Jonathan Blow asks fans to "have faith"
Don't judge The Witness by its blue mazes.
Braid creator Jonathan Blow has asked gamers not to jump to conclusions about his new game, The Witness, based on early video footage showing blue mazes.
Footage of the game from the Penny Arcade Expo, where it was shown in seclusion, was from the start of the game and showed said mazes out of their full context, Blow wrote on his blog this week.
"Some people seem to have jumped to the conclusion that the game is going to be about solving simple maze puzzles, and thus not be particularly exciting. If that thought crosses your mind, all I can ask is to have faith. I wouldn't make a game about solving a series of rote puzzles," he explained.
Blow compared the situation to one he encountered while developing Braid. He said he never made a trailer for that game because he couldn't come up with a way to show "what happens in the player's mind during the puzzle-solving process" - the thing he regards as most cool about Briad.
"The time stuff is the method by which that is implemented, but the rules of time manipulation do not contain the magic. Watching a video, it's nearly impossible to see the magic. You have to play the game to see the magic.
"The Witness is like that too. The blue mazes are a major aspect of the game, but they are not the point. The point is the magic that happens in the player's mind when he understands the subtle things that the mazes are saying - because the mazes aren't just puzzles, they are lines of communication that aggregate, become more complex and eventually say surprising things. This can't be seen in a video; you have to play it to have the experience. The magic is in the player's head, not on the screen."
The Witness is a puzzle game set on an uninhabited island and is due out late next year.
"The only two guys who have played The Witness to completion have said it will be better than Braid when it is done," Blow continued.
"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."