An extended journey into the Braid creator’s new game
Jonathan Blow’s post-Braid game, The Witness, has been in development for seven years now. In that time, audiences have been introduced to the game’s mix of linedrawing puzzles and island exploration. I didn’t know what to make of the game at first. How could drawing lines remain interesting for any real length of time? Was that all there was to it? After spending nine hours playing the game, I now have a sense of how the seemingly simple concept is expertly stretched, twisted, and manipulated to become something far more fascinating than a surface reading might lead you to believe.
The biggest surprise was seeing how much variety can be extracted from what might seem like a one-note mechanic. As you move around the island in first-person, you encounter panels. Each one contains a puzzle, which, upon completion, builds toward a larger sequence. You might eventually open a gate or a series of shutters, which in turn open new routes to additional puzzles. These puzzles are as varied as the island’s stunning regions, too.
The earliest puzzles function like mazes, where you simply have to draw a line from the opening position to an exit. The island is home to themed sections, from both architectural and natural perspectives to the types of puzzles you find as well. The greenhouse area is home to puzzles based on colors. In the hedge-maze zone, your footsteps light a path on a jumbo version of a panel. Sometimes you’re joining symbols, other times you’re dividing them with your line. Just as Braid married the ideas of a simple platformer and time-manipulation, The Witness merges exploration with those puzzles.
“What happens is that method of drawing lines is really just there to give a slate for the ideas to happen,” Blow says. “That slate should be kind of blank and simple, because if it’s really complicated, it’ll mess with the ideas that you’re trying to do.”
Unlike many puzzle games, where it’s easy to find your progress blocked by a single puzzle, The Witness’ open-island structure encourages players to move on when they get stuck. It was refreshing to know that I could leave a tricky puzzle and progress in another direction. Whatever obstacle I left behind would still be there when I decided to return. And everything is conveyed through gameplay – there aren’t any cinematics or text messages to steer players anywhere.
“I bristle actually when games try to hand-hold me too much, because I feel like it takes away the opportunity for me to have agency as a player,” Blow says. “I want to decide what I should be thinking about right now, and the fricking game won’t let me because it just popped up a hint that told me to talk to the old gray-haired guy in the corner, or whatever. I hate that. I wanted to make a game that respects people and lets them have the thoughts that they’re going to have and lets them do the things they want to do in the order they want to do them.”
I won’t spoil them, but there are some truly breathtaking sequences in The Witness – one significant aspect of the game hasn’t been discussed, and for good reason. Players will want to experience it for themselves, which they’ll soon be able to at long last. Jeff Cork