There is a glass factory near the beach as well as a botanical green house. Different locations are related to craft and artistic practices, such as the quarry where stone is gathered and sculptures are made. The idea that games are art – meditative, reflexive, affective – is strongly present in The Witness. The Witness is an art piece – meant to provoke without giving answers.” It also has moments of stark, exuberant beauty – and, yet again, feels like it’s a love story. It’s coherent and consistent, never breaking the world’s rules. “The Witness, by contrast, doesn’t seek that realism, but trumps it. As Dan Griliopolous in Show Me The Games writes:
Its aesthetics are simple, but work through magnificent use of color and light. The Witness is a mesmerizing and stunning game. It is a unique and personal expression of the designer, but it is also a game about games, and what this medium can accomplish. Overall, I argue that The Witness is best understood as self-aware art and metafiction. By looking deeper into the symbols and locations, I unravel the meaning of the game in this blog, including the significance of its multiple endings. Other than audio logs, this game has little to no text, making it hard to find out what is really going on and being represented. Different puzzles, most of them consisting of line puzzles on a grid, have to be solved in order for the player to reach the heart of a mysterious mountain on the island. Location means everything as the player navigates a island through the eyes of an unnamed character. The result of this hard labor is a unique first-person puzzle video game with a beautiful aesthetic. This indie game, created by Jonathan Blow, was in development for eight years after he released Braid in 2008. The Witness (2016) has acquired somewhat of a cult status the past years.