The Witness

https://dustmop.itch.io/the-witnes

that was fun!

a little confusing, though - where is the full version? i'd be willing to shell out a few bucks for it but all i can find is the link to the demo.

it's freeware; i think that's it.

http://time.com/4355763/the-witness-jonathan-blow-interview/

damn, after some time off of Witness i got back into it because a few friends of mine got into it heavily, and i finally got the alternate ending (which is way better and trippier than the obvious one). there's no way to talk about the secret/hidden stuff without spoilering but it puts all of the sound clips/videos that you find throughout the game in a different context.

i know there was some backlash but the witness is still a top 5 all time game to me

interesting, watching this video with someone playing the game with Jonathan Blow (http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/we-play-the-witness-with-jonathan-blow/2300-10990/), and he says near the beginning that he designed the game with the intent to make the "secret stuff equal in magnitude and important to the non-secret stuff", and that "the secret stuff was the whole point".

i bought talos principle last night. i can partly understand the comparisons to the witness - the talos principle features another world where you're totally alone and you occasionally pieces of information and audio logs that help to provide some sort of backstory. but for the most part they're completely different games and i'm massively disappointed in it so far. the open world itself is much bigger than the witness, and is also filled with many pointless objects and wastes of space. where you can proceed through the witness in a million different ways, and even skip to the end pretty early on (in fact from what i've seen and heard, i would say that the majority of witness players never got to the "real" part of the game), the talos principle is very linear. i'm guessing you don't have have to complete all the puzzles in order to get to the end, but the first sections of the game are labeled "1", "2", 3", etc, then "A", "B", "C", then a giant tower that God Voice tells me not to approach but that i obviously must approach.

i'll keep going because it was $49 and i was forced to buy the expansion pack, but if the fucking narrator calls me 'my child' with Old Testament God Voice one more time i'm gonna freak out.

This is the War and Peace of puzzle games. Sure you could argue it's somewhat repetitious but hey so are 90% of puzzle games. Anyone who plays sudoko or does a crossword every day shouldn't have a problem with that. Plus there's so much variety and ingenuity within the basic mechanic. Plus the incredible environment, plus all the secret stuff. Unbelievable. Exemplary.

I've been breezing through pretty quickly, maybe too quickly, but I think I'm whittling it down to a core set of real head-scratchers that should keep me stumped for a while, one hedge maze in particular has me totally perplexed (no clues!). And I think there's a whole bunch of secret stuff I've yet to uncover.

I guessed at the baffling hedge maze and got it right, and now I feel worse! It's ok though because there's still another baffling one to go.

the hedge one tripped me up for quite a while too

but my nightmare was the treehouse village thing

which turned out to be not difficult at all for my wife, luckily

That didn't trip me up too much although I've already forgotten which mechanism it was, lol. Love that I'm still finding brand new things on the island after all the time I've spent there - just come across a spooky bamboo grove.

the one with the shepard tone? that is a magical place

I noticed the spooky music but didn't spot it was a shephard tone! Too busy looking for puzzles, will have to head back there.

one thing that's nice about the long tail of the witness is you end up revisiting every part of the island several times trying to figure out shit anyway

(well, i guess that's nice if you like the island, which i do. if i had to live on a videogame desert island it would be witness version)

Good thread idea, which videogame would you live in. (Expanded beyond desert islands since I can't think of too many others. Or any.)

research material: Best Level from Super Mario 64 and favorite place to hang out in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

btw i wish i hadn't read that KM post about the talos principle because i agree completely and now fear i should buy the witness

Got the first endgame with one laser to go, panicked a bit when I thought I was going to have to start from scratch.

This is an incredible game but I'm very happy I'll never have to solve some of those puzzles again.

https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2014-09/8/9/enhanced/webdr08/enhanced-buzz-21645-1410182243-23.jpg

The part of the game that never ends :)

What did folk make of the challenge area then? At first I thought it was a huge lol, turning what had been a leisurely no pressure pursuit into a frantic race against time, making you feel like a puppet on a string jerking frenetically around to the music, and like a prize chump for going along with it. Then I got frustrated and angry at how hard it was, then all of a sudden I got lucky and breezed it (plus I slightly unintentionally cheated and found out the clue to the maze room). I think it was a good idea but ultimately too reliant on luck, the pillars and not one but two 'pick one out of three' in particular tipping it over into fucking bastard territory.

Had the same experience of butting my head against it and then beating it out of nowhere. Think it's cool thing to have in there and introducing a random element, which the rest of the game is so dead set against is neat. The best puzzles in the game made me feel smart though and beating the challenge just made me glad I wouldn't have to keep trying.

This couldn't be ported to PS3? Doesn't seem too incredibly graphically intensive? Played a bit at a friend's, only did a few puzzles but was very enjoyable. I may actually re-download steam after five years when I decided my computer would only be for work related stuff (which really just meant I play rubbish flash games or android phone games) for this.

Can I recommend people have a look at this?

https://severedheads.bandcamp.com/album/snowglobe-for-pc
https://severedheads.bandcamp.com/album/snowglobe-for-mac

Mac port arrived today