The Witness

The Witness is perhaps the best example of a puzzle game I have seen yet, and it is also one of the most effective instances of interactive storytelling that I can recall. For this game, I have nothing but the utmost respect.

The Witness is a masterpiece of video game design. It presents a mysterious and fascinating world to explore, full of puzzles that will confound the player, but also delight them as they figure out the solution. The island setting is both fun to explore and endlessly enjoyable to look at. The game's true achievement though is in how it teaches the player its intricacies, with minimal intrusion and subtle hints, allowing for a great feeling of accomplishment when everything clicks into place.

The Witness has a power and pull that carried me throughout the more than 40 hours it took to complete it for the first time, and that, even now, beckons me back to confront the mysteries I left unsolved. Its graceful combination of tangible goals, obscurity, and freedom creates ample opportunity for small victories and grand revelations alike. For the most part, its themes weave themselves beautifully throughout the gorgeous world and wide variety of puzzles, but even when it breaks subtlety in favor of a more heavy-handed approach to exposition, it never detracts from the truly fulfilling mo...

I'm so caught up inside the world of The Witness that it's hard to think about anything else. It is one of the best games I've ever encountered.

Brennan Dyal lives in Baltimore, and actually likes it. When he’s not playing games, he’s disappointing his teammates on the basketball court, or going to Popeye’s in disguise so they don’t ask “Weren’t you just here yesterday?”

“The Witness is one of the best exploration puzzle games since Myst.”

Doors of Perception

Republished on Wednesday 27th February 2019: We're bringing this review back from the archives following the announcement of March's PlayStation Plus lineup. The original text follows.

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Thought provoking and challenging, The Witness is a game that really depends on the player's perspective to reach full enjoyment.

I’d love to write more about my time playing The Witness, but so much of it needs to be experienced first hand to truly appreciate what it has to offer. It isn’t a perfect game by any means, but it’s an unforgettable experience. It nails the puzzles for the most part, but there’s a feeling someone needed to just pull Jonathan Blow back a bit and say, “hmm, perhaps no with that”. The air of pretention is off-putting, and the conclusion doesn’t do the experience justice, but if you can look past that, The Witness is a masterpiece when it’s at its best – and it’s there a lot. In a year’s time, ma...

Colorful graphics, couple of hundred of riddles, narration through environment, and, at times, extremely high level of difficulty is the Braid's author's recipe for the perfect logic game. But such a meal my not be digestible for every player.