The Witness
You wake up, alone, on a strange island full of puzzles that will challenge and surprise you.
The Witness is a puzzle, exploration and first-person game
developed and published by Thekla and Inc..
Released on January 26th 2016 is available on Windows and MacOS
in 15 languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish - Spain, Polish, Portuguese - Portugal, Portuguese - Brazil, Russian, Arabic, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean and Hungarian.
It has received 18,306 reviews of which 15,538 were positive and 2,768 were negative resulting in a rating of 8.3 out of 10. 😎
The game is currently priced at 9.24€ on Steam and has a 75% discount.
The Steam community has classified The Witness into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
Get an in-depth look at The Witness through various videos and screenshots.
Requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS *: Windows 7
- Processor: 1.8GHz
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Intel HD 4000 series
- DirectX: Version 10
- Storage: 5 GB available space
MacOS
- OS: 10.11.6 (El Capitan)
- Processor: 1.8GHz
- Graphics: Intel HD 4000 series
- Storage: 5 GB available space
- Additional Notes: Metal support required
Reviews
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
On the surface it's just a collection of line puzzles but very quickly into the game expands into so much more than that. Gorgeous visuals & art style, sound design, everything feels methodically crafted and placed and begs to be explored and uncovered. Some might feel it's pretentious but the game doesn't force anything unto the player, it's up to you to piece everything together and take out whatever makes sense for you from the whole experience.
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This is one of the best puzzle games and the ultimate one stroke drawing game. Before this game, I can't even imagine there're so many elements can be added to one stroke drawing. Both the quality and quantity of puzzles in the game are amazing. The first run will take 20+ hours, which is huge for a puzzle game. Although the game has a reasonable learning curve, it's common to enter areas with unknown mechanisms and this could be frustrating at times. In fact, there's no explanation on any game symbols or mechanisms. It will be very painful if you don't get it from the limited hints. There's a guide in the community provided basic explanation without spoiling which is indeed useful. There're only two achievements in the game. One for completing the game and the other one is a time limited challenge. The time limited challenge is difficult but doable after a few practices, provided you minimize the use of guides throughout the game. Or else, good luck. In Braid, the developer's previous game, there's an annoying time limited challenge achievements as well. I hated that achievement all the while. But now after this game, I think maybe I can understand where the developer comes from better. Probably one day I will go back and finish that game. Overall, this is a must play game for any player love strategy or puzzles.
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The best puzzle game I have ever played in my life. Found out about this game through Achievement Hunter's Let's Play of it back in 2016 and I was hooked . I remember beating it back in 2019; only now in 2024 did I come back to this game and realize that there is more that I have missed. [*]I like how no words explain what you need to do and that the only clues you get are visual-wise. The entire environment is pretty relaxing to listen to and can help you calm down. I remember closing my eyes during one puzzle to help me concentrate on some puzzles and I felt at complete Zen ; such a beautiful feeling. This game is definitely not for everyone; but for those that can be patient enough to breathe deeply and focus, definitely check out this game.
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most of the bad reviews seem to be people who simply dont enjoy puzzle games and thought for some reason they would enjoy this. this game is NOTHING but line puzzles. it does lots of cool things with line puzzle yes, but at the end of the day if doing line puzzles for 10-15 hours + doesnt sound fun to you, spare yourself the frustration and just dont get it.
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This game is not for everyone. If you don't like experimental weird shit games, don't get it. The Witness is hard to describe. A large open world that you wander around in solving puzzles. Why do you solve the puzzles? Some times you can see that they lead to something, some times you do them because, well, this is a puzzle game and you found a puzzle. The entire game is built upon a slowly increasing knowledge base, where you solve an extremely simple puzzle, then a slightly more complex one, until you learn the rules of that type of puzzle. You might need to look at the puzzles from different angles, or listen carefully to sounds, but you can't even carry objects so don't worry about fetch quests. Every puzzle in the game is totally self contained, once you understand the rules. Like a Myst game, keeping a notebook is a must. It has no characters in the traditional sense. No big face slaps of "I AM TEACHING YOU PHILOSOPHY" like The Talos Principle. But it has strong theme, expression, and intent. Cons: -Dear god the motion sickness. I don't get motion sickness from games, but hooooooly crap did I have to stop playing this multiple times because it made me sick. This is especially true with some of the very late game puzzles. The worst part of the game by far for me. -Difficulty that can be frustrating. Almost nothing in the game is difficult in the traditional sense. What makes the game hard is figuring out the rules, and if you don't know a rule it becomes next to impossible. Figuring out some of them can be a challenge. -Nothing is explained in the traditional sense. The reviews that say there are no tutorials are wrong; the entire game is a giant set of tutorials. But you need to pay attention to every thing you do, in every puzzle, and what it means. Woe to you if you didn't write down your discoveries. -It's slow. Think Myst, if you played that back in the day. Moving through spaces, exploring them, piecing together from the environment what you are supposed to even do there, if anything. Pros: -Do you like learning through doing, rather than having something explained to you? That's the game. That's literally the entire game. And I mean it. It is 30+ hours of tinkering and experimenting and OH SHIT I GET IT! moments where suddenly 3 of the puzzles you left behind, stuck, suddenly make sense and are child's play. Along each of those you will discover something else and another puzzle you couldn't figure out just clicks into place. Or maybe what you discover is a puzzle you didn't even realize was there, but you were staring at the whole time! And you get lost in it. -It's beautiful. Incredible art direction with layers and layers and layers. -It has a hard to quantify human "art feel". The frustrations, and the journey. The realizations about the game and about yourself. It'll do things to you that suck, and it'll do things to you that are wonderful. When I beat one of the endings I literally had to stand up and walk away from my computer. A few ending notes Looking up almost anything immediately breaks the game. This can be extremely hard to deal with in a context where the answer to not understanding something is to just look it up. A few times in the game I "solved" things a bit faster than the game intended and had to slog through a dozen puzzles of ramping difficulty. If you just look up how a mechanic works, all you're doing is slogging through puzzles that take longer to walk between than to solve. There are multiple endings, and at some point you will probably want to look up some of that because... Well, you probably will. I can't tell you if that is the right or the wrong move. It will make a radical impact on your entire game experience though, and I'm not sure which way is better. Do I recommend? For me, yes. I also know people that would hate it, and I totally understand why.
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Last Updates
| Steam data | 20 November 2024 00:00 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 20 January 2025 22:41 |
| Steam price | 22 January 2025 20:45 |
| Steam reviews | 20 January 2025 17:52 |
Online players
215
Developer
Thekla, Inc.
Publisher
Thekla, Inc.
Release
26 Jan 2016
Platforms
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