Many people remember fondly playing the game The Witness, the 2016 single player game that puts you on an island and forces you to solve puzzles so that you can find your way home. The game was unique and challenging, with a distinct game design and a constant inflow of new and challenging puzzles. Subcreation Studio’s new release takes all of this and flips it on its head.
The Looker is set up exactly like The Witness. The moment you step into the game, you’ll notice that the graphics look almost identical, and it begins with the same maze puzzles that you would see in The Witness. The difference is that unlike in The Witness, these puzzles are almost absurd in nature. When doing the puzzles, you use what appears to be a red crayon to fill out mazes that could be on the back of a children’s menu in a statement that mocks the simplicity of some of the puzzles that they parody.
What’s more is that mechanic of seemingly using a crayon to complete puzzles actually becomes an integral part to solving some of them. For example, you may have to draw lines outside of what would be an otherwise impossible puzzle to solve, or you might have to color in something red. These humorous yet clever solutions are some of the things that make this game so great.
On top of the constant poking fun at The Witness’s puzzles, the game is also filled with visual and audio gags. The humor isn’t particularly dark or crude. Rather, it is filled with relatively simple jokes that almost anyone can enjoy. It shows that the creators put great detail into this game, but still did not take it too seriously along the way. Even the description of this game is littered with mockery of the tropes that the game is parodying, “If you really think about it, aren’t the real solutions the, uhh… friends we make along the way?”
What’s more is that everyone can enjoy playing this game, regardless of if you typically enjoy puzzle games. For example, if you loved The Witness, then you will certainly have fun in a similar open world puzzle game, looking for more clever solutions this time. However, if you hated it, then you will enjoy seeing some of the tasks and concepts from it being satirically portrayed. Remember the boat level? Well if you hated it like some people did, you’ll love the boat level in The Looker.
Overall, this game is a masterpiece. It takes everything that is so iconic about The Witness and turns it inside out. We would highly recommend you checking out this game. After all, it is free on Steam right now, so there is nothing to lose.
