Kolzig

The Witness by Jonathan Blow

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I finished this over the weekend. I still can't stop thinking over stuff despite that. There's one puzzle type that I thought I had figured out, and for the most part I had, but then I came to one that I just couldn't get.

The white panels you find on the ground with the yellow triangles. I've solved each of those I've come across, but when you get into the cave for the challenge, the pillar that combines the single and double triangles - I just don't seem to get it. Is the rule not how many spaces you allow between lines around that tile?

 

I quite liked the sound puzzles, although what appears to have been the last one in the jungle gave me a hard time considering there was so much overlapping audio.

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There's one puzzle type that I thought I had figured out, and for the most part I had, but then I came to one that I just couldn't get.

I believe it's the number of sides around the tile that need to be filled in by a line.  So a single triangle is only crossed by once and the line doesn't bend; two is crossed twice separately or in one bending line; three by a line that bends twice, with one side of the tile unoccupied.

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That makes complete sense, and explains what I missed. I assumed I understood it after the first couple I found, but clearly I didn't. Thanks!

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I've played more than 20 hours of this game and last saved in the middle of (what I assume is) the end-game string of puzzles, and yet I still have no idea what people are talking about when they mention "sound puzzles". I must've just... completely missed those, somehow.

 

How is that possible? It's freaking great how that's possible.

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In order to access the end game, you need 7 of the 11 lasers activated. It's entirely possible you skipped the area that has them if you didn't go for all the lasers.

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That makes sense. But I still wonder how it's possible to miss an entire category of puzzles, since I've been running around the island looking for things to solve all week!

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492 puzzles complete, and I'm very close to getting the Challenge achievement.

 

 

Fuck pillar puzzles. Fuck this game. Fuck Edvard Grieg.

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I'm not as far as you all, only 231+9. Sort of had the "+" thing spoiled for me on accident, that would've been a good "aha" moment otherwise.

I had sort of picked up on it, but hadn't actually tried tracing them. I don't think I'll be trying to go for those, walking around the island and looking at things from every possible angle doesn't sound fun. I'll take the ones I see.

Still not loving the actual puzzle mechanic though. Most puzzles tend to fall into one of these categories:

1) simple enough that you can solve it more or less right away

2) slightly harder, but you can try tracing something, see what works and then adjust

3) puzzles where you need to stop, and try to define some constraints on all possible solutions then think through those

4) similar to 3) but complex enough that you feel like you'd solve it more easily by breaking out some paper

5) solution coded in the environment

For me, the puzzles that fall into 3) are the ones I enjoy. 1) and 2) are fine but they aren't that satisfying. 5) is down to taste I guess, I don't super enjoy them. The ones in 4) tend to annoy me more, because so far I've been stubborn enough not to draw/visualise anything, but when I solve them I rarely get a good "aha" feeling. I think that comes from the process of solving them not being as enjoyable, and for me that goes back to the visualisation. The process of visualising the problem is key in all puzzle games I would say, but the difference is that in most other ones (ones I like anyway) the process of visualising them is intrinsic to solving them. For example, in Portal you act out the solution every time you attempt to solve a puzzle, maybe you go through a portal, realise you need more height, then start looking for a way to get more speed. It helps you break down the puzzle into individual steps (that is the actual act of solving puzzles in those games, break it down into small steps then solve each step).

In The Witness though, if you're doing for example a tetris puzzle, the game doesn't visualise anything for you. In some cases it will flash a thing to indicate what's wrong, but that's more to teach you the rules than it is an actual aid in hard puzzles. To me it feels like the equivalent in Portal would be if you could see the entire room, but you had to describe the entire solution (where to put each portal) without acting it out, and if you got the wrong solution you'd simply get an error. Sure, I bet we could solve puzzles in Portal that way too, but doing it all in my head isn't more satisfying to me, it just feels ineffcient because you can only visualise so much. Doing it all in my head doesn't increase my understanding of the puzzle or its solution, if anything it's the opposite. If the answer is to make some cardboard cutouts, or open up GIMP then I'd rather just the puzzles be presented differently.

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I've resorted to drawing/notes/constructed Tetris pieces about 5 times, and then to taking screenshots and having them up on my second screen maybe another 10 or 15. I found all those times satisfying because it turned out that I had gone to these extreme means for a puzzle that I really, actually needed it.  It would break me very quickly if I was making drawings and such but the solution ended up being simple and not worth the time of sketching it out. So far, my biggest complaint is that a decent amount of the game doesn't require an environment, it could just be a menu with "Puzzle 1-1, Puzzle 1-2, etc" written on it, but then I hit a couple of parts in a row that actually used the environment in interesting ways, so that complaint has been somewhat mollified.

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based on the things i'm hearing about this game I fully expect that the player character's shadow will factor into a puzzle at some point.  am I way off?

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I don't know if you're right or not. But

 

your character's shadow certainly can be a minor annoying obstacle in the way of some solutions

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your character's shadow certainly can be a minor annoying obstacle in the way of some solutions

 

I think that counts as "factoring in" if it means you need to reposition yourself to see something properly because of it.

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I think that counts as "factoring in" if it means you need to reposition yourself to see something properly because of it.

eh, that's not quite what I meant, I was hoping for something less mundane

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326+0 puzzles, I'm underneath the top of the mountain, and I'm really not enjoying these puzzles. I definitely started feeling motion-sick here, and now I'm stuck at what I think might be the very last puzzle in the game?

Edit: And it sucks to end stuck in the middle like this, because now I'm just angry and frustrated.

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In The Witness though, if you're doing for example a tetris puzzle, the game doesn't visualise anything for you. In some cases it will flash a thing to indicate what's wrong, but that's more to teach you the rules than it is an actual aid in hard puzzles. To me it feels like the equivalent in Portal would be if you could see the entire room, but you had to describe the entire solution (where to put each portal) without acting it out, and if you got the wrong solution you'd simply get an error. Sure, I bet we could solve puzzles in Portal that way too, but doing it all in my head isn't more satisfying to me, it just feels ineffcient because you can only visualise so much. Doing it all in my head doesn't increase my understanding of the puzzle or its solution, if anything it's the opposite. If the answer is to make some cardboard cutouts, or open up GIMP then I'd rather just the puzzles be presented differently.

 

I can see why some people would not like this at all, but I did not find this to be a problem. In fact, I quite liked having to fit the pieces together in my mind before tracing the solution, especially with the tetris puzzles. I felt like it trained me to visualize things better. Sure, having to "code" the entire solution of a Portal puzzle without the ability to test/visualize it would indeed be painful, but the Portal puzzles tend to be much larger in scale or at least have more free parameters than The Witness puzzles, so I'm not completely buying the comparison. Still, valid criticism of course.

 

The only external tools I used was a camera (and once a piece of paper) for puzzles that required you to memorize things, because I don't like to go back and forth between the puzzle and the hint. However, I do like how easy it is copy a large majority of the puzzles on a paper if you need help visualizing things. I would imagine that this would also be a nice feature if you are playing with other people, because you could explore different areas while your friend works on the puzzle that you got stuck on.

 

 

Dewar: I feel you. I quit in the middle of the one part of the game that felt frustrating to me, and now I can't get it out of my head.

 

 

Also, holy Tetris Effect! I was reading a book on the bus this morning, and I was constantly tracing a line between the sentences and paragraphs in my mind.

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I've managed to reach the part where the game explains what the game is actually about, which is very exciting because it is both much clearer than Braid and has a much clearer marriage between the mechanics and the story than Braid does.

 

It feels a little stupid that everything is in English.

 

Anyway, I'm in the post-game area - I cheated on the jungle puzzles because I'm somewhat tonedeaf - and let me tell you it's a big ego boost to see people get stuck on puzzles that took me a little walk to get, including some notorious puzzles in the marsh. I used paper because it wasn't my idea of fun to memorise puzzle solutions, which turned out to be a great call even though I have a bunch of things written down that turned out not to be solutions at all.

 

This is an early contender for my goaty, but of course I was in the tank for this game from the beginning and it has met my expectations.

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After posting that angry comment, I blazed through the sandy ruins in one shot, which means I completed three areas total yesterday with little or no problem. I guess it's a character flaw that I was so frustrated by that one puzzle despite doing so well on other bits of the game.

 

I think I'm going to have to look up spoilers on what the +1s are, because I'm worried I'm going to have to comb the whole world a second time to get the puzzles that I apparently just walked past. I don't want to ruin the surprise, but I'm also starting to feel some of luster rubbing off as I get further into the game, so I don't know how much more time I really want to put in.

 

Edit: Looked up some vague spoilers earlier in the thread, now I'm really annoyed.

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Woohoo! I beat the challenge!

 

Now I remember what I hated about so many puzzle games: timed puzzles.

 

Found it yesterday evening but had to give up because it was getting late. Finished it today after half an hour or so. I did not enjoy the challenge much at all, but because I had gotten that far and had already tried it so many times, I knew that it would have kept nagging me for a long time. Glad to be rid of it.

 

The challenge did have one really cool mechanic, though. The one where you had to figure out which of the puzzles was actually impossible to solve. I had gotten so used to the feeling of "This puzzle is impossible! Oh wait.. no it's not" that it took some time before I was able to trust my conclusion.

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Just 'finished' the game. Those pillar puzzle were a cake walk

435 +75 with no cheating, help or drawing on bits of paper.

Haven't found this credits sequence so got a bit of searching left

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I'm in the place where you can close the blinds

I traced the things through the windows, and it unlocked a blank 3x6 panel. I assume the solution is coded in the environment somewhere, like with the other puzzles, but that is seriously my least favourite part of the game. Just walking around a place staring at things, or looking at it from different angles. It's a neat trick to pull a few times but it gets old fast.

Also, those +1s can be real finicky.

I've had several now where I'm standing in almost the exact right location, it looks like I should be able to do it, but I can't. Then I move the smallest amount possible and suddenly it works.

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They're definitely picky. I still can't find the position to get the one in

the clouds near the back of the mountain.

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521 + 134 + 5. 43 hours played according to Steam (a few of those idling).

Used pen and paper as a memorisation aid, and a video camera for a few puzzles.

 

Big time tetris effect too, thinking about drawing lines in my sleep and even when awake, compulsively looking for/noticing "puzzle-like" elements in "real life".

 

I forgot how to turn off my phone alarm one morning thanks to The Witness making me believe that I needed to trace out an elaborate path on my phone, instead of just swiping right to the "cancel alarm" icon.

 

I haven't actually "ended" the game yet, but I think i've finally reached a mental state where I no longer feel compelled to complete/search for puzzles, and now feel free to do or not do so at my leisure.

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I've not put as much time into this as I'd like, but holy crap there's  another plus? If it's an unofficial plus, and for what I think it might be, I'm at +3. 

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