Kolzig

The Witness by Jonathan Blow

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You're going to hate the final Tetris piece puzzle, thrust me :) I still don't really understand how I solved it... I kinda brute forced it with educated guesses. There's been a few puzzle like that actually. I always think "am I missing something in the environment", or do I literally just have to guess this portion of the puzzle.

I thought the Tetris puzzles were communicated well if memory service, or maybe my brain just took the necessary leap needed.

I love love love this game, yes I've got stuck a handful of times but never felt frustrated, would alway walk away from a puzzle after 10-15mins. Every hour I play my mind seems to become more wired in to solving these puzzles.

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I also thought the tetris puzzles were well communicated. The blue tetris bits not so much. I also brute forced my way through that bit.

 

I  think the biggest issue with the game's layout is that the town can be one of the first areas you come across, and the huge leap between the town and the starting area can be really confusing and off-putting.

 

Ultimately, I am loving this game. I love how it makes you think, and how it's learning is all intuitive and really satisfying to solve a puzzle. the number of times I've walked away from this game and gone 'oh snap, that's how you solve it!' is an incredible feeling.

 

 

Regarding literal mazes.

There's a courtyard with four hedge mazes, the first one only has one way through it and you trace that path on the board, easy enough. The second one has grass on the ground to mark impassable areas instead. But the third one is just a blank maze with probably several dozen ways through it. I really don't understand the logic progression there.

Yup yup yup.
I enjoy solving puzzles I understand the rules of. Figuring out the rules can be fun if it's presented to you in a good way, but this game seems to open to reliably do that.

 

listen. Hopefully that'll make sense. if not:

listen to your footsteps

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eot:

listen

Welp, I was playing without sound.

Didn't want to have my headphones on for hours just to listen to ambient noise.

I think the biggest issue with the game's layout is that the town can be one of the first areas you come across, and the huge leap between the town and the starting area can be really confusing and off-putting.

Welp 2

I guess I can stop beating my head against that then.

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Welp, I was playing without sound.

Didn't want to have my headphones on for hours just to listen to ambient noise.

 

Haha yeah

I was listening to a podcast while playing, but luckily I hadn't muted the game audio completely, so I noticed that sound might be important.

 

As a heads up: you might need game audio somewhere else as well.

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So I've just "finished" the game and I feel like I've barely started exploring what's there (Steam says I've played for 14 hours and it sounds correct), I still haven't even been to some areas on the island and found multiple mysterious doors and things that I still have no idea what they mean. Well, I guess the real The Witness begins here. God I love this game.

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So I just had a funny story about the tetris puzzles (I guess we're calling them that even though not all of them are tetraminos.) After giving up on those introductory puzzles I just went ahead and solved a bunch of other areas to unlock the final area, this included solving some other related tetris puzzles in different areas. In the final area I came across a puzzle with a tetris component that I just couldn't figure out and thought "damn, I have to go back and actually solve the tetris tutorial area to get to the minimal ending". So I trudge all the way there, get to these puzzles that I thought were so freaking hard the first time I saw them, and then solve them within a couple of seconds. Turns out I did learn the key to them while solving other puzzles and just didn't realize it!

 

I feel like a lot of the negative reviews of this game fundamentally misunderstand something related to this about the game. The Witness is fundamentally more of a puzzle game than an adventure game. The lack of major rewards and story progression after most puzzle solutions seem quite deliberate. It puts more emphasis on the reward being the solution of the puzzle rather than a feeling of progression, which is obviously at odds with most other modern games. And what distinguishes a great puzzle game from a mediocre one is variety and challenge, which The Witness has both of in spades. I'm willing to accept puzzles I can't solve immediately and stay away from for days at a time because there's really substantial punishment for doing so. The amazing thing about hard puzzles is that not thinking about them for a while can actually help you solve them because you're able to come in with a fresh perspective!  I think that in itself is a valuable life lesson worth the temporary frustration. Also a lot of this philosophy about the game is actually contained within the hidden messages in the game itself, the truth is out there!

 

(However I don't think The Witness is a faultless game. For example. the slow bridge in the tetris area is a really annoying punishment if you have turn back there. There's also some aesthetic choices with a good number of puzzles that I don't really like, even though I liked some of those puzzles they have problems terms of ethics of accessibility that's kind of distasteful. For example I'm surprised that the game doesn't come with a warning for people with photosensitive epilepsy like other major games, or that I even think it needs one.)

 

By the way, the clue you need to solve the harder tetris puzzles is in the first set of tutorial puzzles in that area. You just have to take that clue to another level. But yeah, that definitely seems to be one of the hardest mental leaps in the game and I still think some of these tetris puzzles are really hard.

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Woohoo, just solved the puzzle Danielle posted... Been thinking about that one for a good while! I'm 204 +4 right now. i am still finding bits I had never been to before, not even locked away.

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Really good game! I'm almost at 300+30 with 14 hours played. I haven't had any motion sickness, but maybe sitting 3.5 meters away from a big screen helps? I had some headaches while playing it, but not sure it's the game's fault.

 

Reading this thread really carefully to avoid spoilers. I think once people are starting to finish it, we should perhaps have a new thread full of spoilers for those who have, if there's still a lot to discuss?

 

I was starting to get blocked by the stars in many places so I finally went and started the tutorial for those. Some really complex ones there.

 

So far I've found two types of repeating puzzles somewhat annoying:

  • the tetris ones -- it just isn't that fun doing tetris in your head. Even if it makes me feel good that I can, fuck that.
  • I loathe music puzzles. I just don't have good enough musical hearing and some of these are even deliberately obfuscated, making it worse
  • related to previous, any kind of puzzle that makes the screen blank when you fail, making you go back and solve the previous one that you already just solved. What the fuck is the purpose of that and why use it inconsistently for only some puzzles?

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I see a lot of people miss tutorials for puzzle mechanics and bang their heads against the wall, there's a way to find them reliably (I'm sorry if this has already been suggested, not reading a lot of this thread because of spoilers):

 

Get on a boat and look at the map, the tutorial areas are marked with the symbol of the mechanic they teach.

 

 

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  • related to previous, any kind of puzzle that makes the screen blank when you fail, making you go back and solve the previous one that you already just solved. What the fuck is the purpose of that and why use it inconsistently for only some puzzles?

 

I think this was done to keep (or at least discourage) people from brute forcing some. The puzzles where the path looks like a tree have I think 16 possible paths max, so it would be easy to just blow through them if it didn't keep interrupting you after a wrong answer. Same thing with the wheel ones - I think the starting ones there have 30 possible solutions.

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I've now played 19 hours and I've solved 291 puzzles, but I just got my first "+1"!

 

I enjoy just hearing the mechanical sound effects when solving a puzzle, but the +1 was such a surprise. I'm going to be spending sooooo much time on this game.

 

Also, this many hours in I can say my little makeshift crosshair I stuck on my TV has basically completely stopped any motion sickness I was having.

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I finished the tetris area, the remaining puzzles were pretty damn difficult. Then I go back to the final area puzzle and just realized the reason I'm having so much trouble is not the tetris part but because...

 

Spoiler for property of one of the puzzle elements.

I forgot that different colored starbursts can be in the same area.

 

That terrible feeling when you realize it's all your fault. 

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I think this was done to keep (or at least discourage) people from brute forcing some. The puzzles where the path looks like a tree have I think 16 possible paths max, so it would be easy to just blow through them if it didn't keep interrupting you after a wrong answer. Same thing with the wheel ones - I think the starting ones there have 30 possible solutions.

 

I thought that also for a bit, but the puzzles where you're forced to go back are (mostly) the ones where you need to look closer at your environment to figure out what's going on.  I think the 'go back and do the last one' is really more of a 'staring at this puzzle won't show you what you're missing'.

 

I'm at 510+35, and I assume the vast majority of the ones I'm missing are in the +n side.  I ended the game with 7 lasers, got a (pretty unsatisfying) ending, and then found the weird credit sequence. Then I got eleven lasers, spent forever figuring out what changes in the world when you get all eleven, discovered another hint that points toward the hidden credit sequence I'd already found, as well as an area with a very difficult puzzle..  Spent a day on the very difficult puzzle, and got through it to find... an achievement, and possibly something if I find all the [so far, terrible] windmill unlocks.. I'm on the fence whether I should work on getting all the +n mazes.  There are clues in-world at how to deal with them, and I'm just starting to make maps to try them out, but my suspicion is that this will add up to a few dozen hours to get an achievement.  Really, this might be fine except that Braid had such a nice a-ha moment at its ending.  I was really hoping for the same from this.

 

People have complained about the reviews that say the game is unrewarding.  I think there's a big distinction to be made between a puzzle game where solving the puzzles is its own reward and a puzzle game that rewards you with

a video telling how science is better than art or

an audiolog explaining the difference between the different kinds of buddhism or

an audiolog complaining how expensive it is to license a Carl Sagan quote.

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Yeah, I also just finished and found the end sequence a little underwhelming. I didn't mind the sparsity of rewards minute to minute, but you do expect a little something more at the finale.

 

Really, just a flyover of the island as everything resets? It just feels like they were too in love with the world they created.

 

But the puzzles leading up to it were pretty good. I finally had to crack and break out MS Paint to sketch out ideas for one of the last ones, although the solution was actually easier than I thought.

 

This was the big tetris puzzle on the ground. I thought for a while the solution would be a symmetric shape down the middle, I even calculated things like how it had to span exactly 13 blocks with either 1,3, or 5 blocks per row. Took me a long time to reconsider separate shapes on the sides.

 

Anyway, I'm still looking forward to going back and sweeping up the puzzles I skipped.

 

Edit: Just went back and saw the credits, I saw a Kotaku article that had a hint about where it is. I actually liked it.

 

I found the magic palace in the sky to be a cooler way of looking back at the island than just doing a flyover. Also just a nice way to deliver credits and kind of ground the game. There also looks to be a clue to the location of the challenging puzzle. The final end sequence was also hilarious. Be on the lookout for this infamous thing.

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Also, I like this tweet:

 

"You are smart, you can do it! If you don't know now, sleep on it. Take a walk. Watch a good movie or go to a different puzzle!" - Jonathan Blow

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I love this, so far. 231 solved, none of those fancy + puzzles you are all talking about. I can't wait to finish this and go back and actually read this thread with spoilers.

 

I almost always just back firmly away from puzzles with elements I don't recognize and the grid is big. After ignoring so many puzzles, like that tetris one, it's such a thrill when you finally find the tutorial area for a mechanic. It's like finding a new powerup in Metroid. "FINALLY! I can get in that weird tetris door thing!"

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Bought this Friday night, at 165+0 after 7 hours. I love it so far. Like many others, my only real problem with the game is not always understanding where the tutorials for a section start, and not always knowing if I've gotten to the end of a section. I guess there's at least one area I thought I'd completed that I either haven't, or doesn't the same big finish as a lot of the other areas.

Thankfully, I just got to the boat for the first time, so that's given me a little bit better idea how things are structured. I've got a couple of areas I haven't touched yet, but also a couple of areas that I think I'm going to have to comb over a little better. I'm not looking forward to the time when I've only got a few left and the gameplay will be about hunting down the puzzles, instead of solving them.

Edit: Oh, there were three puzzles I was stuck on when I went to bed last night, and ideas about three of them occurred to me as I was getting to sleep. Two of those were correct, so stepping away for a bit really was a huge benefit.

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Is there a point of no return? If so, is it obvious?

I've gotten all the lasers, but still have a lot of other stuff to unlock. Can you continue to explore after completing the game?

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How does the final part of the game work?

 

(Technical level progression spoiler)

I read somewhere that there is a point of no return and after you solve the puzzles in the final area, you go back to the beginning with zero puzzles solved. Is this correct? Does the game make a permanent save before the point of no return, so that I can go back to finish all the puzzles? I think I'm about with the regular puzzles (1 or 2 lasers to unlock), and while I would eventually like to solve the rest of the puzzles as well, I think I would like to play the final area first.

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Is there a point of no return? If so, is it obvious?

I've gotten all the lasers, but still have a lot of other stuff to unlock. Can you continue to explore after completing the game?

 

I just finished the game. Yes there is a point of no return, but when I went back into the game there was a save in the load menu right before the break happens.

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About that place with literal mazes:

Beyond the hedge mazes there's a place where you need to input solutions by physically walking on a grid. The second one of those has a puzzle with the white/black boxes. It's got a purpule background instead of a blue one though, are the rules different for that one or did I perhaps not learn the rules properly? I think I've only seen blue ones of those but I'm not even sure

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This was the big tetris puzzle on the ground. I thought for a while the solution would be a symmetric shape down the middle, I even calculated things like how it had to span exactly 13 blocks with either 1,3, or 5 blocks per row. Took me a long time to reconsider separate shapes on the sides.

Wait, what was your solution then? I had the opposite experience, I spent a bunch of time trying to make separate shapes and then eventually found a solution by putting them in the center.

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I'm at 321 +12 and I still think this game is fantastic, but the honeymoon period of complete infatuation is over. At this point, two facts that I already knew about but did not think would bother me are starting to wear on me anyway: (1) there are a ton of puzzles ahead of me yet, and I doubt if I have the intelligence or patience to solve all of them, (2) there isn't (according to all of you, and the Internet at large) a satisfying end point that the game builds towards.

It sucks because I truly didn't think I'd care about the lack of reward or climax... But without it, I'm afraid the rest of the game will be a slow petering out of my patience until I arbitrarily decide I'm done. And with that in the back of mind the game is suddenly much less engrossing.

That said, the hours I've already put in are some of the most satisfying I've had in a game in a while. So it still gets my endorsement, big time.

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