The Witness Reviews – Page 3
4/5 rating based on 137 reviews. Read all reviews for The Witness for iPhone.
The Witness is paid iOS app published by Thekla, inc.
The Witless
kaljshfg;oahg;h
Fond of the same finger puzzle over and over ? Like linked, random selection puzzles that make you go back and reset after a wrong guess? Enjoy solving seemingly meaningless puzzles with no clues or theme ? Then take out a $10, burn it, and save yourself the aggravation of this pointless adventure.
A great game you shouldn’t play
No yo biz
Yes, I beat it and got the secret ending. I have near 100% completion (497 panels and 46 environmental puzzles) and will 100% the game, but it’ll probably take a walkthrough. Up until now, I’ve only needed one once in the shadow based area. This game is great, but bad at communication. I feel like a lot of the aha moments could become pure frustration to someone who doesn’t understand them. If you don’t understand a concept, the game will NOT guide you. It will simply cross it’s arms and shake its head. So why is it 5 stars? Because my experience with the game was amazing, and because this will most likely not happen to you. The game is phenomenal, from the opening to the end, it’s full of thought-provoking puzzles and ideas. Granted, don’t get the plot, it’s an unnecessary part of the game, but it’s still there if you want it. I LOVE this game (except the Jungle and shipwreck, they can rot in Hell, but they’re optional unless you want secrets). The way that some puzzles have parts covered by something or are changed by color is ingenious to me. The way the mountain flips the ideas on their head, making the puzzles move, messing with perspective, obscuring certain parts, giving you a seizure, making looping puzzles, it all feels very Baba is You esque, but without the Baba is you, and with waaaaaay better visuals. The ideas are communicated mostly by showing you an oversimplified puzzle with no prior knowledge, the player trail-and-erroring the first super-simple puzzle, figuring out the rule, and then applying the rule in super complicated ways. This is how the jungle, quarry, zen gardens, orchard, keep, marsh, bunker, and more teach you their principles, and it’s an effective yet ineffective way of doing things. I assumed a tutorial would be somewhere, and as a result was stumped for the first 3 hours of the game in the town because since it’s right there, you would think it’s the next area, but I gave up and then realized it’s close to the endgame. Other than the few problems, the game is almost perfect, but also absolutely infuriating. Great game, don’t recommend.
Stay away!!!! Poor controls, poor puzzles, just poor everything.
Ryekia
The first 30 minutes is the sweet spot for this game. Over that it’s the same “draw a line”. Some of the mechanics are very unclear. Other line the sun game make sense for the first 3 puzzles and then nothing. I have it a 2 because the graphics looks nice. Edit: I couldn’t take this crappy game anymore. Tired of the controls. Tired of the “puzzle” mechanics. You have to line things up just perfectly to get it, which is near impossible because the controls. Then when you do line up perfectly it still says some puzzles are still wrong. I had to look them up because of the stupidity of them. Stay away from from this game. It is the worst game I have ever played on my phone. Period.
Some convoluted puzzles, forcing to refer to guides, to no avail.
Reluctantly Tried
Nice visuals & colorful. But movements are not near as smooth or quick as other games. The scenes are cartoonish & not as realistic as say Myst or Talos series. Also, once lost, you had no clue where you are in the game: beginning, middle, or end! Some puzzles are too convuluted, even by the account of some of the guides that refer to the puzzles. I tried to avoid the spoilers & looked only for guides, but couldn't find a single guide that explained the rational behind some of the puzzles, as if the reviwer him/herself didn't know eeither. One is very often forced to guides that seem disoriented & incomplete, a refelction of the comvultion of the game. Anyways, even though it cost me about $10, I figured cut my losses was best to avoid the torment of back-&-forth betweeen the game and intenet searches for advice. I deleted it away.
The closer you pay attention, the better this game gets
NDTrooper
There are many popular snarky reviews out there about this game. They are just noise. This game is for those who enjoy paying close attention. It’s also for those open to an earnest discussion. If you can’t do either, don’t bother. If you are able, then there is no better game out there.
Screen is so dark and can’t see anything, just shadows
Kathplayer
I bought the IOS Version and am playing on an iPad mini. After opening the door at the beginning of the game, it was too dark too see anything. I turned my screen brightness up to 100% and there wasn’t any improvement. My other games show up just fine. :(
Game keeps abending after finishing the initial area.
MikeGS72
The first section was fun to complete, but after entering the next section, the game keeps abending causing me to be back in the first section. This is a 6th gen iPad running the latest iOS 13.5.1. Abend is an abnormal end of the game, in otherwise crash. Don’t buy this game. The developer is just going to run away with your money!
Exploring fun
Level 11 has a bug?
I enjoyed the various venues and amazing detail. I took my time and wandered around. For me, that is the best part. Each part of the island was a puzzle of its own. It was easy to re-enter where I left off by selecting start and choosing the last saved “game”. The Caves was quite unexpected; loved it. I am not into intense gaming but love exploring, so Witness was spot on for me. However, I found the puzzle panels to be tedious after a while. Just way too many of them. The Quarry is my favorite because it had more variation in getting around, not just puzzle panels. The least favorite was Shady Trees. The audios were interesting but the videos not so much. It was worth the cost even though I did not complete everything there was to do; but did almost all. Thanks to Theica and Mr. Blow! June 2020
Great game limited by small screen
awmerkley
This is the full game experience you get on console/PC, and I bought it for my iPhone 8 because that’s the only device I have that can play it at decent graphical settings. There are some parts where the slightly janky controls become frustrating, and there are some parts where doing a puzzle with your finger actually blocks part of the screen where the puzzle is. But 99% of this game is comfortably playable on mobile, and of course the $10 price tag makes the 1% of frustration easier to swallow. I’m quite impressed with whoever was responsible for porting this. Great job! I will say that if you have the choice to play this on console or PC (maybe MacOS as well?), you absolutely should because the visuals in this game are very nice to look at and having a bigger screen with better graphics to show them off will make the 20-80 hours you spend with this game more enjoyable. And a mouse/keyboard is the optimal input method for this game as well, although I will admit that being able to touch the panel puzzles is a pretty cool gimmick.