Some gamers who loved Jonathan Blow's Braid were perplexed when early footage of his team's next game, The Witness, debuted on Kotaku last month. To those alarmed or confused, Blow offers some encouraging words.
"The only two guys who have played The Witness to completion have said it will be better than Braid when it is done," he writes after addressing the puzzled reaction to the puzzles glimpsed in his game. "I am certainly not going to jump up and down and say "hey this game is better than Braid", or even claim that Braid is good. But I just want to put that out there as reassurance to those of you who are worried about that gameplay video."
The Kotaku gameplay video showed a player moving through a beautifully-lit and apparently uninhabited island that is full of puzzles, many of them blue squares through which the player has to trace patterns. It seemed simple. It seemed Myst-y. It seemed like something that wasn't as obviously wonderful and innovative as many of our memories of Blow and team's previous game, the time-warping Braid.
In a post about The Witness at the game's development blog, Blow hints at the gameplay significance of some of the early blue puzzles in the clip that ran here. I encourage you to read his full post. It won't take long and should put the early gameplay we've seen in better context.
The Witness has no scheduled release date or platforms.
About the Blue Mazes [The Witness blog]