Viewfinder is like if The Witness was made by artists. Rather than spotlighting the puzzles and challenge, it is focused on the design and makes for a very cohesive non-euclidean puzzle game that explores lots of ideas to their logical ends. The game has a simple conceit - to place geometry from photographs into the game environment, but has enough tricks up its sleeve to be a consistently entertaining experience.
There are some real flashes of brilliance here - but rather than repeating them over and over, the developers were extremely restrained and constantly pulled the focus back to the core idea for better or worse. For example one of the first puzzles you complete incorporates various different art styles, pencil drawing, watercolor, blocky children's drawings, and pixel art and it feels very clever as you move through them. Unfortunately, that is the only time we really see that type of art stylistic change (outside of a few notable examples). This felt like something that could have been the core to an entire world if not the entire game, but the idea was dropped. There are many cases where individual puzzles shine but they're given equal treatment as relatively standard ones. This game was very focused on having a polished and memorable first impression, and I did notice as the game went on some of the timed puzzles or teleportation puzzles at the end of the game didn't quite work as well as some of the other standard platforming ones, but overall I enjoyed at least something about every section of the game.
It's not too difficult to solve any of the puzzles, and the nature of the game's mechanics forced them to make relatively small zones. This helps to give it the "just one more puzzle" feeling, but I think it does diminish the sense of discovery slightly that it stuck to a lot of repeating formulas.
While the introduction to the narrative portion of the game was fantastic, I found it didn't have much to say or much to go with it. It might also be that this genre is known to have sparse narratives or totally memorable ones that enhance its twisty-turny mechanics... to have one that is inbetween and largely forgettable is a missed opportunity. I think the environmental storytelling didn't quite build up to what it promised.
There are some real flashes of brilliance here - but rather than repeating them over and over, the developers were extremely restrained and constantly pulled the focus back to the core idea for better or worse. For example one of the first puzzles you complete incorporates various different art styles, pencil drawing, watercolor, blocky children's drawings, and pixel art and it feels very clever as you move through them. Unfortunately, that is the only time we really see that type of art stylistic change (outside of a few notable examples). This felt like something that could have been the core to an entire world if not the entire game, but the idea was dropped. There are many cases where individual puzzles shine but they're given equal treatment as relatively standard ones. This game was very focused on having a polished and memorable first impression, and I did notice as the game went on some of the timed puzzles or teleportation puzzles at the end of the game didn't quite work as well as some of the other standard platforming ones, but overall I enjoyed at least something about every section of the game.
It's not too difficult to solve any of the puzzles, and the nature of the game's mechanics forced them to make relatively small zones. This helps to give it the "just one more puzzle" feeling, but I think it does diminish the sense of discovery slightly that it stuck to a lot of repeating formulas.
While the introduction to the narrative portion of the game was fantastic, I found it didn't have much to say or much to go with it. It might also be that this genre is known to have sparse narratives or totally memorable ones that enhance its twisty-turny mechanics... to have one that is inbetween and largely forgettable is a missed opportunity. I think the environmental storytelling didn't quite build up to what it promised.