Every puzzle can be solved with patience, whether you carefully work out the logical necessities before touching the controls, sketch out the maze in a notebook, give in to trial and error, or ask a friend. Players may be tempted to look up a walkthrough, but they should resist. At worst, solving a puzzle incorrectly might force you to redraw the solution to the previous in the series, but that solution won’t have been deleted so you need only retrace it. Success and failure is clearly signalled, and there’s no unfair punishment. The Witness is challenging, but you won’t need to google for an external guide to get through it. You begin the game without knowing what you’re supposed to do and how you’re supposed to do it, which is why when we were sent the review code we were asked to reveal as little information as possible about the in-game situations you will face.

The Witness does still draws obvious inspiration from that fondly remembered title, however. This clear demarcation of what you’re supposed to play with is Blow’s main improvement to the formula of classic PC adventure Myst, which was sometimes confusing for the wrong reasons. The rules change – sometimes you need to make sure that the line separates marks on the grid or forms particular shapes – but the process is the same: find a puzzle, solve it, witness the effect (an opened door, a new pathway, or just the activation of a new puzzle) and move onto the next. Your first act is to draw a line through a square on a door to open it, and once you’ve walked through into the island you’ll come across hundreds more grids to be marked in much the same way. Your only way to interact with the island, to open doors or create paths or otherwise make things happen, is to draw lines, thereby solving puzzles and occasionally operating switches. You’re the only one here, but your influence on the world is limited: you can’t push, pull, pick up, or go anywhere you’re not supposed to. Though water flows and plants sway, the environment feels still and controlled, and it can feel eerie. There’s no music and no animals – only diegetic sounds of waterfalls, machinery, and the sound of your own footsteps. Propped in permanent scenes from different time periods – some have swords, some laptops – these figures make the island feel like a gallery: you get to interpret the story and no one will tell you whether you’re right or wrong. Besides the natural beauty of rivers and hills and flowers and trees, perhaps the most impressive work is in the buildings designed in collaboration with real architects, the mechanical structures that creak and clank and thud, and the sculptures. A more obvious expense is the island itself, which is vibrant and lusciously detailed.

The witness game