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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

#231

Post by saluk »

no_wave wrote: post #124

The hype machine around this is strange - tons of superficially positive reviews but without a whole lot of passion behind them. Does anyone else smell something off about the response to the game so far? Have people convinced themselves that this is a great game before they started enjoying it?

I don't know what you are seeing, I'm passionate about it. There are really only one or two puzzle games of this caliber every year, if that, and for me this is the best one in many years. The superficial similarity of the puzzle design to some popular iphone games, combined with a higher price than indie games typically have, seems to be putting people off.

It's also a very simple game. There isn't a lot someone who likes it can say about it without spoiling anything. There are puzzles. They are good. The island is also a puzzle. It is fun to solve puzzles. Yeah, I can't really go on that way for very long, can I.

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

#232

Post by School-Cotton »

sdrothrock wrote: post #216
mwill wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've solved ~300 puzzles (out of 600) but am able to trigger the ending, so I am finished but not 100% completed yet. I haven't found ANY puzzles where I feel like you're guessing at the solution. Every puzzle I've solved has had well defined rules. I don't want to give too much away, but broadly speaking there are two types of puzzles: Those that rely on the symbols, where whats on the screen in front of you is all…

> I think deaf players will be unable to 100% this game because of a handful of puzzles, and theres no indication that the piece of the puzzle you're missing is sound. This is the first time I've seen this mentioned, so thank you. I've been thinking about buying a PS4 just for this game, so that's a major bummer. I hope there's a patch in the future for some kind of visual indicator or subtitle to make it a bit easie…

He said you couldn't complete the game 100%, not that you couldn't get any enjoyment out of it.

You don't need to complete all the puzzles to finish the game. A small minority rely on hearing.

(I agree it sucks... trying to be optimistic; not trying to argue with you :) )

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

#233

Post by unimpressive »

sdrothrock wrote: post #216
mwill wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've solved ~300 puzzles (out of 600) but am able to trigger the ending, so I am finished but not 100% completed yet. I haven't found ANY puzzles where I feel like you're guessing at the solution. Every puzzle I've solved has had well defined rules. I don't want to give too much away, but broadly speaking there are two types of puzzles: Those that rely on the symbols, where whats on the screen in front of you is all…

> I think deaf players will be unable to 100% this game because of a handful of puzzles, and theres no indication that the piece of the puzzle you're missing is sound. This is the first time I've seen this mentioned, so thank you. I've been thinking about buying a PS4 just for this game, so that's a major bummer. I hope there's a patch in the future for some kind of visual indicator or subtitle to make it a bit easie…

To elaborate on what was said in other replies to this comment. Jonathan Blow has said previously that he got around some of the puzzles being fiendishly hard by not requiring all of them to be completed to get to the end of the game. He didn't want somebody to get stuck on one puzzle and then not be able to see the rest of the game over it, so you should be able to complete the vast majority of the game including the ending just fine without those audio based puzzles.

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

#236

Post by robohamburger »

This game is indeed great! Push the envelope forward for puzzle games and games in general. The game feels pretty heavy with potential like there are layers I am not even seeing yet and I am 10 hours in!

Some what spoilery I made a solver for one of its puzzles: https://gist.github.com/robo-hamburger/2269ef76603263ce1061

Amusingly I ended up not really needing it but fun to code.

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

#237

Post by baddox »

mrmondo wrote: post #46

Looks really very intriguing, I'm not about to install Windows to play it though - it doesn't seem there is a Mac / Linux version available?

It looks great and I would definitely be playing it this weekend, but Windows-only is a nonstarter. I'm rather surprised to see an indie title like this not support OS X.

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

#238

Post by mwill »

sdrothrock wrote: post #216
mwill wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've solved ~300 puzzles (out of 600) but am able to trigger the ending, so I am finished but not 100% completed yet. I haven't found ANY puzzles where I feel like you're guessing at the solution. Every puzzle I've solved has had well defined rules. I don't want to give too much away, but broadly speaking there are two types of puzzles: Those that rely on the symbols, where whats on the screen in front of you is all…

> I think deaf players will be unable to 100% this game because of a handful of puzzles, and theres no indication that the piece of the puzzle you're missing is sound. This is the first time I've seen this mentioned, so thank you. I've been thinking about buying a PS4 just for this game, so that's a major bummer. I hope there's a patch in the future for some kind of visual indicator or subtitle to make it a bit easie…

Just to clarify a bit, from memory I saw 13 puzzles that relied on sound, there are 600 puzzles in the game, you only need to beat about 250-300 (Could be less) of them to start the end game part.

So you can definitely finish the game without sound, but if you're a perfectionist aiming for 100% you'll need to resort to outside help, which does suck.

The puzzles don't even have a visual cue to let you know audio is important, so if you're not expecting it these puzzles just seem unsolvable.

This and no colour blind support are probably the two biggest criticisms I have of the game.

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

#239

Post by oilywater »

agentultra wrote: post #134
oilywater wrote: post #127

This game is the perfect tool for testing your problem solving skills. It puts you in a new framework and tests your cognition. Portal, The Talos Principle, all have the same goal. I wonder if people could become excellent problem solver by playing these games instead of honing the skills in the mathematics, physics or similar frameworks.

You may begin to realize that you are doing maths without realizing it. Thinking mathematically is quite natural for a curious, motivated person. It's writing down these thoughts which people find difficult. It's not easy for us to be precise! It could augment your skills in mathematics. Most people are much better than they think they are or are given credit for. I gave my niece the game, Set, over the holidays. She…

I believe it is called problem solving, not math.

Mathematics is a framework for problem solving which requires problem solving skills and knowledge of mathematics.

I believe anyone using a piece of paper and writing down their thinking is doing problem solving on problems that are presented in the game. Yes, it is probably equivalent to some algorithms present in computer science but they are (if not familiar) discovering everything by themselves.

The game provides the framework for problem solving, so instead of having knowledge of math/algorithms, you build that knowledge yourself and improve your problem solving skills as you go.

The way math is commonly taught seems to be knowledge oriented - which leaves a lot of people completely stuck when it comes to problem solving.

That's why I'm interested if you could, playing these games, improve your general problem solving skills, so that only thing you have to do, when you start with a different framework, is to get the knowledge - but your thinking previously trained without it and it should work now when you're familiar with the framework.

At least that is what I would expect form a general problem solver that got one's skills by solving problems in maths, or physics. I would assume that they could solve problems in other areas if they knew the terminology, if they acquired knowledge.

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

#240

Post by simoncion »

dharma1 wrote: post #227
alowe wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trailer is intentionally vague to avoid spoilers. I thought the same thing playing through the game for the first hour or so until I got to a puzzle that made me realize why they built their own engine. MINOR SPOILERS: Some of the later puzzle mechanics rely on playing with lighting and perspective in a way that seems to me would be difficult to implement in a stock engine.

ah, interesting, will have to buy to see what all the chatter is about :) I seem to be downvoted to death - the comments weren't meant in a disrespectful way - just wondered why the gargantuan effort with a DIY engine. The game itself looks really interesting.

> ...just wondered why the gargantuan effort with a DIY engine.

Given that Jonathan Blow is in charge of the project, it's almost certainly because existing engines were inadequate for the task.

From what I can tell, Rust is the most ambitious Unity project out there. The Witness is substantially more technically ambitious than Rust. Additionally -from what I read on the Rust devblogs-, the Rust guys spend a large amount of time working around Unity's limitations, missing features, and parts of Unity that are just buggy. (Granted, the buggy stuff generally eventually gets fixed, but until it gets fixed (if it ever does), you have to work around it.)

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