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The Witness |OT|

D

Deleted member 30609

Unconfirmed Member
So, about Stephens Sausage Roll.

Is there anything more to the game than rolling sausages around? Hidden mechanics not shown in early videos? Amazing discoveries as you dig deeper into it? Feel free to spoil it for me if there is.

Or is it "only" a well-designed puzzle game which teaches you new rules elegantly, and then asks you to execute on using those rules?

Not that the latter is a bad thing, but I've always wondered.

It's always a puzzle game about rolling sausages, but the way new surprises and mechanics are paced throughout the game is (and I don't say this lightly, I really really don't) genius. There isn't a single wasted or repeated puzzle in that game, and there are over two-hundred sausages to be cooked.

I don't know how else to say it without spoiling some of it. Don't watch videos. It never becomes anything other than what it is, but it's a game that deliberately restricts what you can do in early levels without it ever feeling like it, so when pieces are snuck back in without any fanfare later, it's... good. The game is paced like an album. I never hear anyone talk about this, but the puzzle order in SSR is the secret MVP. It must have been tempting to start with some things that aren't really explored until world five, but the way it's currently ordered is, especially in hindsight, not at all obvious but absolutely perfect.
 

llehuty

Member
do i need prior knowledge of any specific puzzles to do the windmill?
In any case, the village is one of the last places you should visit, since it features puzzles from all the different types explained in every other single place on the island. Make sure you have done almost every area before going there.
 
Do you mean, the pannel that looks like a windmill or the pannel at the door of the windmill?

If it's the first one, yes, there are easier puzzles with the same concept but the pannel is presented in a different way this time around. More concrete hint:
it's like the pannels that look like a tree.

If it's the one at the door, come back later (it's not a complicated puzzle and you will find the solution easily once you learn the mechanic).

In any case, the village is one of the last places you should visit, since it features puzzles from all the different types explained in every other single place on the island. Make sure you have done almost every area before going there.

i went into the actual windmill and then down some stairs to a little chamber area that had puzzles with hexagons. i didn't really try to do it at the time because it was pretty early and i didn't want to spend time on something i might not have the information for.

so far i've done the marsh, desert ruins, glass factory, orchard, symmetry island, monastery, bunker, and the forest.
 

llehuty

Member
i went into the actual windmill and then down some stairs to a little chamber area that had puzzles with hexagons. i didn't really try to do it at the time because it was pretty early and i didn't want to spend time on something i might not have the information for.

so far i've done the marsh, desert ruins, glass factory, orchard, symmetry island, monastery, bunker, and the forest.
Oh, you definitely have to go back later to those hexagons. You will know when.
 

mf.luder

Member
Just introduced the game to a friend and it made me want to revisit it. I'll have to go exploring for some environmental puzzles or anything I missed before.
 

deleted

Member
Finally found some time to play a bit again. Solved the desert including the last part :p

Stuck on the beginning of the Japanese Tree garden place. I guess I
have to do something with shadows and viewpoint, but after opening the entrance and the ability to shut down/pull up the front or the back shutters I didn't get anything done yet. My only lead are the three identical puzzles on the side of the temple - I guess completing them allows me to pull the side shutters of the temple up. I solved the first one by accident on first try without knowing the rules. Can't really deduct from that what the rules here are though :p
There's some beautiful point of view pictures in the temple though.

I hope I'll have time enough to complete the game before I forget certain rule sets again.
Already turned my back on two of these:

20170116171234_1u3uy4.jpg

It's not that I won't be able to solve it. It will just take so much time, that I'll try and complete the other worlds first when I have time to play.
I'm at
8 complete worlds atm and from my understanding, I would've been able to trigger the end on top of the mountain with 6. Can I just play on after doing that?
 
I'm at
8 complete worlds atm and from my understanding, I would've been able to trigger the end on top of the mountain with 6. Can I just play on after doing that?

You can trigger the end with 7, and, yes, you can play on afterwards (just load your last save after the ending).
About the shutters:
you can already open the shutters on any side of the building.
 

Blizzard

Banned
Finally found some time to play a bit again. Solved the desert including the last part :p

Stuck on the beginning of the Japanese Tree garden place. I guess I
have to do something with shadows and viewpoint, but after opening the entrance and the ability to shut down/pull up the front or the back shutters I didn't get anything done yet. My only lead are the three identical puzzles on the side of the temple - I guess completing them allows me to pull the side shutters of the temple up. I solved the first one by accident on first try without knowing the rules. Can't really deduct from that what the rules here are though :p
There's some beautiful point of view pictures in the temple though.

I hope I'll have time enough to complete the game before I forget certain rule sets again.
Already turned my back on two of these:

20170116171234_1u3uy4.jpg

It's not that I won't be able to solve it. It will just take so much time, that I'll try and complete the other worlds first when I have time to play.
I'm at
8 complete worlds atm and from my understanding, I would've been able to trigger the end on top of the mountain with 6. Can I just play on after doing that?
About the mountaintop end:

You can trigger it with fewer, but the ending is lame. Do all the lasers and some secret additional thing to unlock more content and a neater ending. :)
 

muteki

Member
I started playing recently after I picked it up in the holiday sale. I've got most of the areas cleared that I know about, in the sense that I've
turned the lasers on.
I can't stop thinking about the game, and really wish I would have picked it up sooner.

I've had to resort to hints in a couple places, usually to clarify what I've figured out from the tutorials.
The mercedes icon and tetris icons were particularly tricky.
Otherwise have had plenty of "oh shit!" moments and plenty of banging my head on the wall for a while.

The Jungle puzzles that use
audio
as a key component can fucking die though. Those are really hard to process for me, especially when they get
layered.
 

deleted

Member
You can trigger the end with 7, and, yes, you can play on afterwards (just load your last save after the ending).
About the shutters:
you can already open the shutters on any side of the building.

About the mountaintop end:

You can trigger it with fewer, but the ending is lame. Do all the lasers and some secret additional thing to unlock more content and a neater ending. :)

That was a huge brainfuck on my part :p Of course I could open them... Okay,
so up to 9 now, there are 11?
 
Question with some spoilers about the boat house early on, grateful for confirmation (or not) on something:

Near the start area there is a boat house, you can get onto the corrugated iron roof and look down through holes to the room below. The room has 8 vases in it, and you can choose which vase to lift up by drawing the outline of each vase in a puzzle panel.

It very much seems like you have to lift the yellow vase up, so it forms a line with the yellow door frame and then this would let you draw one of the environmental puzzles. This is from the roof, looking down into the room.

Clicking on the yellow vase activates the fuzzy effect and noise, but it won't let me draw FROM the vase onto the door frame, even though it looks perfectly lined up. It looked pixel perfect when I stood next to my TV. I spent 10 to 15 minutes moving slightly left, slightly right etc etc but it just wouldn't draw.

Is the game just being really finicky about the position to draw from? If no, don't tell me the answer, just tell me I have to do more stuff :) or tell me it's a red herring ( it doesn't seem like it)

I'm on PC with high graphics. The only setting I've changed is FOV (to make it slightly wider). Could that mess it up?
 
nearly a year after release. I just bought this game and it's at full price still :/

knowing my luck, it'll go on sale tomorrow or something


anyway. read few reviews on this game and it looks really interesting.. Really looking forward to it.. needs 40 mins to download
 

GlamFM

Banned
Question with some spoilers about the boat house early on, grateful for confirmation (or not) on something:

Near the start area there is a boat house, you can get onto the corrugated iron roof and look down through holes to the room below. The room has 8 vases in it, and you can choose which vase to lift up by drawing the outline of each vase in a puzzle panel.

It very much seems like you have to lift the yellow vase up, so it forms a line with the yellow door frame and then this would let you draw one of the environmental puzzles. This is from the roof, looking down into the room.

Clicking on the yellow vase activates the fuzzy effect and noise, but it won't let me draw FROM the vase onto the door frame, even though it looks perfectly lined up. It looked pixel perfect when I stood next to my TV. I spent 10 to 15 minutes moving slightly left, slightly right etc etc but it just wouldn't draw.

Is the game just being really finicky about the position to draw from? If no, don't tell me the answer, just tell me I have to do more stuff :) or tell me it's a red herring ( it doesn't seem like it)

I'm on PC with high graphics. The only setting I've changed is FOV (to make it slightly wider). Could that mess it up?

It´s finicky about the position. You basically figured it out - there´s no shame in looking this specific puzzle up now ;)
 

bosseye

Member
Hadn't played this for a while - bought a PS4 Pro and an HDR/4K TV since I last played it, restarted the other night......holy shit, its gorgeous. Looks just incredible. I always thought it was a beautiful game, but at 1440, HDR, 60FPS mah gawwwwd. Lovely.

I didn't finish it last time I played and its been long enough that I've forgotten the solutions/rules to all the puzzles.

Really enjoying it again, I think I managed 6 lasers last time before getting distracted to other things.
 
It´s finicky about the position. You basically figured it out - there´s no shame in looking this specific puzzle up now ;)

Great - thankyou! Appreciate help from a DGAFfer! No idea what to search for though, will try a few terms and hope I don't see something I shouldn't :)

EDiT just in case anyone gets stuck in the same spot. I had messed with the FOV slider...i think! I ended up setting the FoV in the local variables file, based on web instructions. I couldn't find the slider in the game options (because I'm dumb).

Once I did that the puzzle popped from the exact place I had been standing before.

We're up to 410 puzzles now and are also hunting the environmental ones as we go. This game keeps getting better and better. Our first non-mountain laser is pointing off into the sky...Will see where some of the others go
 

bosseye

Member
I got stumped in the swamp so I went off looking for
environmental puzzles
, found a load I never even noticed before. Such a clever game. Theres one in the
sky where the clouds line up as you look towards the desert from the base of the mountain
but I can't figure it at the moment, the
grey cloud
blocks the path.
 

llehuty

Member
I got stumped in the swamp so I went off looking for
environmental puzzles
, found a load I never even noticed before. Such a clever game. Theres one in the
sky where the clouds line up as you look towards the desert from the base of the mountain
but I can't figure it at the moment, the
grey cloud
blocks the path.

Maybe you can change its colour somehow?

I gave up on that one, hmmmmmm.
 

muteki

Member
Its been the third night in a row I've said i'm going to finish this and yet here I am still going. It has to end soon, I don't really see where else I could go. I still have not made a real effort to find
environmental puzzles
and I just figured I would be satisfied for now by
turning on all the lasers.
Which I've done, feels good. I know there are some areas I haven't figured out how to get yet, still have
2 videos to watch
, but pretty happy at least at solving every board I have come across, some I had to come back to after some time though.
 

mclem

Member
Anyone in here played it? I saw Blow recommending it in the Reddit AMA.

I haven't got around to Sausage Roll specifically, but I've played some other Increpare games, and he's absolutely got the knack for making some great puzzles; I have every confidence SSR is in the same boat.
 

deleted

Member
Okay, I have solved
10 Lasers
so far.

I have no real idea where the last one is though. Do I find it in the windmill? That's the only place left where it makes some kind of sense, because I read about the
bunker
having one and I didn't activate one there.

It's a bit weird, because I just solved the
town
and that was a culmination of everything I had learned so far. Didn't feel like I was missing something. Obviously I'm missing lots and lots of puzzles, but no rules to solve it :p

I'm at
356 +44, 1 video
atm, I'll solve the
last laser and then activate the ending.
Hopefully tomorrow.

So far I had to look up 5 puzzles I think. Regretted one of them, because I would have surely figured it out with a bit more time. For the rest I had the right idea, execution, but e.g. I counted the symbols wrong the first time, had the right solution but with a shape missing. I was thinking about that one for half an hour, min... Not once thought to count the shapes again :p

Oh and I finally got
My first sky shape. Those are a bitch. I see them everywhere, but I just don't find the right angles.
 

deleted

Member
There is no laser in the windmill.

In the bunker, you have to get the elevator to go all the way up to reach the laser.

I was there and activated that. Didn't connect that building with a
bunker though...
Weird, what's missing then?

Got it :p Never finished the
autumn woods
:p
 
I was there and activated that. Didn't connect that building with a
bunker though...
Weird, what's missing then?

The 11 lasers, going clockwise around the island from the start of the game:

Symmetry:
Solve the paired yellow and blue puzzles.
Desert:
Raise the underground elevator at the archaeological dig.
Quarry:
Open all three shutters blocking the panel at the top of the quarry.
Shady trees:
Open both halves of the gate and solve the shadow puzzle with two halves.
Keep:
Solve either one of the two big puzzles on top of the tower.
Marsh:
Reach the path behind the 3x3 platforms puzzle.
Treehouses:
Get inside the room with the time-limited door.
Bunker:
Enter the color elevator solution that reaches the top level.
Jungle:
Open the innermost part of the bamboo forest.
Monastery:
Solve the four puzzles around the big tree.
Town:
Open every locked door in the tower.
 

deleted

Member
The 11 lasers, going clockwise around the island from the start of the game:

Symmetry:
Solve the paired yellow and blue puzzles.
Desert:
Raise the underground elevator at the archaeological dig.
Quarry:
Open all three shutters blocking the panel at the top of the quarry.
Shady trees:
Open both halves of the gate and solve the shadow puzzle with two halves.
Keep:
Solve either one of the two big puzzles on top of the tower.
Marsh:
Reach the path behind the 3x3 platforms puzzle.
Treehouses:
Get inside the room with the time-limited door.
Bunker:
Enter the color elevator solution that reaches the top level.
Jungle:
Open the innermost part of the bamboo forest.
Monastery:
Solve the four puzzles around the big tree.
Town:
Open every locked door in the tower.

Thanks, managed without the spoilers. Activated the
endgame and cleared the first floor
Tomorrow I'm gonna start the game with 2 friends all over again who never played it. It's pretty laid back and should be perfect for some couch coop.
 

Vorheez

Member
Oh man, the desert/ruins are sooo damn cool

Has anyone in here managed to complete all puzzles without spoilers? That's what I'm trying to do, and I'm at 148 +11
 

Chitown B

Member
There is no laser in the windmill.

In the bunker, you have to get the elevator to go all the way up to reach the laser.

that thing pissed me off. Had to look up a solution. got to the broken level of the elevator and there was absolutely no way to move it up further and no hint to the solution that I could see. No way off that room on the level either.
 

Blizzard

Banned
Oh man, the desert/ruins are sooo damn cool

Has anyone in here managed to complete all puzzles without spoilers? That's what I'm trying to do, and I'm at 148 +11
I had hints as to the location of 2 panels, but solved them all myself.

I didn't finish any of the pillars though. I'm glad they weren't tied to achievements.
 
that thing pissed me off. Had to look up a solution. got to the broken level of the elevator and there was absolutely no way to move it up further and no hint to the solution that I could see. No way off that room on the level either.

Well... Here's the simplest explanation I can think of.

Floors 1, 3, and 5 had pure red, blue, and green light. Under each of these, a different group of squares appears black. (You can't reach floor 5 at first, but you could see it had green light, so you can deduce what you would see there from the pattern of the first four floors.)

That tells you that these three groups of squares must all be different colors, with everything else white. At the top there is natural sunlight, so you will see all the different colors at the top. So to reach the top, you must need to section off all three groups of differently-colored squares.

And you could also make the elevator go back down by re-entering the previous solutions.
 

cyba89

Member
Oh man, the desert/ruins are sooo damn cool

Has anyone in here managed to complete all puzzles without spoilers? That's what I'm trying to do, and I'm at 148 +11

Needed a little hint with one single optional panel (after I was stuck on that one for hours) but otherwise I did everything by myself. Missed a lot of the environmental puzzles though.

I'm currently on a second playthrough on PC (played on PS4 before) and I'm focusing more on getting as many environmental puzzles as I can.
 
Bought this for £12 for PS4.

I'm thick as fuck and have never done any puzzle games before (Did Myst & Rivan with a mate many moons ago but didn't really understand what the fook I was doing).

Anyway just done
Puzzles where after you do them, it shines the light out of the beacon thingy
but this game has a weird way of making me feel smart lol! Smarter than normal anyway lol! (I understand how he's doing it too :) ).
 

mclem

Member
Bought this for £12 for PS4.

I'm thick as fuck and have never done any puzzle games before (Did Myst & Rivan with a mate many moons ago but didn't really understand what the fook I was doing).

Anyway just done
Puzzles where after you do them, it shines the light out of the beacon thingy
but this game has a weird way of making me feel smart lol! Smarter than normal anyway lol! (I understand how he's doing it too :) ).

Ah, the first step. So rewarding. It's all an uphill climb from here, but the journey is worth it.

On your spoiler, with a spoiler of my own (it's a very mild spoiler, but if you want to be completely fresh, don't reveal it)

What you describe is not enough information to narrow down which section you mean
 

deleted

Member
Oh man, the desert/ruins are sooo damn cool

Has anyone in here managed to complete all puzzles without spoilers? That's what I'm trying to do, and I'm at 148 +11

I'm trying and taking my time with this game. Which is unusual in itself, since I don't really stick with SP games for longer times.

So far, I'm at 21 hours, ca.
400+50
puzzles - and I think I'm about 10-30 puzzles away from the end. Which doesn't mean that I solved all puzzles in the game, but enough to end the game.

It's very rewarding, but I didn't like some puzzle types which didn't seem smart or clever but simply mechanically hard and wouldn't let you put in your solution for no good reason at all. For now, I had to look up around 5 puzzles. 4 of them I would have 'never' gotten, 1 I regret looking up, because I would have found out the solution for sure.

The game is mostly fantastic at showing you how to solve a puzzle except where it isn't. Or you simply think in different ways than the game expects you to. Doesn't happen often, but I guess it happens for everyone in different parts of the game.

I had a problem with the ruleset of the Tetrino puzzles, didn't manage to extrapolate them from the game. Got some spoiler free help here and was explained the rule set and once I got that, those puzzles became some of the most rewarding in the game for me.
They still take longer than the rest, but they offer some of the best solutions.
Mostly, when I didn't get the solution, I just wandered off and did something different. Solved the
Town
not as a whole but part for part when I got another piece of information to solve something else.
It just gets a lot more linear the further you go, since you already did much of the clear alternatives.

Well... Here's the simplest explanation I can think of.

Floors 1, 3, and 5 had pure red, blue, and green light. Under each of these, a different group of squares appears black. (You can't reach floor 5 at first, but you could see it had green light, so you can deduce what you would see there from the pattern of the first four floors.)

That tells you that these three groups of squares must all be different colors, with everything else white. At the top there is natural sunlight, so you will see all the different colors at the top. So to reach the top, you must need to section off all three groups of differently-colored squares.

And you could also make the elevator go back down by re-entering the previous solutions.

This one I didn't get, looked it up, was fine with me - wouldn't have gotten that:p

Bonus Pic (might contain spoilers, but nothing specific:

2017-01-2316.27.56i4u92.jpg

No idea when I did something like this for a game, ever! And that's just half of it, I took many cellphone pictures to just run around and compare solutions to patterns :p
 

Chitown B

Member
Well... Here's the simplest explanation I can think of.

Floors 1, 3, and 5 had pure red, blue, and green light. Under each of these, a different group of squares appears black. (You can't reach floor 5 at first, but you could see it had green light, so you can deduce what you would see there from the pattern of the first four floors.)

That tells you that these three groups of squares must all be different colors, with everything else white. At the top there is natural sunlight, so you will see all the different colors at the top. So to reach the top, you must need to section off all three groups of differently-colored squares.

And you could also make the elevator go back down by re-entering the previous solutions.

Thanks. That seems way too complicated even for this game. Trying to memorize which colors turn which squares which color and combine those while in the elevator.
 

Nozem

Member
I completed the game yesterday without help, at
436 + 59
. I absolutely love the game, and Jonathan Blow is a genius. Can't wait to see what he makes next.

I love how the game made me feel both really stupid one moment and insanely smart the next.
 
I completed the game yesterday without help, at
436 + 59
. I absolutely love the game, and Jonathan Blow is a genius. Can't wait to see what he makes next.

I love how the game made me feel both really stupid one moment and insanely smart the next.

That completion number means
you are still missing something big... and you can start getting to it by loading your last save.
 

nny

Member
This game is so good. I just completed a series of puzzles that made me feel very good about myself :D

This game is so beautifully designed, some of the situations are pure genius.

In other news, I was not expecting to see
a videoclip from a Tarkovsky movie. wtf.
 

bosseye

Member
I need some help guys please. Ideally without actually giving me the solution (if thats possible), just some clever hints please!

Location 1
The bunker by the sea with the elevator and the coloured levels, the place where you learn that looking through coloured glass changes colours; I can't figure out how to get the elevation to rise right to the top, I always get stuck at the level with the broken wire.

Location 2
The Town - I've done nearly everything, but I'm stuck thus:
One of the buildings you have to open the door which has yellow glass, rules of tetris blocks from the swamp and coloured flower subdivision from the treetops - now I've done this puzzle, the door has swung open. Looking through the yellow glass in this door, the puzzle on the door to the ruined church (?) now has only 3 colours to subdivide, but I can't see a way to subdivide the 3 colours with one line. This means I can't open this door, which means I can't then use the tree branches outside to do the line for the puzzle in the church, which is the one that opens the door to the base of the tower.

Also, within this same room, down the stairs is a broken sound puzzle in a sound proof room and an adjacent puzzle with 4 red hexagons/pentagons. This would lower the blue stairs in the room above, but I can't figure it out. I assume the sound puzzle is just a straight line across as there is no sounds? The arrangement of the speaker screws etc on the floor looks like it could be a clue but I'm not sure.

I wonder if dropping these blue steps has an impact on the colour door puzzle above?

Location 3
The jungle, the bloody sound puzzles. I've got 2 more to do I think, I've hit the one where the bird chirps no longer align with the up/down of the line puzzle, and there is instead a wolf howl over the top. I was assuming this wolf howl relates to the longer section of line puzzle, but I can't figure it.

So any clues appreciated! Thanks
 

Eklesp

Member
Location 2
The Town - I've done nearly everything, but I'm stuck thus:
One of the buildings you have to open the door which has yellow glass, rules of tetris blocks from the swamp and coloured flower subdivision from the treetops - now I've done this puzzle, the door has swung open. Looking through the yellow glass in this door, the puzzle on the door to the ruined church (?) now has only 3 colours to subdivide, but I can't see a way to subdivide the 3 colours with one line. This means I can't open this door, which means I can't then use the tree branches outside to do the line for the puzzle in the church, which is the one that opens the door to the base of the tower.

Also, within this same room, down the stairs is a broken sound puzzle in a sound proof room and an adjacent puzzle with 4 red hexagons/pentagons. This would lower the blue stairs in the room above, but I can't figure it out. I assume the sound puzzle is just a straight line across as there is no sounds? The arrangement of the speaker screws etc on the floor looks like it could be a clue but I'm not sure.

I wonder if dropping these blue steps has an impact on the colour door puzzle above?
So any clues appreciated! Thanks

I would have to get in the game since I don't remember an issue with the mountain bunker. The Jungle is a pain.

You are doing #2 right, looking through the colored room changes the colors on the church door. Once you have the right colors I don't remember it being too difficult. I couldn't figure it out for a long time since I didn't realize I had to get into the colored room.

The broken sound room at the bottom. The dots on the right side represent the sounds. Try it a few different ways. Biggest dots high pitch to smallest dot low pitch and vice versa.
 
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