The Witness (puzzle game)

Something I’ve wondered about since my first play are all the little arty touches that don’t seem to have any direct impact on the game, like the statues, the shadow silhouettes, the eyes made of tree branches, and the fish under the stone arch.

Was wondering if anyone else noticed that.

Another nearby one is that there’s a tree that, when seen in the water reflection, almost exactly matches the outline of the stone arch.

There’s another spot near the colored ponds with a statue on a metal box. In the background is the giant statue on the mountain. If you line them up right, it looks like the character on the mountain is reaching up to the character on the box.

I would say they directly relate the Jonathan Blow’s intention when making the game, if not the gameplay.

There’s also a spot on the coast somewhere (in the symmetry area, IIRC) with a goblet sitting on top of a tall glass box and a statue reaching up futilely to try to grasp it, but his shadow has it.

Yes, it’s the spoiled one I love and was going to tell you.

There’s another well-hidden one. I won’t say anything about it, but if you don’t find it, visit again after you play through the caves a bit and you may have more ideas. Actually there’s two that fit that description…

Oh, man, I gave up on these environmental ones. I mean, I looked for them constantly and saw a lot, but I gave up finding them all because some of them are genius and impossible to find.

The first ones are very hard, and then the middle ones aren’t too bad because you start to know what kinds of things to look for, and then they get hard again. They’re very satisfying, though.

I did get partially spoiled on a few of them. I might end up looking up the final few; we’ll see. But for now they’re still entertaining. IIRC, my last count was +112.

I’m still only at +50-something, so I haven’t yet gotten to the point of specifically setting out to look for them, more just keeping my eyes open as I move around. Heck, there are still several that I know about and just haven’t yet gotten around to doing, like the ones where you pass the shipwreck in the boat, and others that are pretty obvious but which I haven’t yet unlocked the vantage points for (like the pit in the village. And speaking of which, there’s a lot going on down that pit: I assume I’ll get down there eventually).

I assume that the endgame “caves” folks are referring to are where you go after that silo-door opens.

The big things on my to-do list right now are a few puzzles in the marsh that I think will bring me close to that laser, but which involve nega-tetris that I don’t yet fully understand; finishing the sound puzzles; finishing the shrine puzzles (I suspect these latter two culminate in papers, not lasers); and the village in general. Oh, and also more thorough exploration of the island, since there are apparently several lasers I know nothing of. Also on the list is a puzzle on what looks to be a door, set into the coastal hills of the desert. After I get some of that knocked out, I might go enviro-hunting, or at least knock out some of the ones I already know. Or try to open the silo door more, but that’s a long way to go to bang my head against one puzzle (well, two puzzles).

Yep, they don’t do anything, they are just artsy touches. (There’s one next to the shrine I think where a shadow creates an image of a drowning man or something, that I focused on for a while, because I thought it was key to a puzzle inside. But it wasn’t IIRC.)

Just like with the environmental puzzles, there’s something mind bending about seeing structures at different distances combining into an image. In a way, it’s good that this isn’t a VR game, or it really would affect my view of the real world.

At the shrine, if you peer through the rusty holes in the metal shutters at just the right angle (standing inside and looking at the base of the laser), you can see various outlined people. IIRC, there’s an angel and a couple of others.

OK, I’m now up to nine lasers (just need the village and the shrine, I think), I’m at +75, and I have two of the three silo-door locks opened. There are I think only four panel-puzzles left: One in the shrine, where some branches line up so perfectly that you can barely even see them, but they’re not enough to show a solution to the puzzle, one on the coast by the desert that I have all the clues for but just decided to come back to… eventually, because it was using too much brainpower, one in the village that apparently needs to be solved three different ways, one of which is by shadows, one of which is by scratches seen in the glare, and the third solution I don’t know where it comes from, and one that follows directly from that one and I think unlocks the last step before the laser.

Another odd thing I found: An environmental puzzle in the clouds, but not the one I’d seen hints of before. This one has a round cloud, then a short path of clouds coming off of it. I can start tracing it, but one of the clouds on the path is black, which stops me.

I’ve also found several other environmental puzzles that would be a pain to get to work, and at least one I haven’t yet completely figured out. And I suspect that the colored flowers in the middle of the map (right in between the castle and the shrine) form one or more puzzles somehow, but I haven’t found how.

There were also a couple of annoying ones in the marsh, where solving the puzzle required unmaking the long yellow bridge, in such a way that the controls aren’t accessible from the side you’re on, so you have to go around the long way to fix it.

And I’ve been wondering… Diegetically, how are we solving the puzzles? The obvious interpretation would be that the panels are touchscreens, and that’s supported by the evidence of the desert puzzles, but then again, it’s also possible to solve puzzles from a distance, and in fact, many of them are easiest to solve from a distance (including some of the sort involving the aforementioned evidence). And of course, almost all of the environmental puzzles are solved from beyond arm’s reach.

I don’t think I ever figured that one out, but I do remember it.

Wow, so you are about to light up the final laser and go into what would be considered endgame stuff. Very cool.

…And, with tonight’s session, I finished unlocking the silo door. I’ve only just started venturing beyond, because I know I don’t have the mental energy right now, but I’m definitely getting a very GLaDOS vibe, here. Also, it’s pretty obvious that, as you get lower, the paths you trace through the open air will be environmental puzzles when seen from below, just like the pressure plate puzzles were.

I also went back to the theater area, where I have 2/6. While there, I noticed a couple of things: One, an exit pair of doors from there that I couldn’t figure out before and forgot about, and which I was able to do easily now. Two, a couple of really cool environmental puzzles: You can use circles in the Burke video as the start of enviro paths.

I logged out today at that puzzle on the desert coast, and remembered why I gave up on it before: It’s a Hamiltonian one, and those are always tough. But I feel like there’s something really important behind it.

This is one I was partly spoiled on earlier. I’ll repeat the same limited spoiler that was made earlier:

Shoot a laser at the cloud

There are more of that kind. No further comment.

I’m now down to only one panel-puzzle in the overworld (the last one of the village). I’m pretty sure it’s a shadow puzzle, but with the shadows displaced, but just haven’t worked it out yet. That one on the desert coast turned out to reveal a rather fine man.

I’ve also discovered a couple of other sorts of secrets. One, scattered here and there, there are small electronic devices that turn out to be audio players. Go into solve mode and click them, and they play a speech. I’ve only found two of them in the main world so far: The easiest to find is in the starting area, on the porch roof. Finding them doesn’t seem to be acknowledged in any way.

Second, I found the secret developers’ lounge. But I had to restart the game to do it. And…

There’s something at the end of the developers’ lounge that definitely acknowledges that.

I’m a little worried, though, because it looks to me like access to that can (and probably will) be permanently cut off, fairly early in the game. Are there other things that now permanently can’t be done, at least in this save-file, because I did the wrong other thing first?

And I’ve now found another environmental puzzle, that seems impossible. In the boathouse, near the starting area (part of the symmetry area): If you go on the roof on the land side, and look through the hole in the roof, you see a yellow pottery pot that forms the start of a path. You can start tracing on it, but it’s not enough by itself. There’s also a yellow outline around the door without a starting circle, and you can almost line them up. But before the line quite connects, the edge of the circle starts getting covered and is no longer valid.

Other ones that I’m pretty sure exist, but haven’t done yet:

Two that involve boating around the shipwreck (I’ve done one of them)
Underneath the prow of the boat, as reflected in the water (who knows where the boat needs to be to connect that one)
A couple pieces of wreckage just off the coast behind the castle, as viewed from a couch sitting on the grass
Some clouds that, when lined up right, would make a circle and path in the blue between the clouds
Some other clouds that move very slowly, so if you got into the right place, they’d eventually move into position to make a puzzle
One more from the pit in the village, which needs to be viewed from the top of the tower that I haven’t unlocked yet (I already have two from that pit, viewed from other buildings). Oh, and I did figure out what the pit is, too.
One more on the movable ramp in the quarry dockhouse
Probably one or two more from the Sun, viewed directly, and one from the reflection of the Sun in water.
There’s also a patch of shallow water with some very interesting patterns in the sand on the bottom, but for which I can’t find any way to make it a puzzle Might just be decorative.

For those who have enjoyed the environmental puzzles, a nice follow-up for me was the game Superliminal, which is currently on sale on steam (at least it is for me…I don’t know if the sales are globally the same).

It’s pretty short, especially compared to The Witness, and easier, but goes further down the mind-bending perspective puzzles route.

I would probably recommend Antichamber before Superliminal.

Antichamber is really up there with some of the best puzzlers of all time and I feel like it had its day in the sun and was forgotten.

Very highly recommended by me.

In fact, I love Antichamber so much, I am asking all of you to watch this 2 minute trailer to get a sense for what it is like: