Today I was deleting an old area of the island, which had about 25 puzzles in it that I wasn’t happy with. I took to wondering how many puzzles would be left on the island after I deleted those, so I added a console command to count puzzles: So, there …
The past week has been a very productive time in terms of world-building. The island has been shrunk further, with several of the locations that used to be further to the right moved inward. The white-walled location from last time used to be a standalone structure, but is now built …
Here’s your Island Snapshot for the end of January. Recently, we’ve been mostly working on things you can’t see, but you may notice some subtler differences in terms of buildings / structures. The most obvious difference from the previous shot is the thicker atmosphere. Ignacio changed the fog model; the …
During the past couple of weeks, we have been doing some experiments for The Witness that involve pre-rendering a scene with a fisheye lens and then using that render during gameplay. If I were to say exactly what this is for, it would be a massive spoiler, so I’ll just …
Recently, on a visit to England, Chris Hecker and I did an interview with Edge magazine. It was a long interview where we spoke freely on many topics, while having a good time. Afterward, the interviewer and the editors of Edge did a very good job editing down the interview …
Now, for the social game developers out there – let me help. You know that bad feeling you have in your stomach? …
It’s been a while since we’ve posted one of these… One interesting change, compared to the previous shots: you’ll notice that the lake that used to be in the center of the island, with the windmill on the edge, has moved over toward the left side and become a bay. …
Something like a year and a half ago, when I was starting to get serious about making The Witness, I was talking to Casey Muratori about 3D modeling and texturing. Braid was a 2D game; The Witness being 3D meant that it would be much more expensive and difficult to …
This talk is called Games and the Human Condition; it was given at Rice University on September 27, 2010. It’s about “best practices” of modern game design that I find unsettling, and the way in which “social games” and “gamification” are destructive. A full video is available from this page …
Just after PAX, Stephen Totilo posted a video at Kotaku showing some gameplay of The Witness. This is video from the start of the game and shows some basic stuff, including a set of blue mazes mounted on poles and on walls, that the player must solve to proceed. I’ve …