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Jonathan Blow's new game, The Witness, is out

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Re: Jonathan Blow's new game, The Witness, is out

#91

Post by ericye16 »

seivan wrote: post #73
nailer wrote: post #28

For those wondering, Jonathan Blow is the author of the critically acclaimed time travel platform game 'Braid'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Blow

It's hard not to admire Blow. Not only does he make amazing games, but he actually powers through and finishes them. That's a talent on its own. I mean put aside his engineering and design skill-sets, actually finishing should be part of what one would have to 'learn'. At least for me.

One of my favourite talks from a developer was his talk on "Deep Work,"[0] where he talks about how he manages to keep working on projects that take a very long time to complete. He has some pretty good advice with regards to managing one's own psychology and avoiding burnout while being productive.

[0] https://vimeo.com/94259578

Re: Jonathan Blow's new game, The Witness, is out

#92

Post by myth_buster »

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!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indie_Game:_The_Movie

[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1942884/

Re: Jonathan Blow's new game, The Witness, is out

#93

Post by seivan »

ericye16 wrote: post #91
seivan wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard not to admire Blow. Not only does he make amazing games, but he actually powers through and finishes them. That's a talent on its own. I mean put aside his engineering and design skill-sets, actually finishing should be part of what one would have to 'learn'. At least for me.

One of my favourite talks from a developer was his talk on "Deep Work,"[0] where he talks about how he manages to keep working on projects that take a very long time to complete. He has some pretty good advice with regards to managing one's own psychology and avoiding burnout while being productive. [0] https://vimeo.com/94259578

Thanks, haven't seen that one.

Re: Jonathan Blow's new game, The Witness, is out

#94

Post by seivan »

myth_buster wrote: post #92

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! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indie_Game:_The_Movie [1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1942884/

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.

Re: Jonathan Blow's new game, The Witness, is out

#95

Post by AsyncAwait »

I like the potential of the game, but sadly it did not meet my expectations.

I saw it as a Myst-style game, where you have puzzles, but you also have a lot of interactive environment around you to explore.

Here, I was getting taken it by a lot of beautiful scenarios in the distance, only to realise that there is nothing to do there, but solve more panels. It simply feels like this beautiful island is going to waste, being a little more than a hiding place for the panels.

How's everyone feeling about this?

Re: Jonathan Blow's new game, The Witness, is out

#96

Post by nilkn »

amichail wrote: post #50
hbex5 wrote: post #45

And it is wonderful . It's one of those games that manages to push buttons in your brain you never knew you had, and make you feel like a genius when something finally clicks. And it does all this without ever needing to explain anything. Jonathan Blow's enigma variations. A meandering meditation on the means by which humans gain knowledge and understanding of the world, by standing on the shoulders of a hacking mini…

Isn't it like those ill-defined puzzles where you need to say what number comes next? Any number can come next.

No, I'd actually say it's designed to avoid issues of that nature. In my opinion, while the game derives some (actually rather minimal) inspiration from Myst and Riven, its puzzles are much more structured and logical.

This does come at the cost of their not being quite as wholly integrated into the environment as some of Riven's puzzles, for instance, but it also means a lot of the arbitrariness and guessing is gone.

(There are environmental connections with the puzzles, just to be clear. The game is simply a lot more careful and conservative with them.)

Re: Jonathan Blow's new game, The Witness, is out

#97

Post by drzaiusapelord »

seivan wrote: post #73
nailer wrote: post #28

For those wondering, Jonathan Blow is the author of the critically acclaimed time travel platform game 'Braid'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Blow

It's hard not to admire Blow. Not only does he make amazing games, but he actually powers through and finishes them. That's a talent on its own. I mean put aside his engineering and design skill-sets, actually finishing should be part of what one would have to 'learn'. At least for me.

Yeah, agreed, he's quite the talent. I was more than a little pissed off when Indie Game: The Movie made a special effort to make him look like some kind of nutball for the audience to laugh at. I can't stress how terrible that documentary was. It played up hateful stereotypes of "pathetic geeks" and other things best found on sitcoms like The Big Bang Theory.

Blow was treated very unfairly, imo. He's actually interesting to listen to and something of a deep and critical thinker. Clearly he's someone who understands that games can be a transcendent experience like any art.

I just hope he's working on a VR game soon. I suspect the Vive is going to change everything in a couple months. I'd love to VR in the kinds of worlds he builds.

Re: Jonathan Blow's new game, The Witness, is out

#98

Post by rotw »

seivan wrote: post #86
test1235 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After Braid, Blow (rightly or wrongly) took an immense amount of criticism for his views and opinions. Even more admirable is that he shrug all that off to come thru' with another game (unlike Phil Fish who took all his criticism rather badly).

Fish also stole much of his stuff, so you can't expect him to steal twice as he has eyes on him this time. http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/evidence-that-phil-fish-st... I actually paid for Fez, apart from its little gimmick and art work, it wasn't really much. Never finished it even, and I finished Assassins Creed 1 ;-) Blow just seems genuinely good at writing games/software and creating puzzles, but even better a…

Your assertion that he "stole" Fez is really not supported by the purported evidence you linked. And you totally missed the point of Fez if you think it only has the 2.5D and artwork going for it.

Re: Jonathan Blow's new game, The Witness, is out

#99

Post by blablablame »

eamsen wrote: post #71
hoorayimhelping wrote: post #61

> 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 gu…

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 cas…

I agree. I tried to play Braid many times but just couldn't get myself to play for more than a bit and switch to another game. Interesting enough, Flashback is probably one of the games I use as a reference for platform games so maybe that has something to do with it.

For anyone that hasn't played Flashback, give it a go. The graphics while low res now, still look very much alive and nice to look at even on modern monitors.

Re: Jonathan Blow's new game, The Witness, is out

#100

Post by chasing »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #95

I like the potential of the game, but sadly it did not meet my expectations. I saw it as a Myst-style game, where you have puzzles, but you also have a lot of interactive environment around you to explore. Here, I was getting taken it by a lot of beautiful scenarios in the distance, only to realise that there is nothing to do there, but solve more panels. It simply feels like this beautiful island is going to waste,…

> How's everyone feeling about this?

I'm feeling like you haven't played very far into the game. :-) And neither have I! The puzzles are definitely mostly panel-based, but the environment becomes very important to solving them.

I think The Witness is quite clever, so far. It's interesting how much diversity and playfulness can come from just these simple little grid-and-line puzzles.

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