Polygon interviewed Blow.Really interesting preview. He talks about platform decisions, length of the game, puzzle/game design...
What are the odds on VR support then?
So only two years after it's intended release date. At least it's coming though!
This line of thought uncorked a pretty lengthy monologue on Blow's part about puzzle design. It was the first time I'd realized how obsessive he is about the practice, and it proved to be a real statement of intent for what The Witness has to offer. "To be crassly manipulated purely for entertainment value, to be treated like this stupid game consumer, is about as far from what I want [in a game] as you can get. I get pissed off when a game treats me that way. To act that way as a designer similarly involves not having much respect for the player as an intelligent person.
"Some game designers will talk about making the player feel smart and having that be the important thing," Blow continued. "'We want everyone to feel smart, so we design things that arent actually very hard. We have them do what we wanted them to do.' I do not like that. Instead, I give people the opportunity to be smart for real. I dont care if they feel smart. What matters is if they are. That leads to a very different game."
Well the original intended release date was Christmas 2011, then that changed several times
Blow says he has "at least three games" that he's considering creating next. One of them already has a working prototype with 40 hours of gameplay, but he's not sure if that will actually be the next game he works on.
Welp, looks like this will be too hard for me.
That's depressing. I guess i'll pass on it.
Well, the trailer gave a glimpse of two line puzzles that weren't really line puzzles, if you know what I mean.That sure is pretty.
I'm still unsure about the game, seems to me that doing those line puzzles could get old. Will probably still get it though unless it gets unspeakably dreadful reviews (i.e. 7/10 amirite)
Aaand hype's gone. What a baffling choice for a singular puzzle design. 650 panels of drawing line after line after line after line.The Witness attempts to solve this problem with a sort of unifying theme to all of its puzzles. Virtually every puzzle in the game takes place on one of hundreds of "panels" that are littered throughout the island. These panels often feature a grid of lines, and your goal is to draw a line on them from a specific starting point to a specific ending point.
To put it another way: All of the puzzles in The Witness are, in their most simplest form, mazes of some sort.
Utterly sad. There is no problem. The problem was fixed. Years and years ago. You press a button and you see all the interactive spots. Bam! no more pixel hunting.However, with The Witness Blow seeks to fix "one of the things that's most broken about Myst and that whole genre of games." Namely: pixel hunting.
"Point-and-click games generally have some version of pixel hunting," he says. "You look at everything you come across and wonder, is this thing interactive or what? In Myst, you come up to some elaborate, beautiful machine, and you start clicking on different parts of it, and eventually you find the knob that you're allowed to turn
Haha... yeah, me too. While Braid is a highly praised game which strongly influenced the indie gaming and pushed it into the spotlight, I never saw anything special. Forced myself to finish it, often consulting a walkthrough, but ultimately can't say I was impressed.Looks great, I hope it's not as boring as braid.