This is a open world puzzle game... it is releasing tomorrow on PC and PS4.

The reviews are really good, pretty exited to play this !

http://opencritic.com/game/1557/the-witness

I'm thinking about taking a day off tomorrow to just binge on this. I read Polygon's review (and skipped over a paragraph that seemed to slightly spoil the nature of puzzle solving so be warned if anyone else reads that one) and he only gave it 8/10 on the basis that it was really really hard at times and there isn't much you can do other than bash your head against the wall more to continue on. Seems like high risk/high reward to go all in on playing this sort of game I guess.

**** it, let's do it.

500+ puzzles. Looks gorgeous. I'm in.

Hopefully they took some notes from Talos Principle and structured it so you can at least always be progressing somewhere if you hit a roadblock. Being able to come back to something the next day while moving on to another puzzle or area is pretty important with these types of games, the answer always seems to come in your sleep and you don't get frustrated enough to quit playing when there's something else to work on.

As far as i've read the game is not linear and you can walk around and try other puzzles.

I think I'm interested in this game. I watched a trailer and it looks pretty great. I think I want to avoid any spoilers or anyone playing the game, but I don't think I can pay $40 for it.

I right there with ItalianFX. I'm sure it'll be great. Braid is probably my favorite puzzle game of all time with Portal 2 (haven't played Talos yet). But $40 for a puzzle game seems too much and I'll grab it when its on sale over the summer.

Steam says "this game will unlock in approximately 15 hours" - wtf, I can't play until 10am? That's cruel.

Jonathan just pressed the button to launch the game on Steam live on Twitch. Downloaded & installed & just stepped out into the island, IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL

Just had my first moment of being stuck for ~20 minutes on one puzzle before figuring it out, and I couldn't help but laugh when I realized what the solution was. This game is cheeky as ****.

Following a steam conversation with weevil about a puzzle he was stuck on, I will post this general recommendation:

While there are some puzzles you can brute force, DON'T DO IT. For two reasons:
1. it doesn't feel rewarding when a random guess you made works and you don't understand why (I learned this the hard way from the one puzzle I brute forced)
2. generally, puzzles build on each other in a way such that each one (not all of them, but lots of them certainly do) teaches you something small about solving a future puzzle, and if you don't learn what it is that a given puzzle is trying to teach you you're making it even harder to progress in the future

Really disappointed in the participation here so far, guys. Am I the only person who took the day off work??

Day 1 results:
- 11 hours
- # of puzzles completed:

Gonna try to get my gf hooked on this tomorrow. She's not a gamer so either...
- she'll come at it with an open mind, unburdened by the past experiences we've all had that have closed us off from open-ended thinking, and crush
- it will be way too hard and she'll hate me

I have a buddy who just downloaded it last night and is going to give me his review today lol.

I always hesitate to buy/try games like this. Puzzle games can be fun and challenging, but sometimes patience is not one of my best virtues so if I get stuck at one puzzle it may frustrate the #$^^%* out of me...it does sound like you can skip a puzzle and go to another one and then come back.

Do you have to solve every puzzle to beat the game? Some puzzle games make it so you need to clear a certain amount or % of puzzles in an area to advance to the next area. Of course like you said learning a skill for future puzzles happens so it may make sense to not advance until you beat all the puzzles.

On the downside it also sounds like there are puzzles you can't beat until you come back later on. I could see it being realllllly frustrating spending a lot of time at a puzzle only to find out you aren't supposed to be trying to solve it yet. I hate that....let me know to come back later on if I am stuck 30 minutes or something like that.

From what I read in reviews, you don't need full completion to get to the "ending" of the game, common estimates were like 40 hours to beat it and 100 hours to do every puzzle.

A lot of the puzzles involve visible mechanics that allow you to instantly identify that you haven't learned what you need to in order to be able to do it yet, so that isn't really a problem. There were one or two puzzles I spent like 20 minutes on yesterday and didn't figure out, but I wasn't super frustrated or anything cause eventually I was like "ok, I'll drop this for now and go explore the other 2/3 of the island I haven't even seen yet".

That is probably pretty key here (for me at least). If I went in totally blind on this with no hints/walkthroughs/youtube stuff etc, I would need to have much more patience than normal and being able to tell when to leave and come back is helpful if that's true. My buddy is going to get back to me after he plays it tonight.

Does the game offer a hint feature? Some puzzle games when you are stuck will either ask you if you want a hint or sort of make it a point to highlight something as a clue. I would prefer that this isn't the case or the option to turn it off if so....of course unless I get totally frustrated and forced to turn it back on lol.

No hints in the game.

Downloading now, super excited.

I've never really understood setting arbitrary price barriers for yourself just based on the genre of the game. It appears this game is packed with hours and hours of content, by a developer who has shown already that he has some amazingly creative ideas about game design. If it's generally something you know you're gonna enjoy and you're at all excited about the concept, I wouldn't be too upset by the price. I'd also be surprised if this game has any sort of significant sale for some time.

Not regretting my purchase after 3 hours. I would add to goofy's comments that it's not always readily apparent whether or not you're supposed to be able to solve a puzzle without external clues. Sometimes there'll be nearby environmental clues, sometimes you'll find a random puzzle by itself that helps illustrate a mechanic useful in other parts of the island, and sometimes it'll just be an obscure or obtuse self-contained puzzle or series of puzzles that you bang your head against until you figure the trick out.

I've accidentally solved a few puzzles that I couldn't figure out the logic of afterwards, and as goofy said, usually you'll need that knowledge later on in a more complex variation of the same puzzle. And sometimes I thought I had figured out the logic of the puzzle but thought it was too insane or weird to be the right answer only to find out it is, so there's a constant tension between deciding whether to keep attacking a puzzle or hold off until you find an answer elsewhere. That probably sounds frustrating, given that a lot of people are going to compare this to Talos Principle which was much more of a guided, sequential and linear experience than this game from what I can tell so far, but I think I'll end up liking this game more. I've found many of the solutions I've come up with so far more satisfying than almost any of the ones I found in Talos, and I'm only through the first 80-90 puzzles.

It's not really "the genre of the game." I really enjoy the challenge. I really liked The Talos Principle. It's more about the dollar amount. I've paid full price for so many games. I paid full price for Fallout 4 and it runs like crap on my desktop. I can't play it until I upgrade. I have no doubt I would enjoy it. I have trouble parting with my money sometimes.

But with that said, I'm fairly certain I will look into it a little more and end up buying it.

Yeah, that's understandable, I was moreso responding to the idea that a puzzle game wasn't worth $40 on its own.

I've played basically nonstop since the download finished. One, my brain hurts. But two, wow, what a game. I really love the open-world aspect, and knowing that when you stumble upon something confusing there's always something simpler out there that explains the concept to you, or just something you need to be more cognizant of. I echo the idea of that tension that weevil brought up; it's absolutely always there, and the experience is helped a lot by that tension. This game also has that essential quality in a puzzle game of always granting you IMMENSE satisfaction when you figure out a clever solution, rather than just being like "oh, wtf?". It seems like a game that's going to be really hard to discuss, given the open-world nature and how difficult it is to describe certain areas without spoiling stuff.

Lastly, the game is incredibly beautiful. I didn't realize it was going to be as visually striking as it is, but it totally adds something to the whole experience. Really fantastic so far.

i'm also interested in this game and am waiting for a sale. willing to wait a year+. i bought the talos principle a year late, too.

I've been waiting for this game since playing Braid about 3 years ago. So far I'm about 3 hours in and it's awesome. Really well done puzzles that are challenging yet logical. I feel like often in these types of games the developers try to make the puzzles hard by adding elements to the puzzles that don't really make sense, like a lever in another random room somewhere or something. The feeling you get when you've been stuck on a puzzle for 20+ minutes and then you see the answer click is great.

The only complaint I have about the game is I really wish you could jump. I feel like be able to jump would help me diffuse my frustration on some puzzles better. I also wish it had touchscreen capabilities, that would awesome.

Ok...took the dive and downloaded it last night since Dark Souls 3 isn't going to be out for a couple of months.

I only played it for a little while and finished about 8 puzzles. I didn't see an auto save feature so hopefully it saves after you solve every puzzle lol.

Also, just looking ahead is there any kind of fast travel feature or will you literally have to walk to and from each location? I didn't know if it was pretty linear or if you had pretty much free roam and the time it would take to go from one place to another, especially when it comes time to back track.

I can definitely see the importance of not necessarily staying at a puzzle for very long at all if stuck as it is possible just further up ahead those puzzles teach you how to do the previous puzzle.

Thanks for the comprehensive review goofy and others, will DL tonight

There's a boat with like 5 docking points around the island, you can set the travel speed but it still takes a bit to get from one port to the next.