Skip to main content

Playing The Witness

 The Witness is a puzzle game designed by Jonathan Blow. the player controls a character that is alone on an Island that is populated by grid puzzles. The player solves these grid puzzles to unlock new areas of the island and progress through the game. 

The puzzles begin by simply introducing the player to the concept of drawing a line through a 2D maze to the exit. The game then adds new mechanics and constraints to be met by each puzzle, for example passing through certain points on the grid or using the line drawn to separate icons of different colours. The expertise in the design of the game lies in the methods it employs to teach players about its mechanics. At no point does the game explicitly tell the player how to solve a puzzle or navigate a certain constraint, it instead provides the player with a very simple, small implementation of a constraint, so the player can test theories of how they think it could work and learn the solution for themself. Here is an example of the first two levels in which the player is presented with black and white icons to be separated. The player must draw a line from the start circle on the left to the exit line section on the right, so there are only three possible solutions. Even a player who has no idea about how to solve the puzzle will be able to do so in maximum three tries. A player who attempts to determine the solution logically will likely be able to solve the puzzle on their first try by drawing a horizontal line through the middle. Even if the player did not understand why their solution is correct, they can look back at it and determine why it worked. The solution to the second puzzle is almost identical and uses the same thinking as the first, reinforcing the player's understanding of the mechanic. 


After teaching the player a mechanic, the puzzles can become progressively more difficult, resulting in the following puzzle. The player will have solved many puzzles of this type and gradually improved their knowledge so they will be able to solve a puzzle that looks as complex as this. 


The game introduces the player to many mechanics like the one previously shown, and creates notoriously difficult puzzles by combining mechanics. 








Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Semester 2 Submission

Project Outline This project is an exploration into player feedback and player reward in game mechanics. I have explored this by creating mechanics in Unreal Engine, imagining how they might be used in a game, and how a player might feel when using them. This exploration progressed into player reward in puzzle scenarios, which links into my current area of research. I looked into how visuals can create a language that the player will learn to understand while playing the game, and will guide them through problem solving in the game.  Project Context My semester 1 project was a core puzzle game, meaning the game was centred on a central puzzle mechanic and expanded from that point. I wanted to explore a mechanic that was more of a peripheral puzzle that exists as side quests to the main gameplay. Many popular game series have main gameplay mechanics with puzzles along the way, such as Batman Arkham, Resident Evil, and Tomb Raider. As these types of games are extremely popular and (a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Design Inspiration Semester 2

First person adaptation I decided to switch the view of my game from third person to first person. I made this decision because movement around the levels would sometimes give the player a confusing perspective (if they had their back to a wall for example). I moved the camera to instead hover above a pair of arms, that would be used to show the hand movements from a first person perspective. The challenge now was to recreate every animation in first person instead. I looked into first person games that think have good first person hand animations. I think Dishonored (2012) is one of the best example, as it relies heavy on the tools and abilities that centre around the player character's hands. One of my favourite aspects of the design is the way the knife moves from a regular to a reversed grip when entering stealth. The knife is clearly visible and serves its purpose in both grips and it tells the player they are in stealth mode without the need for another visual prompt (there i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Semester 2 Project Progress

13th January 2025 To begin this project, I am experimenting with creating different game mechanics. This is to build up a repertoire of skills in Unreal Engine and also see if any mechanics seem as if they can be adapted or incorporated into a game. I began by using free assets to make a character that can run around and execute an attack pattern. This was just to experiment with the assets and create a character that I could test other mechanics with. The first mechanic I created was one that lets the player grab an object and pull it toward them. When within a defined range, the player's reticle changes shape to indicate to them the object they're looking at can be grabbed. Grabbing it moves the object on an arcing trajectory toward the player. This could be used to grab a weapon to use, to bring an enemy closer to be attacked, etc. 14th January 2025 I added functionality for the player to hold an object and attack with it. When an object is pulled toward the player and reach...
Post a Comment
Read more