The Witness Reviews

The Witness is ranked in the 95th percentile of games scored on OpenCritic.
IGN
Top Critic
10 / 10.0
Jan 25, 2016

The Witness has a power and pull that carried me throughout the more than 40 hours it took to complete it for the first time, and that, even now, beckons me back to confront the mysteries I left unsolved. Its graceful combination of tangible goals, obscurity, and freedom creates ample opportunity for small victories and grand revelations alike. For the most part, its themes weave themselves beautifully throughout the gorgeous world and wide variety of puzzles, but even when it breaks subtlety in favor of a more heavy-handed approach to exposition, it never detracts from the truly fulfilling moments The Witness offers in terms of solving its physical puzzles and unlocking its deepest mysteries.

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Eurogamer
Top Critic
Recommended
Jan 25, 2016

Big, beautiful and rewarding, Jon Blow's enigmatic puzzle epic is virtuoso game design - and only a fraction too clever for its own good.

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Game Rant
Top Critic
Feb 3, 2016

Following on from the massive success of Braid, The Witness is an engrossing and hugely satisfying experience that should solidify Jonathan Blow as one of the very best active game designers.

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89 / 100
Jan 25, 2016

Blow does it again. Exquisitely layered puzzles populate a world that will keep you guessing.

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Jan 25, 2016

As brilliant as it is infuriating, The Witness' ingenious puzzles all too easily have their shine worn away by length and a constantly extending complexity.

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9.3 / 10.0
Jan 25, 2016

Fun and inventive challenges wait around every corner. If you want something more than a barrage of thoughtful puzzles (like a story), you should look elsewhere

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8 / 10.0
Jan 25, 2016

The Witness is uplifting and frustrating

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9 / 10
Jan 25, 2016

In both structure and detail, The Witness is an original, difficult, and ultimately rewarding puzzle game.

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Jan 25, 2016

The intricate puzzles and tantalizing secrets of this starkly gorgeous, mystical island are enough to lose yourself in for dozens of hours.

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Unscored
Jan 25, 2016

A meditative masterpiece of virtual architecture and puzzle design.

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Unscored
Jan 25, 2016

more, everything about the game—its puzzle structure, its philosophical leanings, its mysteries—eventually comes together in pretty arresting fashion. Part of this is thanks to the game's multiple layers of puzzle-solving gameplay. We've been asked not to say more about that part. Players may need as little as an hour or as long as two weeks to figure out one of The Witness's coolest parts, but however and whenever players get to that point, it's a pretty clever one. (Some of the game's most incredible aesthetic trickery comes as a result of this part of the game, by the way. Kudos to Thekla for pulling it off.)

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4 / 5.0
Jan 25, 2016

Asking The Witness to be a traditional video game is essentially asking the impossible.

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Unscored
Feb 4, 2016

The Witness is one of the most fulfilling games I've played in yonks and it accomplishes a rare feat. It's varied, playful, elegant, mysterious, challenging, and intensely focused all at the same time.

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70 / 100
Jan 25, 2016

I admire a lot about The Witness. It is a beautiful game. It is a clever game. It is a big game. But all of its elements, mazes, exploration, and philosophy didn't really come together to express some greater theme. Unless I was meant to question why I hurt my brain to solve a series of difficult mazes for no real award.

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9.5 / 10.0
Feb 1, 2016

The Witness is an outstanding game, one that slowly reveals its brilliance and assumes the players intelligence rather than guides it. It is an absolute must play for puzzle fans.

VideoGamer
Top Critic
10 / 10
Jan 25, 2016

I'm so caught up inside the world of The Witness that it's hard to think about anything else. It is one of the best games I've ever encountered.

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9 / 10.0
Sep 19, 2016

Brennan Dyal lives in Baltimore, and actually likes it. When he's not playing games, he's disappointing his teammates on the basketball court, or going to Popeye's in disguise so they don't ask "Weren't you just here yesterday?"

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6 / 10
Jan 29, 2016

Despite occasional pangs of belittlement, The Witness refuses to release its hold on me. Although there are aspects of the game that I clearly dislike, part of me longs to be immersed within its fascinating world. It feels strange, therefore, to try and put a score on this review, given how each individual will react differently to it. That term may be overused but if you were to spend just an hour or two with the game, you would know it to be true. Unique, divisive, and fiendishly clever, there are bound to be those who love it and those who absolutely hate it. Then there are those, like myself, who fall somewhere in between, able to appreciate Thekla's achievements but frustrated at how The Witness continues to build a wall around itself, as if guarding a secret from its players.

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9.5 / 10.0
Jan 25, 2016

A masterpiece. The Witness is an amazing and clever experience, rich in details and love. The game design is simply elegant and the atmosphere is out of this world.

Review in Italian | Read full review

Jan 25, 2016

Thus, I highly recommend The Witness. Although I really liked Blow's previous game, I just loved this. I became so absorbed in it, and its beauty complements the way it challenges my mind. I like how simply it begins and how complicated it is at the end but that there's a logical line from those two points. There's just a lot contained within, and I'm still finding more. I want that for others, too.

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