The developer wants to create a link between puzzles and the game world

Jun 27, 2013 09:19 GMT  ·  By

The Witness is widely seen as one of the most important indie titles of the year, and its creator believes that the experience manages to capture all the important elements of the adventure game genre without delivering any of its negative aspects.

Jonathan Blow, best known for his work on Braid, tells Eurogamer that “I’m taking the structure of a classical adventure game, but getting rid of all the things that are terrible about adventure games. I think we can make games interesting in more ways than just challenge.”

What happens in The Witness will be important, and the developer wants to use puzzles to create a clear connection between the player and the world he is exploring.

The island and its various features will become part of the puzzles and their solutions, and gamers will have to physically move around and explore various possibilities before they find the solution.

Blow adds, “There are a lot of psychological studies that say explicit rewards demotivate you from the rest of the game. If you have a game that’s about getting loot, and you’re fighting monsters to get loot, you end up not necessarily being interested in fighting monsters for its own sake, you just want loot.”

The developer wants players to have moments when they gain access to a wider understanding about the island they are exploring and their own actions.

The Witness is important because it will also be a showcase for how the indie game community is supported by Sony, one of the unique selling points for its next-generation console.

The game will be launched on the PlayStation 4 home console when it is out in the fall of this year.

At the same time, The Witness will be playable on the PC, albeit with a slight delay caused by the console launch.