The Witness

Hard but beautiful puzzles. Not so intuitive and sometimes deceiving, but wonderful scenery and experience.

The controls are the worst ones I've ever seen. Tap to walk is the dumbest idea ever, it's uncomfortable, unintuitive, just bad. And no option for a virtual joystick, which is the way this game was intended to be played. In puzzles, you can't move the cursor unless you put your finger on it. That means you constantly cover the screen with your hand, so you can't see what your doing. Idk who thought this was a good idea, but that person surely never played a game on a touch screen device. I wish they've made a joystick + camera zone split controls, like basically any other first-person game does for phones/tablets. As of now this is simply unplayable, no way someone would enjoy the game like this. It feels like you're trying to play with each one of your fingers broken.

I don’t understand the acclaim for this game. It’s well done, but its main mechanic is the same puzzle over and over again, in endless iterations. There is no variety, no story, and the little bit of Myst-like environmental integration is negligible.

For people who are curious about the port (iPad Pro 10.5”): The controls are tap-to-move with a few details that make the game feel great to control. No issues there. The game looks really good for mobile. It looks low-fi compared to playing on PC, but the art style didn’t really suffer and the resolution is high enough that the game looks good (not native, but close enough). The framerate is rather poor though. I don’t think it ever holds a remotely steady framerate or ever even touches 30fps. From the looks of things, I don’t think there’s much more they could have done to make it run better short of sacrificing a lot more on the resolution and general quality side, so I won’t really complain too much (docked 1 star for it though because I would have at least liked the option for better performance even if it meant tanking the resolution). At least it’s not like the game requires super high responsiveness to play well. TLDR: It’s as good as you could expect a port of a 3D game to mobile could be, and the framerate is sub-30fps. For people who are new to the game: The Witness is a polarizing puzzle game to say the least. I like it a lot, but don’t want to go into much depth because most of what makes the game special for me is in spoiler territory. If you like tougher puzzle games, don’t mind being expected to experiment and explore with no real guide, and like things that are a little pretentious you’ll probably love this. If you prefer easier puzzles, a tutorial for every step of the way, a clear story, and a clear path, this might not be for you. *update Feb. 2024: Some pretty bad graphical artifacting makes this unrecommendable now.

I finished 100% the game on PlayStation last year and am impressed how the experience works on touch platforms. It’s fun to play it all again. For those comparing to Myst, believe me, it will take you a lot of work, let’s say to “completing” the game for you to realize the depth Blow has given us. No pixel is without purpose. But you have to change your POV, literally and mentally. I had some concern about navigation and your fingers obscuring the screen, but I managed to get used to it. However, it could make some of the more challenging parts of the game a bit awkward. Warning, this is a game you cannot look up answers, if stuck - move on, a transcendent experience awaits!

无懈可击，完美的解谜游戏！

Good luck if you’re colorblind or have hearing issues

Definitely a masterpiece

Do not buy boring, but not Ness navigate very awkwardly do not buy

I know a million people have said this, but this is a really good game. Without spoiling anything, this is a game about drawing lines on a grid, and there’s a lot of cool ideas there, despite the simple concept. There are a few minor gripes, such as how long the game takes before it allows you to move in certain spots (experienced players know which moments I’m talking about) but with those exceptions, this is a really good puzzle game. I would not recommend the mobile version though. The tap to move control scheme is not great and the graphics are a bit better on pc and console.