2016 | Puzzle | Thekla, Inc.
The Witness is a puzzle game that tries to teach the player the rules of the game without using a single word. You learn by exploring an island full of maze puzzles, usually seen on little tablet displays, with various rules that ramp up over the course of the game.
I don't know if this task is even truly achievable, perfectly and universally. It's not an easy thing for puzzle games to teach you how to solve things in a way that's neither condescending or obtuse, let alone without exposition. Everyone's mind is so unique that you can't really predict what someone is going to know. It's impossible to account for everybody. Trivially, for example, anyone who is unfamiliar with common first-person controls wouldn't be able to begin the game, since you aren't taught the controls. At some point, assumptions have to be made about what players know and what they will be able to find or work out.
Despite this, I think the game makes great choices to benefit the experience of almost anyone playing. Having the island open to explore and hundreds of puzzles to try made it almost always feel like you were progressing. If you're stuck on something, just find something else to do and come back with fresh eyes. I did finish most of the game without using any guides, which I'm pretty proud of. Sadly, towards the end of the game I did use some, because (among other things) the lack of available puzzles to switch between made it frustrating to progress and the game stopped being fun (but it goes to show how beneficial that freedom was for 90% of the game). I suppose I could've taken longer breaks from playing the game, to better refresh my mind, but it had been so fun up until that point and I was so close to the end, that I was determined to finish. Plus, I have a tendency to abandon projects that I leave for too long.
Still, I think I was lucky to have found these puzzles satisfying for so long. I feel like I was able to get in the mind of the developers and understand what they were trying to teach me, which I guess comes from my experience playing and learning about games. I could very easily see how someone new to puzzle games, or someone who missed an important piece of information the game is trying to communicate, would struggle. There were small moments where I felt this too, I was just fortunate that the parts I was confused about (Treehouse and Swamp puzzles) had heaps of tutorial puzzles that I could practice on.
Another strong feature that made puzzle solving less gruelling is you don't need to solve every one to get to the end of the game. There are certain checkpoints - groups of puzzles that must all be solved in order to make progress - but you don't need every checkpoint done to finish. Completing all the checkpoints, of course, does do something, but it's tangential to the main progression. I do wish the final area wasn't so long or linear. Don't get me wrong, the puzzles were clever, but once I was there, I thought I was pretty much done with the game. Having so much more to go, and in such a linear format, made the ending a taxing experience that forced me to look up answers.
Exploring the island was very fun, there were lots of cool secrets (even beyond puzzles) that aroused my curiosity and the environment itself was beautiful. Being able to crack a particularly hard puzzle, or coming back to an area you were stuck on before with new knowledge also felt really satisfying.
Some have pointed out the game's advertising said it doesn't waste your time, despite making movement around the island pretty slow. I sympathise with this outlook, but I was more than happy to saunter through areas, taking in the gorgeous scenery and often discovering something I hadn't noticed before. The island isn't remotely as large as an open world game like TLoZ: Tears of the Kingdom, which does benefit from fast travel, despite also being littered with fun things to find.
So, for what it was trying to do, I think The Witness does a very impressive job, providing me with hours of fun rewarding puzzles and a rich world to explore. A hint-less exposition-less game is a tough beast to wrangle but they ride that buck pretty gracefully. I hate looking up an answer, it makes me feel like a failure, or like I didn't truly experience the game. I'm sad I had to do it here, but I also need to balance that feeling with keeping the game fun throughout and the desire to finish quickly and concurrently. I also need to remind myself that I'm going to make mistakes, miss things, not understand, and that's okay too. I don't recommend it for everyone, it's not particularly accessible. But if it hits, it hits.
Uploaded: 05 JAN 2025
Last Edited: 07 JAN 2025