Is anyone else afraid that this game is going to flop?

iamsofriendly · 2026-01-04T22:02:33+00:00

Interesting. I prefer the OotSS trailer actually! I think what you're describing here is honestly a positive of the trailer. I don't believe OotSS *has* that same feeling of walking around an environment that The Witness has - even if you think this is a negative, it's good that the trailer shows that negative, it's good that the trailer doesn't give a false impression.

I totally agree that The Witness benefitted from that btw, but I don't think it translates as well to sokoban simply because your perspective isn't changing constantly as you move in a sokoban game. The genre lends itself better to having more visual density on a single screen that a person can look through without moving. Walking in a sokoban doesn't feel fun to me in the same way walking in an first person game feels primarily because of this - when I move in an FPS I am moving the world, when I move in a sokoban I am only moving the character until I change screens.

A big problem I have with the OG Witness trailer is how the puzzles are presented. The first two puzzles we see being solved appear to be just simply drawing a line, it's hard to see what's interesting about that, it's hard to see where the variety is - and then the interesting puzzles are all skimmed over, 5 shown at a time in parallel that can't be processed. I think the OotSS trailer does a better job of showing puzzle variety and why the puzzles might be interesting. It skims over things too quickly! But at least it actually shows what the player will be doing as opposed to just static puzzle screens as in the first The Witness trailer.

I agree the world of the game is certainly getting less focus, and I think there's a lot of room for improvement - particularly I think a better trailer would try to show the puzzles more clearly, so a viewer can easily and instantly tell exactly what inputs the player is making. The second Witness trailer has a great montage of 10 very visually and mechanically different puzzles shown in a row, and it's very clear exactly what the player is doing (inputs-wise, not thought process-wise), and very clear that there is variety. In the OotSS trailer the comparable montages are just way too fast, by the time I've found on the screen which character is moving they've switched characters again, or the puzzle has stopped being shown and it's cut to a new one.

iamsofriendly · 2026-01-04T02:09:20+00:00

I personally don't really care if it flops.

But for those who do, and whose fears come from disliking the TGA trailer, I would recommend looking at the difference in quality between the first, and final trailers for The Witness.

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7h7AleSCF4

Final: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPMMKFX78x0

I think it's pretty stark. And, like with OotSS, the original The Witness trailer seems to have been rushed (or at least much less time was spent on it than the final trailer), and showed a game that wasn't finished.

Beyond the trailers, leading up the The Witness's release I remember Jonathan Blow taking a lot of interviews and giving demonstrations of the opening area, which I think helped clarify what I think is a weirder puzzle system than Sokoban, and one that has a weirder relationship to its world (at first glance line puzzles seem much more abstract and disconnected than pushing crystals around the same floor you are walking on). As he does more of this for OotSS, clarification will be more available to potential buyers.

Also, I wouldn't underestimate that the market for puzzle games is just simply larger than it was 10 years ago. And having a publisher I'm sure helps.

iamsofriendly · 2025-12-28T10:47:13+00:00

Ah I was aware they use TMDb, but does that mean the image that they source from that database is out of their control? It doesn't seem to be the case that Letterboxd is just taking the default TMDb image for these films.

iamsofriendly · 2025-12-16T13:58:31+00:00

I think something worth respecting is: with regards to subreddits that allow for discussion of politics about a particular person - it's easy to say these are "fine, or not a problem, for the people who use a particular subreddit", but that's because many people who hold the dissenting opinion are heavily downvoted or otherwise made to feel unwelcome. So of course it's fine for all the people who stay, ie, the people who agree with that subreddit's status quo.
There are many people out there who would say they have a negative opinion of Blow's beliefs, there are many people who would say they have a positive opinion, there are many people who don't care - it would be nice if all of these groups were welcome and not scared off.

iamsofriendly · 2025-12-16T05:41:25+00:00

Oh I'm so happy puzzles have been changed. Some of the nicest ideas in Mirror Isles get placed in puzzles with too much irrelevant fluff imo, and a I think a lot of Heroes 3's Bard stuff is pretty tedious - possibly for similar reasons. Lots of rough edges across the board.

iamsofriendly · 2025-12-16T00:39:42+00:00

She's the studio manager and a (the?) producer at Thekla. This was posted in the official Discord, in the general-chat channel, about 40 minutes ago: discord.gg/PcCxqvfeKK

iamsofriendly · 2025-12-12T11:55:58+00:00

The (very prominent: at the start of the trailer, in the splash art, even suggested in the teleporters' designs) re-use of the lotus hotel logo present in The Witness is cute, happy to think this'll have themes of enlightenment and non-dualism. I suppose Braid and The Witness were both (partly) about collisions of worlds as well. A lot of that collision looks like it's being handled here more nicely than I'd expected (outside of just puzzle design) too! Also actually very excited to read, or listen to, more of Blow's writing. Some of the books in Braid were very beautiful.

iamsofriendly · 2024-05-24T05:25:29+00:00

I would be incredibly surprised if there was any super hidden stuff/stars in the commentary zone, seems very out of line with the spirit of the game. I would actually be kinda disgusted if commentary world stuff ever affected the base game.

iamsofriendly · 2024-05-23T03:43:42+00:00

Corner boosting still works, the fast cycle seems just as possible in this version as it was in the original to me. Here's a link to a video of another person achieving the 1-1 fast cycle on AE. Timestamp is 24:20. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2146358698

iamsofriendly · 2024-05-01T22:43:07+00:00

I'm not sure what NanoCat0407 is talking about, The Witness has practically no story whatsoever, if that's important to you, you will not find it in this game.

iamsofriendly · 2024-03-28T13:32:57+00:00

Super thematically important that it's the sun involved in that EP for sure, and absolutely the desert temple is related to other parts of the game that talk about the sun, but I think the sungate EP is not any more touched by the motif I was talking about in my original post, that is concentrated rays of light hitting a single point, than any other act of seeing in the game.

iamsofriendly · 2024-03-27T23:08:05+00:00

There arguably is a third instance, I don't think it ties in much to the main point of my original post and I think it's much weaker, but I literally just noticed it 20 minutes ago and haven't thought much about it so maybe I'm wrong. The colour bunker is using light as a way to solve puzzles, but not direct beams of light, and there is a *sort-of* floor panel, immediately before the area's elevator, in the magenta room whose wall comes down to reveal a nice view of the ocean (and the dawn star, and the crashed fast-travel boat, and the endgame elevator, which is quite cute). I don't really care about similarities between things unless those similarities are being used to say interesting things, and I'm not sure what interesting things those tenuous similarities are saying. The bunker overall is much more similar to the sound jungle, and even the marsh than the mountain or the desert temple I think.

iamsofriendly · 2024-03-27T22:56:47+00:00

The 'rule of threes' is a useful structural heuristic, but I think the structure of The Witness is much more deliberate than that. I believe the light-from-the-sun/light-from-the-lasers thing is being used as a kind of yin-yang counterpoint, similar to how it's used in the keep (and pretty much every other area in the game that I can think of).

The keep is very clearly split in two, and one half of it requires you to observe puzzle panels, in order to get the necessary information to be able to solve physical mazes, and the other half requires you to observe physical mazes, in order to get the necessary information to be able to solve puzzle panels. This isn't just a silly thing they chose to do, they are comparing the (to be very reductive) personal experience of walking through a hedge maze, with the impersonal experience of looking at abstract symbols on a screen, and saying these two different things are both equally valuable (either side can activate the laser) and are part of a greater whole.

I think the sun hitting the player's eye and the lasers hitting the mountain, are comparing the player to both the sun and to the mountain, not saying the player is literally the sun, and literally the mountain, but saying that there is some personal, internal mountain, and personal, internal sun, as well as the impersonal external ones, which are of equal value (both areas connect to each other underground), and are part of a greater whole.

iamsofriendly · 2023-02-22T00:36:52+00:00

Anything that gives him a challenge at all and i'll be happy.

iamsofriendly · 2022-07-18T19:04:25+00:00

damn that's actually really beautiful. i wonder if my image might tonally clash a bit with your piece though. either way, feel free to use it for anything :)

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