Hey there.

So I like reading Steam reviews. I know, I know. I shouldn't do that. But I do like to read them and contrast them with the "hours played" counter. I like the silly ones, but I always enjoy reading the most "helpful" ones. Unfortunately I do sometimes go too far down, and end up in a place that I probably should not venture into.

Lately I've been reading some reviews of The Witness, and boy howdy. A LOT of the people reviewing this game are saying that this is an overpriced phone game, and that it looks like a scam. And that would not shock me on its own. It's the internet, whatever. However- some people that I like, and respect the opinions of, have played The Witness for a couple of hours, and they were absolutely shocked that this game costs 40 bucks. They said it should be a phone game and said that this may be a scam. They have said that Blow made a good game years back, and he's banking on his popularity with this trash. That thought never, ever crossed my mind, and the "scam" argument sounds unreasonable to say the least. It might have been a joke, but the shock after finding out the price was not.

Now, I've played about 30 hours of this game. I finished it and I like it. I don't love it, but I appreciate the work that was put into each and every one of these puzzles and the world. It's smart, well designed, pretty and very, oh so very long. It's also great at subverting expectations. That may however be to its detriment, since apparently it doesn't look like it's worth its price. Maybe it's the "2D" element of the puzzles. Or maybe some people don't think the island is important, which, hey, if you've played a few hours, you probably should've seen some stuff that counters that argument.

In many cases the island itself is a tool, in others it's to create these "metroidvania-like" progress gates through the game, only instead of new abilities unlocking doors, it's the new info in your brain that does it. Which is pretty cool. So yeah. It's not a phone game. It may be ported to phones, and it may work quite well, but the 3D environment is key.

So... Why? What creates this feeling of being duped? Are the puzzles seemingly too basic? It also happened in the comments section on GB's Witness Quick Look. Quite a number of comments read: "What's the big deal? Show us more Brad, this doesn't look good at all!" Is it too much to give this game the benefit of the doubt? Have we seen too many of these "Explore the World" games, only to be extremely disappointed by them? Is it the price? The graphics? The puzzles at the beginning of the game? Or maybe people are just not feeling it? If that's the case, why criticize the price or the intentions of its developers? Or maybe there's really just not that much to it?

What do you guys think?

People like to say a lot of dumb things.

It's true. But a lot of the people on GB were also dumbfounded. Maybe the game isn't that great at making a good first impression?

Oh I think this game is great, and I don't care at all what other people say. It's just that, with all of those comments and reviews, I think the game might be doing something wrong. Since I know that the game is smart and creative and makes you feel clever, then why are all these people so dismissive? More so than with any other well designed puzzle game. Maybe the Myst connection creates this strange dissonance?

As shitty as it is to generalize, I think many of the commenters are young people with out income. I don't understand why people have to bandwagon up all the time. Dog pile on a something they don't understand. Complaining about what people spend their money on is crazy to me.

Value for value. If they don't want to pay for what the game is no one is forcing them. I think it's pretty rude to dump on something like that.

I think a lot of it has to due with the perception of puzzle games these days. The Witness presents itself as more of a Picross or Sudoku style of 2D puzzler whereas more people these days expect a Talos Principle or Portal from their puzzle games. For the most part, a lot of this style of puzzle has moved on to mobile where you pay nothing or next to nothing. On top of that, this style of puzzle game has a HUGE difference between watching and playing it. In an era of streams and let's plays, a person is likely to get a straight up shitty impression of the game because when you are watching it you lose out on the part of the game where the player is thinking through it. Instead, all they see is some guy staring at a grid for 10 minutes. To top all of this off, The Witness relies on a very obvious core mechanic. It does not take long to see that every puzzle is some variation of moving a line through a grid. While this isn't a bad thing, players more expect games to be blasting them with different mechanics left and right. Instead, it offers simple alterations to the base mechanic in order to throw in new layers of challenge. While this simplicity isn't a bad thing, some of my favorite games like Picross change the core mechanic less while still being fun, it gives off a bad impression.

I think it's funny that a lot of people will help fund kickstarters and what not and acknowledge that nothing may come of it or it may be disappointing but they want to help out. Yet, when it comes to game pricing, they have this notion that it should stick to some imaginary ruleset. Braid wasn't $40, but that doesn't mean Jonathan Blow has to prove every game $15 or whatever for the rest of his career. Help the dude out, buy his game, especially with it seemingly being awesome, and all is well.

@twolines: I think it's such a specific type of experience that you'll instantly know if you're in or you're out, and when a large part of the Internet is absolutely raving about The Witness (Danny O'Dwyer is positively gushing over it on Twitter) it can be hard to not feel like you've been cheated somehow when despite all this critical acclaim you end up not liking it - that's when that bitterness can kick in despite having only yourself to blame.

I think people like me just find that $40 is quite a large asking price for what you seemingly actually do in the game. I know that I am one of those people. I don't think the game is going to be bad, but I just know that with a huge backlog, I can't justify spending $40 on a puzzle game that may or may not subvert my expectations in some way. I did not spend full price on Braid, and I believe I enjoyed it more because of that. I thought it was a neat game, but by no means did it become one of my favorites or impress me so much that my perspective on something was drastically changed. It was a neat puzzle game with a cool little reveal at the end - I enjoyed it.

I do not know what to expect out of the witness other than the design of some puzzles. I had the same knowledge about Braid. For me, paying $40 for The Witness would be similar to me paying $15-$20 for Braid. Hour count is important, but in this case it's more about price - gameplay/expectations. Maybe I'm just not a big puzzle guy.

Actually, i'd argue many good phone games are underpriced

I think part of the problem is when you see people like Brad and others completely loosing their minds over The Witness, you want that. You want to have that kind of emotional response to the game to justify its price. However, the first couple hours or so don't give that to you. Only upon digging deeper and exploring the island and discovering the lore or meta narrative or whatever you want to call it do you get the big payoff. And, well, some people aren't that patient. It's an instant gratification world we live in.

Man the island itself is just so fascinating. When I first started playing I was a bit annoyed having to run everywhere, but it really does get that lived-in feeling across that makes some of the best Metroidvania games. I am deeply familiar with the layout and learning the paths allows you to traverse fairly quickly.

Part of what probably turns most people off on its face is that we can't talk too specifically about puzzles for sake of spoiling the experience. That leads potential buyers to think "well there really isn't much here because no one has showed me more than these damn line puzzles."

I'm actually pretty pumped that this is coming to IOS. Looking forward to playing it on my ipad. Puzzle games are great on the go. I'd happily pay $40 for it on IOS too. Especially for something as well made as the witness.

From what I have seen, I can see that it is quite easy to jump to the conclusion (especially if you play only hour or so) that the game based on line puzzles should not bee costing that much. Scam thing might come from the fact that it is not VISUALLY obvious when looking at the Steam-page that game is about line puzzles.

Thing about the internet, and people. They say things on it. Most of them are dumb.

Theres a tendency for people to just dismiss anything that can work on a phone or to say anything simplistic belongs there. For me, the Witness is much more than line puzzles, because the island itself is what gives them meaning. The real 'gimmick' of the witness isn't solving line puzzles to open doors, but how it makes you use the environment to find solutions. You need the island to complete the puzzles, and you need the puzzles to complete the island. I think it can work on a phone, but I also think it's worth its price, and distilling it down to just a chain of line puzzles removes what makes it great.

I've only watched the Quick Look, haven't touched the game myself. The puzzles look interesting to solve, and I'm interested in buying the game, but after the Quick Look ended I'm not sure what the purpose of the 3D world is. I've played plenty of puzzle games on my phone, where you solve one and move immediately on to the next. I'm a hug fan of logic puzzles; I have a subscription to Griddlers.net and spend all of my lunch breaks at that site. What Brad and Jeff showed on the Quick Look makes the game seem like something that could be distilled down to the 2D puzzles, easily losing the 3D world and first-person navigation. Even when they had to solve three puzzles in three separate areas to unlock the blocked puzzle and proceed, that's hardly an instance where navigating a 3D space is necessary.

The tree blocking one puzzle was the first instance where perspective played into the puzzle solving, and Brad hinted it would only get more complicated from there. I don't know if this becomes a major part of the game, or just involves a subset of puzzles. I'll bow to others who have played the game to let me know if the 3D part of the game is integral to the experience. From my limited perspective of the game, I think I kind of wish I could just play the touchpad puzzles like those I saw in the majority of the Quick Look and not have to mess with the 3D environment. The backtracking that annoyed Jeff in the Quick Look seems likely to annoy me as well.

Some people also think a game isn't a game without puzzles or enemies.

The internet is a bad place

Gamers never pass up a chance to show their ass. Also, don't read Steam reviews.

Don't worry, it won't be an overpriced phone game until it drops on iOS with the same price point. Then you'll see some shit flinging.

In all seriousness, I'm waiting to see how that iOS version plays/performs, and if it's priced more suitably to my own interest levels. Unfortunate that there's no demo for this game, because it really is just a case of not knowing if I'd enjoy it enough to pay that price (more than I do for most games in general).

Now, I haven't played it, nor would I be willing to say the game isn't good by any stretch, but from what I saw, it doesn't look as interesting to me as most games of its type usually are. Tell me if there's anything to add beyond this, but from what I've seen, the draw is:

• It's a beautiful game to look at.
• Finishing the puzzles is rewarding because they're often challenging.
• Puzzles are set up in interesting ways.
• (And, I've seen this as a strength as well as an aspect others didn't find as appealing, but more as an 'eh' reaction.) The quotes and era set pieces here and there have a strong, meaningful message.

The last one I am referring to is about the sculptures and the quotes; I'm not really positive about those aspects, but I've heard that some didn't make sense of them, while others were affected in some way over them. What else in it makes the game so impressive? I have no clue about the topic at hand though, and so my question here isn't to agree that it's an overpriced game, but as someone that wants to play great games, and yet has little interest in this from what I saw, I'm simply curious as to what is so impressive about it aside from those aspects above. Most importantly for me probably is, aside from its beautiful visuals, how great is the setting? I understand that it's varied. How is the soundtrack? Is there a story? It seems like one that you'll perhaps have to piece together over time, and not one that is being fed to you as easily.

@ntm: That's not an inaccurate assessment. If you want to boil it down The Witness is just a set of crafted puzzles on an island location. Sometimes the environment is used as part of the solution to the puzzles. Sometimes the environment is the puzzle. The island is itself crafted to help facilitate puzzle solving.

As for your last point, there are scriptures/quotes and videos that can be found in the environment. There's also a special post credits video that can be viewed as well.

Well if somebody only played 2 hours and thinks it's an overpriced phone game, steam refund it. The word scam is a terrible way to describe your opinion on a a game based on it's price to content ratio. Now if one of the puzzle involves your long lost Nigerian grandfather, then maybe...

Me personally, 30/40 dollars is to much for a puzzle only game. I'm just not that into them at all. I still haven't played portal 2 and i bought it years ago for cheap.

For me it was the realization that the game is just puzzles. Finishing the first couple of areas and not getting a "reward"...no big story reveals or twists or anything. Which is fine, just when I heard people raving about it, I expected more :/

I wouldn't rag on it in a review or say it's a scam, though. I know I don't like pure puzzle games, so it's my own fault. But I can see where people might be coming from.

I'm a little confused about what revelations or wow moments people are having with the game. My first two hours went pretty much the same as every other two hours with the game.

@ntm: It's hard to really articulate without spoiling things that shouldn't be spoiled, but suffice to say that the game would not work if it were simply one puzzle after another on your screen.

I see a lot of comparisons to games like The Talos Principle and I did enjoy that game quite a bit, but the two games are actually pretty different in the way you approach their puzzles. With The Talos Principle, each puzzle type or object has a very simple purpose and you're mostly combining the objects in different ways (or timing, or sequence) to reach the goal.

In The Witness, the symbols on the grids are puzzles IN THEMSELVES. You don't know what they do and figuring that out is half the fun. And then just when you think you know, the game throws a wrinkle in that makes you question everything all over again. I had so many times where I was 10 puzzles deep in an area only to hit a point where the rule to the symbol I thought I knew all of a sudden didn't work. I had to go back and re-examine everything I had just done. The game is far, far more about discovery than The Talos Principle is in that way. I had 5 or 6 "ah HA!" moments in The Talos Principle and would hit that number in just ONE AREA in The Witness.

I think some people like to bitch about video games more than actually play them.

@bartok: Some of the reviews remind me of when Gone Home came out and there were many highly rated reviews just saying shit like "how can you charge so much for something that's not even a game?" People like being mad.

I think the issue is some people have the mentality of 'I have to play everything and have an opinion of it'. This leads to a lot of negative views and opinions of value in games.

There is no secret as to what this game is and I don't know how someone could spend $40 on it and then feel like they got a bad deal. Just from looking at some video and reviews you can pretty easily tell if it's your sort of game and then make a judgement on if you want to spend the $40 or not.

@bartok: This is why I'm trying to avoid pretty much any other video game communities besides Giant Bomb. I can only take so much complaining and many long negative pieces about someone's experience with a game. To be sure, some of those can be well crafted and therefore thought-provoking and nice to read; but a lot of them are not.