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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

#141

Post by jerf »

StavrosK wrote: post #57
chrismbarr wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for all those wondering, YES you should go buy & play Braid if you haven't already. It's an astounding game. A 2D platformer-style game that deals with in-game undo, time travel, time distortion, and multiple realities. It's mind bending, fun, and beautiful. Watch the trailer for it here if you haven't seen it before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqtSKkyJgFM

Braid is a masterpiece, just go get it now and play it WITHOUT WALKTHROUGHS (they'll just spoil the game for you). I'm not sure the Witness can live up to Braid, but we'll see.

Braid is on the short list of games I've played where I could spend an hour bashing on a puzzle unsuccessfully, then sleep on it, then come back the next day and do it first try. That happened at least twice as I recall. I generally find that impressive.

(The game that did that to me most often was Catherine. At least five or six times. And given that I never got very good at the puzzle version (in the arcade game in the bar), probably still at least a couple more still lurking in there if I picked it up again.)

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

#142

Post by likeclockwork »

JabavuAdams wrote: post #137
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to wait for Linux version to buy...that way will incentivize devs to make Linux versions.

Er, no it won't. If everyone who shared your opinion could convince 100-1000 other people to do the same, then maybe it would work. Fundamentally, though, some kinds of customer aren't worth the trouble. I'm not going to sell Lamborghinis to people who don't really care about flashy cars. So, why would I expect to sell AAA polished games to people who won't install a gamer OS, out of principle?

"a gamer OS"?

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

#143

Post by 6x9equals42 »

nickpeterson wrote: post #75

My daughter is going to be about 4, and she loves puzzles. I was thinking about picking this up for the apple tv to play along with her. Is it conceptually too difficult for children?

The world is beautiful so she might enjoy playing it, but you would be doing the actual puzzle solving. It gets very challenging.

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

#144

Post by vlunkr »

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,…

After seeing some of the earlier screenshots and videos I was afraid of this. Lots of the reviews on Steam report the same thing.

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

#145

Post by hnal943 »

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/

Indie Game: The Movie is one of the best documentaries I've ever seen. The cinematography is amazing, and they tell a great story about each of the dev teams they follow. Definitely worth a watch.

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

#146

Post by vlunkr »

oldmanjay wrote: post #90
seivan wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I feel like I could pop into that forum, ask "what is code, exactly?" and get 25 different, incorrect answers.

Yes, IGN message boards are hardly a place to cite as evidence of anything.

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

#147

Post by dr_zoidberg »

michaelbuddy wrote: post #104
muraiki wrote: post #101

One thing to note is that some of the optional puzzles are likely to be unsolvable by colorblind and hearing impaired players: http://kotaku.com/colorblind-and-hearing-impaired-players-wo... As someone who is colorblind, I've been happy to see many games come out with options to enable filters for one or more types of colorblindness. It's disappointing that such a feature isn't present in this game.

Send him the info. Despite the success he's still an indie dev, and maybe didn't have the resources at the outset, or just didn't get to it or know about it. but maybe it could be in an update.

From the linked article:

> “We definitely thought about colorblindness but ultimately there was not much we could do in terms of the individual puzzles,” the game’s lead developer, Jonathan Blow, told me today.

It's been a decision by the devs. Still, it would be nice if they updated the puzzles for those who are colorblind.

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

#148

Post by [deleted] »

pdabbadabba wrote: post #79
amichail wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think you may be making the mistake of viewing these puzzles as purely mathematical instead of also psychological. Mathematically its true, of course, that any number can come next in an arbitrary sequence. But its not true that each of the possible interrelations between those numbers is equally likely to be selected by human puzzle designer (*especially a good puzzle designer who is attempting to make the puzzle…

[deleted]

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

#149

Post by nickpeterson »

6x9equals42 wrote: post #143
nickpeterson wrote: post #75

My daughter is going to be about 4, and she loves puzzles. I was thinking about picking this up for the apple tv to play along with her. Is it conceptually too difficult for children?

The world is beautiful so she might enjoy playing it, but you would be doing the actual puzzle solving. It gets very challenging.

Thanks, I couldn't gauge from the pictures how hard it actually is.
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