deep down you feel like you're doing the same thing over and over again. I understand this might be an exaggerated comparison but to me it felt like eating salad hundreds of times consecutively, only with a different dressing each time. The content of the salad and taste slightly changes periodically but it's still salad, you'll want meat or dessert at some point, right? Well spoiler alert, you'll never get either in this game.

Map and exploration

The map or better, the scenery, at first looks very promising. Lots of vivid colors for different places to visit, makes you think they're full of mysteries to be discovered and that you'll have fun while doing so.
Having found a few of them I know there are secrets in the game but for the most part you'll not be presented with any of this. Just panels and their puzzles. There's not much exploration to be done, the only thing I got was a bit of frustration because sometime you don't know where the next panel you activated is and end up going around aimlessly for a while. The environment itself is used for puzzles as well, but not that much.

What is this game about in the end?

I've read on other reviews that this game gives you little motivation to go on because there's no story at all and the ending is no satisfying either. I think this critique is mostly agreeable with. If you somewhat need a plot to get till the end, then The Witness is not the game for you. I will say though, the regular ending felt very unique and convinced me to go look for explanations about the whole lore behind the game. The stuff is there, just quite hidden. Was it the right design choice for this game though? While I admire the developers for having the courage of committing to this design, personally I would have thrown some more clear hints here and there, just something to get players more interested in solving the puzzles and even do other secrets.

I can't honestly recommend this game in good faith. The graphics and scenery are amazing, but the panel puzzle mechanic being hammered to death (which is needlessly limiting to the game's potential for clever puzzles) forces you to spend all of your time away from the nice views of the game. The puzzles aren't effectively linked to the environment (yes I am aware of the environmental lines but those have absolutely no effect on gameplay) and function on esoteric rules which are sometimes not effectively communicated to the player. The puzzles feel meaningless and repetitive without any sort of plot or narrative to justify their existence, and combined with the pretentious vague gesturing at some kind of narrative it gives the impression that the game does not respect your time in the slightest (which isn't helped by the slow walk speed and animations, and also the maddening detail that there's an invisible wall on every ledge). Also the complete lack of soundtrack makes the game feel soulless and sterile. Also the game costs about four times as much as it should. Go buy the Talos Principle instead if you want a good puzzle experience, which is somehow less expensive.

One of the best puzzle games I've played. Learning each rule feels organic, and all iterations on mechanics are extremely well implemented. I only resorted to online solutions around 3 or 4 times, and I was always disappointed/less satisfied when this happened. I would recommend going in as blind as possible, and never looking up any puzzle solutions even when you feel frustrated. When a puzzle seemed impossible to me at the time, I just put the game down for awhile until I could see the problem from a different perspective. This kind of problem solving is the game's goal, and if that sounds interesting to you, it's worth trying.

I was so burned out by this damn challenge that I deleted the game and didn't leave a review.

But I've already cooled down, so yes. In general, I definitely recommend this game, it's cool, interesting, difficult. I personally completed the entire game on my own except for the riddle with two roads at the very end (for me it was too much). I also couldn't complete the challenge, since it's a random garbage dump, I condemn such things. But still, what are the riddles with the birds that sing and the color squares in the bunker worth, wow!

I like the idea of this game and of course the world, but many of the puzzles don't require being clever or using your knowledge of the game but more "what does the puzzle designer randomly want from me this time" The game abandons all good game designs lessons and forces the player to use trial and error and hit dead end after dead end rather than simply telling the player what is expected. The developer might say that's by design, but I say it's lazy poor design.

There are so many puzzles or series of puzzles where literally nothing happens. I feel like this is a bug? if not it's horrible. There's puzzles where I am 1000% certain I completed it correctly and it does not complete, another bug? if not why is there no feedback if this was some twist in the mechanics. It's just plane lazy.

There's great puzzle design in the game but there's also garbage time wasting design as well. I don't have time for that. I am sure I'll miss out on some great puzzles in between, oh well.

Puzzles 10/10
Environment and world 10/10
Game play, execution and does it respect it's players 3/10. Does that make sense?

this game is a puzzle. I can't solve most of them YET. That YET is important. It means that when I have time I can come back and try some more. I love it.

It feels like the game doesn't like you and just wants to waste your time and laugh at you while you do so. It tries to show off how clever it is without any kind of real payoff.

The puzzles aren't "hard" in the traditional sense, they are more just time consuming to figure out. Some puzzles require you to wait minutes of real world time for some event to occur, other puzzles require you to run back and forth between areas over and over again to solve.

The movement is super slow. The game has a "Sprint" button that makes you move at what I would describe as an almost normal pace, so I've just held down this button almost the entire time that I played. There is no fast travel or faster way to move around the island. There is a "vehicle" but it's honestly slower than walking.

Every animation and movement in the game is slow with no way to speed it up. It must be intentional, and I think they did it this way as a practical joke to make fun of players for wasting their time on gaming.

This games tries to be too clever and ends up just turning you off instead.

At the beginning, the game is clear about how you are meant to solve puzzles. It steps you through logically the rules of each puzzle and how you are meant to approach them.

Then, it lets you out into the open world, that all completely goes away, and the difficulty curve just takes off like a rocket.

All of a sudden, you are given a slew of puzzles with no obvious way of solving them and no way of figuring out how you're meant to solve them. The solutions to these puzzles are often incredibly obscure and take FOREVER to figure out because you largely just have to wander around the world until you stumble upon the solution.

That isn't clever or good game design - it's just tedious and cryptic for the sake of it. The game could easily explain to you the mechanic of each puzzle and the puzzles would STILL be challenging to solve. The withholding of this information is just frustrating.

I liken it to this scenario - imagine you are asked to solve a jigsaw of a Chinese character without knowing Chinese, without being allowed to see what a Chinese character looks like, and without knowing what a jigsaw is. Of course, the puzzle is still solvable because all of the pieces can only go into one valid position, but the process of solving it is infinitely longer simply because key information is being withheld from you.

some clever puzzels but the games story is not there at all.
all voice lines in this game is very cringless.

A fun game with a really neat puzzle system. The puzzles are the main focus of the game, though there is some story to be had as well. The way in which the game indirectly shows you how to navigate different puzzle types is really cool, and exploration through the environment is pretty enjoyable. Really interesting experience overall.

The Witness is one of the best puzzle games of all time.

This game left me speechless many times, and this review is one of those times.
It's simply Perfect.

one of the best atmospheric puzzle games i have ever played. my only complaint is some areas have this metalic humming noise like a fan as ambience and even tho its quiet it gives me a headache if i hear it for to long so in some areas i have to take breaks to keep playing. otherwise absolutly fantastic game

This is probably my favorite game of all time. The way that Blow was able to take the concept of a simple panel puzzle connecting A to B and, by continuously adding to or diversifying the rules, keep it intellectualy stimulating for 500+ puzzles is a momentous achievement.

I just finished the game for the third time and this time I decided to try and 100% it. I did the 523 solution puzzles without any help (these are all doable) and decided to use a walkthrough for the environment puzzles I had not found yet. That was (for me) a good call, because some of them were pretty insane, so I would probably not have been able to find them all by myself, plus it would probably have taken a lot more time than it would have been worth for me.

The Witness is a puzzle and exploration game that gives no clear direction or instructions. It requires you to sit with a lot of puzzles and simply take the time to view things from alternate perspectives as you stare into reflections, listen, look at things in different lighting and angles, and try to create new ways of paying witness to the world around you. Ultimately, I think games like this make me realize that I'm not as into puzzle games that aren't directly connected to a tangible story as I thought. The secret ending gives another level of depth, forcing you to see those puzzle patterns experienced in the game, in every part of the environment of the game even where you might not have expected them to be or even externally even in real life. It's a gorgeous way of creating madness as you analyze the world around you a little more through fresh eyes. 5/10

The Witness's deeper message is to make you witness how dumb you actually are

the premise of the game's puzzles is simple. draw line from start to finish. simple enough.

then, the game adds a few small mechanics that transforms the difficulty from dollar store coloring book to interviewing for a coding job at Google. The Witness is the Dark Souls of maze puzzles.

The Witness is the first game i have ever played where i have sat in my desk, staring at the same exact puzzle for 2 1/2 hours in the middle of the night with no solution, asking myself "what do the symbols mean mason?" over and over again.

i covered my hands and felt tears rolling down my eyes as i question my existence, not because of the impossible task laid before me, but because of all the philosophical quotes questioning society and reality scattered throughout the island

as i wipe the tears away, i realize the puzzle has permanently burned into my frontal lobe and the only clear solution i can come up with is to get a lobotomy which triggers the third ending that even the walkthroughs online haven't found yet.

once you play the game and finish it, the world will never look as it were again. you will see the puzzles. you must solve

I finally finished the game, and all I can say is... I hate it.
Despite what is implied in the game's presentation, The Witness has NO story. Zero. It's just a cold, dead conglomerated mass of puzzles packed up in a nice box. There are numerous audio recordings scattered around the map, with some intellectualoid gibberish and random "wise quotes" from famous authors, making everything feel even more pretentious and soulless. Even the unlocking of the final area feels nothing like a revelation: It's obvious, banal, uninteresting. The ending? An insult. The "secret" ending video? An even greater insult.

The fun in this game ends fast. The hope for something better fades and only with a certain dose of resignation and masochism one can eventually finish the game.
The game sets rules to solve the puzzles, than changes the rules randomly, actively harming the experience with the excuse of being challenging.

That said, the graphics and sounds are really, really well crafted. They're probably the main selling point. Some of the puzzles are indeed good and interesting. It's the overall experience that infuriates me.
I will NEVER touch this thing ever again.

I like this game, I didn't expect to since I played The Looker first. I bought it, played it for a couple of hours, then didn't pick it up again until a year later where I've been playing it in earnest and enjoying it (despite my pretty bad brain fog). There are a couple of criticisms though:

1. I felt like I needed to access walkthroughs too much before I found out that I needed to do some areas first. Each area teaches you how to do certain puzzle types but I'd honestly had no idea that was how it worked so I'd do a puzzle in a more advanced area and not understand why it was so hard or what some of the elements represented. Part of the issue with this is almost every area is accessible as soon as you're out of the starting area. Some of the puzzles have learning cues (like showing you what you got wrong) but more advanced ones don't, and honestly I didn't even notice those either until later. That is all to say I think if it was slightly more linear in terms of progression, it would save a lot of people headaches.

2. The difficulty is inconsistent. For example in the treehouse area I'd be completely stumped on the first puzzle in one section that was trying to teach you the rules, spend 20 minutes trying to brute force my way through it, and once I did . . . I'd finish the next puzzle in 30 seconds on the first try because it was dead easy. The swamp was another area of frustration, I had to find solutions to the puzzles to open the gate (4x4 and 5x5 I think) and then the next set of puzzles were 1x2, 1x3 etc. I didn't particularly like getting stumped at random, I prefer slowly raising the difficulty. It seemed like either the person who made them wasn't aware, OR was trying to mess with you by making them difficult at random.

3. I believe there is one puzzle in the temple area that can't be finished, or rather has to be guessed, once one of the other puzzles is done. I didn't know this so I ended up looking up the solution. I don't think anyone should be in that position.

I haven't finished the game yet but I will say I've really enjoyed it, I feel like it's gotten me thinking outside the box and now that I know more of how it works it's much easier to pick up what it's putting down.

the controls on this game are absolute garbage – i've been hitting the keys trying to align a fucking root to the puzzle behind for a good 10 minutes