86+6 in 4 hours.

Why am I still up? :|

64, but ive hit a wall. time to take a break, but damn i love how challenging the game is. its so refreshing!

I've reached 96 in my first few hours. Initially I felt like I was following some sort of progression in terms of the difficulty of the puzzles but now I'm completely lost and all the puzzles around me are painfully complicated. Definitely an intriguing game though. Looking forward to giving it another try after I've let my brain rest.

79 so far.

Playing with headphones has me hilariously on edge. I'm fairly certain it won't bust out jump scares but man can the sound get unsettling.

77 +1 after two hours tonight. I'm pretty sure the +1 came from either one thing or another Either the hexagon puzzle or getting a glowing light to the mountain

I felt foolish for taking way too long to understand the one puzzle in the dual lines section where the yellow line was beginning to fade out. (I was thinking that I was using up too much of the "yellow line" power, so I redid all of the puzzles before it started to fade out to try and make it the smallest path to the end of each puzzle to lengthen out the amount of yellow line I had for later puzzles.... only to find out I should have treated the yellow line as an invisible line. Silly me.)

I'm now at 127 +1. Definitely getting into it.

142 +12.

Having the opposite reaction to most people and just wanting the game to crawl into the same hole as Proteus and The Mountain and die. It's pretty but I'm finding most of it just tedious leg work hoping that there might be a story hidden in here at some point.

177 now. Still no +whatever though - wondering what that's about! Finished my first area though - that felt pretty good.

Hey so just a quick word of warning.
If you get to a forced perspective puzzle area in a temple like area with shutters that you can control (only able to have one half of them open at a time), do not switch the shutters too quickly (wait for the whole open/closing process to completely finish). Doing so will bug it out and then you won't be able to have any shutters open.

121+6. There's 500 puzzles, right??

I'm at 159 +8 and having a blast. I read in some review that a lot of puzzles feel like the game designer fucking with you, and that's been borne out in my experience. Not necessarily difficult puzzles, but puzzles that purposely "break" rules without actually doing anything out-of-bounds like (star puzzle area example) hiding black hexagons under shadows cast on the pane. I laughed out loud.

Very strange. I have 74 panels completed according to the load file, but I don't have any + anything listed even though I unlocked an achievement and saw a thing.

The thing I saw I feel is a spoiler as it was a BBC video clip.

I'm at 95. Really enjoying it. I made some notes to hopefully get me unstuck while i'm thinking about it all day at work tomorrow.

109 in my first 3 hours. I couldn't put it down... but I should probably sleep at some point.

183 +5 here. That area up in the trees has A LOT of puzzles... Also getting stuck fairly early on in the swamp area...figuring out how to arrange these tetris pieces correctly sure takes a lot of mental effort

Also: The random parts of the world you can interact with that are connected to the black pillars are super cool. Wonder if that's building towards something bigger.

83 +12. My first +1 resulted in me saying HOLY SHIT out loud at like 2am.

212, and I'm still not particularly enjoying my time with it.

So I'm kinda buying into the hype behind this game and my interest has been piqued. But I'm not huge on puzzle games. When I'm hearing comparisons to Braid and Fez I get a little wary because neither of those games really hooked me and I didn't get beyond the first few hours in either. I can't think of many puzzle games that really do hook me, except The Room, but maybe I need to think about it more.

Anyways, think this might be worth getting or should I steer clear?

(Wasn't sure if I should have made a new thread to ask this. Sorry if I'm stepping on any toes doing this.)

I'm at 106 +2 after about 2 hours (according to Steam). Not stopping...I finally figured out how to do something with the black pillars so I'm planning to backtrack a little.

@jjbsterling: Definitely steer clear if don't like puzzle games. This is a puzzle game with hundreds of puzzles. Sure, you can admire the scenery, but I wouldn't recommend buying The Witness just to look around...

@golguin: The +s are something completely unrelated to the puzzle panels. I was worried about not doing something right for a long time, but I finally figured out what it means when I was at around 250 solved. It sorta sucks to figure it out late, but it doesn't really matter when you figure it out.

Hmm - should I have bought this on PS4? I can't see any way of seeing my puzzle counter on PC which is bumming me out - no apparent way of checking my progress? Any ideas?

32 +6. Definitely in to the +s

On PS4, it only shows up when you select "load game" from the pause menu, so maybe try that.

Yup, same deal on the PC.

Just listened to the bombcast and caved and bought it. Played for 1.5-2 hours, 82 solved so far. Solved one area (that's what the laser means, right?). Haven't hit any mind blowing moments yet. I also have yet to stumble across any audio logs. Are they something that's hidden/easy to miss?

My main problem with the game so far is that the physical act of doing the puzzles isn't inherently fun like in some other puzzles games, so if you already know the solution it can feel a little like tedious busywork. The two parts that come to mind are: the cherry blossom trees and the floor panels that you step on in the castle area. In both cases I knew exactly how to solve the puzzle and yet it took a good minute or so referencing a picture on my phone to make it happen. Also, taking pictures of the screen with your phone is essential in this game.

@davidh219: There are two tapes in the starting castle area. They can be quite small, and you activate them by just going into 'use' mode and clicking on them. This means that they can also be in places that are not actually reachable by you, but within your sight.

198+12 (10h). There are a lot of really quick puzzles, but there's also some things that I've been completely stuck on for ages :|

@davidh219: They are super easy to miss. In the beginning area, there's one on the roof by the pillows and such, and one right above the gate. If you want an idea of what to look for.

I haven't checked my completion thing yet, but I played for a few hours last night and 'completed' one area, along with some other seemingly random stuff I ran into.

162 panels, two areas cleared, took me around 5-6 hours.

Also, still member of the "no +"-club.

And fuck these tetrispuzzles.

@qreedence: @spaceinsomniac:

Thanks a bunch - saw no reason to click on that, so I probably would've never found it by myself. :P

91+22 at the moment. Have hit a several walls - hunting more tutorials right now, so I can progress. I wish there was a counter for the audio logs as well, so I'd know if I will end up missing any. I think I've heard 5-6 logs at this point. I foresee the secret puzzles becoming an annoying endgame of sorts. I keep seeing more and more of potential secret puzzles without being able to solve them straight away and some of them are really easy to miss - I doubt I'll have the patience to try and get them all.

229+7 at 8 hours, progressing way slower lately, puzzles getting much harder

106 so far after 3-4 hours, think four areas cleared. Feels like the mechanics/areas I went through must have been the simpler ones as they were clever but not terribly difficult. Just hit on a tutorial for symbols I hadn't full grasped yet, but I couldn't even get past the second panel of the tutorial so I decided it was time for sleep.

And I have to say I actually love the way this game is rekindling my desire for notes and pictures the way Fez did. I've got notes of puzzles I didn't yet understand and wanted to come back to, weird stuff I hadn't figured out, pictures of random things used to solve other puzzles, even used some digital graph paper to play with solutions for one.

I binged on this for about 5-6 hours yesterday and got to 123 +15. I think towards the beginning your number will reflect how much you like to just turn away and explore other tutorials vs. just digging into every chain and area until you make it through. I am definitely the former =)

Such a roller coaster of a game, I am a huge fan right now. For some of my failed attempts I've muttered '**** you Jonathan Blow...', don't think I've played a game that has gotten so intimate with me when I can't progress. On other puzzles I solve I would cheer and say 'Jonathan Blow, you crazy so-and-so/madman/genius'.

Talking about the two achivements I've gotten so far:

Symmetry taught me how to think like a crazy ass in order to solve these. Great puzzles. Kudos to Mr. Blow and team. What about that dark panel at the water's edge?? Ahh!!

Desert Ruin was a huge bitch to get through. Busted out the notepad real quick and even then... Anyway, very cool interactions with the light and shadows.

Agree with the others in this topic: those + puzzles are seriously getting me curious.

149 +4

if you haven't figured out a + puzzle yet, you will know it when you do & it will make you happy

Argh, I've hit a wall, these camoflage-pattern panels are driving me nuts ;__;

@icil:

i really hate those desert ruin puzzles, i didn't find them really all that engaging or smart, they're the only puzzles that have felt like a chore. really love the rest of the game though, 8 hours in and still no clue how to solve the puzzles by the bamboo.

I'm at 77+12 and have been playing for about 2 1/2 hours. I've been stuck on two different puzzles for over an hour now.

The game's pretty damn good, but man, some of those quotes from the tapes are terrible and I really wish there was a map. (Right now I'm taking screenshots to remember where puzzles/hints are and that's far from ideal.)

@sessh: Not really a spoiler but you'll find a map eventually.

How do you find how many puzzles you have solved in the Steam version?

Up to 400 and change with +10. Although now I'm literally stuck with two panels I have no idea how to clear and no other places to go as far as I can tell.

I'm now at 114+13 and am going to leave it there for today. Those damnTetrominos are giving me a headache.

@muftyriots Okay, that's great to know. Makes me even more stoked about this game.

I've played for really long, no idea how long though. Currently at 274, +23, +1.

I didn't understand what those +'s were until about 270 panels in, whichmight be a good thing because then I didn't use even longer in some areas looking for them.

Did 84 my first go at the game,my friend and I spent like 2 hours trying to finish one of the puzzels using graph paper and shit... And did 20 just now but have to leave for work... Can I call in sick. So 104 in total, I am loving this game so much.

@briguyd: When you click Load, it'll show you your save progress.

I'll preface this by saying I'm someone who hated Myst and doesn't have much patience for puzzle games in general, including Braid, but I've just done 70 in a sitting (from the beginning) in The Witness. Got no idea when my patience will wear out but I've surprised myself so far.

Up to 73 in roughly two hours. My self esteem has been destroyed and built back up again several times over already.

I have solved 121 +3 in 5 hours of play. But I've reached a point where I can't figure out any more puzzles so I guess I'll just have to wait for the guides to be finished and look at those because I am stuck. I really wish this game had some kind of hint system.

186 +3 whatever that means.

Played for like ten hours yesterday, up to 273 +34. Done 7 zones I think.