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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

#71

Post by eamsen »

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 case otherwise).

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

#73

Post by seivan »

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.

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

#74

Post by minimaxir »

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 worth noting that Blow used all the money earned from Braid to develop The Witness (as a result of long development time, though)

http://www.engadget.com/2015/02/06/the-witness-money/

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

#77

Post by mwill »

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.

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 thats required and those that...don't.

The first category, you slowly build up your understanding of the various rules as you progress, and they all play by the same rules. The second category though, the real puzzle is to figure out what you're missing, generally by observation.

But once you learn the difference between the puzzles that you can take a face value, and the puzzles where you should look around, it feels much more fair.

The only time I felt truly frustrated was the few puzzles that introduce audio as a mechanic. 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.

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

#79

Post by pdabbadabba »

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.

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 fun, challenging, but not impossible). Of course, that doesn't mean there is no such thing as a bad puzzle...

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

#80

Post by clentaminator »

edem wrote: post #39

It is interesting that the game's rating is very positive but no one recommends it if I read the reviews. It seems that this game is not like Myst but a sterile puzzle collection without a story. Did I miss something?

I think the default sorting for Steam reviews is by how helpful a review was.

Looking through some of the positive and negative reviews, it seems like the positive reviews are fairly short and don't say much about the game, while the negative reviews are longer and the reviewers do mention what they thought did and didn't work about the game, so the longer reviews that have a negative opinion end up being the most helpful. Just telling someone you liked something isn't going to cut it for everyone.

I can only guess that everyone who wanted to write a more in-depth positive review was just so keen to get back to playing the game that they cut their review short ;)

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