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The Witness


DisturbedSwan
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Played 90 minutes or so myself and I've enjoyed it so far, already I can tell this is a really well made game that has had a lot of love and attention gone into it.

The puzzles are pretty basic in nature, essentially a 2016 Snake-Light puzzle but with different elements that make them harder and harder such as having to pick up little squares on your way to the goal and having to control two snakes at the same time. They have grown quite challenging already and I've got stuck a couple of times already but persevered and eventually found a solution.

The island itself, the atmosphere and the art style is where the game really shines, there's absolutely no tutorials, no hand-holding whatsoever and you're left to explore wherever you like and solve whatever puzzles you like. The game looks truly beautiful, like a 3D painting come to life.

The Island feels purposefully bewildering, haunting, eery and mysterious and just ripe to explore, it definitely has that Skyrim sense of wonder to it, seeing something in the distance and thinking to yourself 'Ooh, I wonder what's up there' and then sauntering up to see what you find.

Found a couple of the voice recordings too and they were both high brow philosophical quotes from famous scholars, scientists, philosophers from a bygone age.

My only worry so far is the repetitious nature of the puzzles, but I've read they go more in depth the further you get into it so its not a major worry.

Going to put another 90 minutes into it later tonight.

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Another 90 minutes played just now.

Hardly made any progress and spent most of the time exploring the island, the puzzles have really stumped me now and I've had to leave almost all the ones I came across in the session which is a shame, I mean I know I'm shite at Puzzle games but I thought I'd be alright for the first half of the game but nope, they're all seemingly too difficult for me already so even though Jon Blow & co. don't recommend looking at a Guide and just leaving a puzzle for later, there's going to come a time when I'll run out of puzzles to leave and only encounter ones I'd previously left.

Time definitely flies playing this game that's for sure, there's something about it that is so damn compelling.

More later today.

Also, can you put that Map behind Spoilers please, Lakitu? Almost saw that then, you may not give a fuck about the game, but I certainly do ;)

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i've been playing this nearly non stop from ~7pm, not really sure what i make of it yet. it looks really nice.

just like Blakey i made good progress early on then got really stumped for a while, thought i had gone the wrong way, but now i'm not sure there is a wrong way. anyway i eventually stumbled on some more easier/tutorial puzzles and made some more progress.

then came across one of the most annoying things i've done in a game for a while, wanted to throw everything out the window, had i not paid good money and been looking forward to this i might have given up at this point - i did eventually make some progress on that puzzle but more through brute force than being able to do it...and what you have to do is easy to work out i'm just not really capable of that sort of thing so found it really frustrating.

spoiler about the puzzle i was stuck on:

its a sound/bird song that relates to high/medium/low notes on the line puzzle, its easy to work that out, but i've heard the phrase tone deaf - it's probably a good way to describe me - i had loads of trouble doing the basic ones - then they throw loads of stuff at you at the same time like wolves howling, mobile phone, buzzers, and whatnot all at the same time, i hadn't a clue what was going on and it was horrible. more musically minded people might think it's laugh easy. anyway i think i managed to get to maybe the last puzzle of that type, might look at a guide for that one at some point

didn't want to stop playing on such a bad note so played on and did find some puzzles i could do and was enjoying it a bit more. think i 'completed' one of the areas.

spoilers about some of the other puzzles:

some puzzles have tutorial sections with some easy to work out ones that introduce a new mechanic and get gradually harder - if you see one of these before other puzzles of that type it's usually ok to work others out, although i've still had problems on harder puzzles of that type.

but if you come across a new type of puzzle/mechanic without seeing the tutorial puzzles - maybe they don't all have tutorials. it's pretty tricky - the hexagon ones i have no idea

and ones with no specific mechanics mentioned - they just say you failed - some of these are environmental - something in the area will explain the route for the puzzle - these i generally find pretty annoying. and if that's not what you're supposed to do i have no idea on some of them.

i've been moaning about the game quite a bit and that does reflect my time with the game so far, but there have been good points and some good fun puzzles too so it's not all bad. hopefully i'm over the worst bit anyway.

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It's just so damn compelling isn't it, Spatular? My 3 hours with the game yesterday/today just absolutely flew by.

It's very much the Dark Souls of Puzzle/exploration games 'go wherever you want, no hand-holding, and oh, yeah, the puzzles get ridiculously hard ridiculously quick, see ya!' but you just keep coming back for more time and time again.

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Yeah, time just absolutely flies by playing this, I couldnt stop thinking about it in bed last night either, it utterly consumes my thoughts.

Played another 3 hours earlier, made a bit more progress today luckily, still got rather frustrated and infuriated about not being able to complete some of the puzzles (feels like continuously hiring your head against the wall) but with some patience and going away and leaving one for to do another one, eventually it is satisfying, especially if you can get into a puzzle completing rhythm like I did today.

Found a castle area with a load of hedge row maze puzzles and pressure sensitive block puzzles yesterday so spent the majority of my time here, got on alright with the Hedge row puzzles, couldn't work out the key to them so just kept guessing and eventually finished every one and started up this big laser.



Then on to the pressure sensitive puzzles, got majorly stuck and lost my rag with these a bit at times, stuck with them though for seemingly ages and eventually managed them all, incredibly satisfying :D.

After this I went back too a few of thee puzzles from the starting areas to see if I could do any now finished quite a few here and then called it a day



Had to get a pen and paper out a lot today to remember where things are and the patterns of some puzzles, can't even remember the last game I had of do that for, love it! Can't wait to play some more tomorrow.

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yeah i had a pen and paper out today too. took some pictures of some odd things i found in case they are needed later.

i've had a much better time on this today, got loads of puzzles solved and really enjoying it a lot more. still stuck in some areas mind and as there will be less to do now it'll just be the more tricky stuff left. anyway yeah the puzzles have been pretty good with interesting use of the environment, and combining different mechanics into the line puzzles.

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some more good progress tonight, much slower than yesterday but the puzzles are getting more difficult! i think i'm near the end, well only a few more puzzles to 'complete' all the areas on the island, it could take ages to do those last few mind, and it's supposed to be quite long so maybe loads more stuff will open up after that, or it's all the secret stuff that adds the length. i have found some 'secret' stuff myself, but will be resorting to guides or something to finish off that stuff if i can be bothered. anyway yeah it's pretty good.

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Blimey, you've gone through it quick, Spatular!

How many hours and Puzzles are you at now? I'm at 9 hours, 125 Puzzles down +8 with 3

lasers

up and running.

Made some really good progress today, seemingly managed to find an area where all the Puzzles were easy enough for me to do

(the forest)

managed to work out the key for these set of Puzzles

the Tree Branch shadows

and it was so was damn satisfying when I managed to finish every one in the sequence, the first time in the game really where a Puzzle sequence has clicked almost straight away for me and I haven't immediately been incredibly frustrated by something.

After this I went back to the

Symmetry

area and finished up everything here which I was pleased with, then continued on exploring around the

quarry.

Hardly feels like I'm making a dent in it though, heard there's 650 odd puzzles and I've done a 1/6 of them at the moment, so this could be one long-ass game for me.

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My resolve cracked last night after trying to get back into Fallout 4 and getting royally fucked off by it.

Really like it, i'm about three hours in and 96 puzzles solved, and so far there have been a few head scratchers, but nothing to obscure. It's absolutely beautiful to look at as well.

What's amazed me the most is how much variety they've managed to get out of such a simple concept.

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Thinking of downloading this from a torrent site Ed told me about

Not sure if you're serious or not :lol:

I would urge you not to if you are, this is an Indie game made by a 1 guy for 7 years, who sunk his entire savings into this, have a heart and pay for the game if you want to play it.

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