Sports Games

Loved, hated, debated, analyzed, Braid was the game that three years ago led the players to "need" to know Jonathan Blow, because for better or for worse it was impossible not to bump into someone who talked about it. The fact that a seemingly innocuous two-dimensional platform game, originally released on XBLA, could generate so much hype, it was also a substantial novelty, not to mention the many awards and sold copies.

Said goodbye to players and platforms in a suit and tie, and goodbye to Xbox Live Arcade, our designers have put in question again reach for your wallet and invested the remarkable figure of two million dollars in what appears, at present, as a 'exclusively for PC and iPhone OS. Not only that, the kind that acts as a canvas to the experiments of Blow is no longer the platform but the adventure game Mist style, based on that of wandering in strange places, among strange contraptions and no one to talk. While Blow now takes lessons of game design on the most prestigious stages, it is equally true that no one, perhaps, would invite him to lecture on how to secure their savings.

The Witness is in fact a work of his risky but the name of the creator has already ensured the visibility of blogs and journals that other projects can only dream so crazy. What is it then? On the surface, as you may have guessed, is nothing but a collection of puzzles, each zone contains a number of the island and about 350 in total, grouped into seven key challenges. An interesting aspect of this structure, a "macro" level, is that enough five challenges resolved to complete the game. The other two are optional but not the game to have them defined as such: the player to do so, discarding what does not on its own initiative to his liking.

At the level of "micro", i.e. the individual puzzles, The Witness begins with something very simple, or asks you to draw paths in a series of panels, like little mazes to activate the mechanisms. Then insert the new rules, but, contrary to the unwritten laws of the game, purposely avoids explaining them. Some puzzles have proved so intractable in the first instance, and force the player to adopt a non-linear approach - which is exactly what he wants then Blow.

At the theoretical level, in other words, we know what little brain whirls in the Blow: the deconstruction of paradigms of game design is his favorite sport. What we can not grasp now, and who knows if we will take ever, is the substratum of the narrative of the game, the sense of sound recordings scattered throughout the scene, the strange objects that furnish and make it up, the ultimate goal of the player's presence on 'island. In his delirium meta-discursive reflection on what we do not know Blow wants to lead us, what topics should be treated - even if told in no uncertain terms that his main interests are science and philosophy, or perhaps there is nothing to understand that is simply the joy of finding the solution to each of the puzzles on the island. In any case, the appointment with The Witness is set for next year: you have plenty of time to think about it.