02/52 - The Witness (PS4)
Thekla, Inc. (2016)
If you’re into games, there’s very little chance that you haven’t already heard about The Witness at this point. I spent roughly 45 hours plucking away at the puzzles in this game (and only completed around half of them!), and all I really want to do is wipe my brain of any trace of it so I can do it all over again for the first time. Seriously, the puzzles are that good. They are so good that I bought a pad of graph paper and cut out dozens of geometric shapes just so I could physically manipulate pieces in an attempt to make the puzzles make more sense in my brain.
I have absolutely no idea what the story in this game is or if there's even one there to discover, though there certainly were parts where the narrative seemed like it could be heading up it’s own ass. In the end, the puzzles themselves were good enough that I didn’t even care. The Witness set out to teach the player how to interact with a world of rules and regulations with no guidance at all, and for me at least, it was immensely successful. I look forward to picking it back up this summer and tackling more of those panels I missed, though I might be close to hitting a point where the puzzles are literally too difficult for me.










