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Innovative mind and perspective bending puzzle mechanics | Full Review - Viewfinder

2K View2023-07-21

Viewfinder

9.0

AbstractRetroPsychologicalFirst-PersonAdventureSingleplayerPuzzleExploration

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Viewfinder is a puzzle game where players reshape reality by placing works of art in the world. Uncover mysteries, solve engaging puzzles, and explore captivating environments in this innovative and imaginative journey of discovery.

🟩Pros

+Innovative mind bending puzzle mechanics

+The puzzles are consistently engaging and satisfying to solve

+Visually pleasing art style

+Subtle and player-driven narrative

🟥Cons

-Limited complexity in its puzzle mechanics

-Lack of story depth despite the interesting premise

Viewfinder's narrative takes a subtle and player-driven approach. The game's plot unfolds through environmental storytelling and uncovering the mysteries left behind; Stumbling upon audio recordings of the past, discovering abandoned houses, and investigating ancient technology. It definitely feels like I was playing Portal back again, with the similar approaches in storytelling and puzzle gameplay.

The actual plot revolves around the player and their companion over voice-comms, investigating an ancient technology that makes the premise of reality shaping possible, and embarking on a quest to find answers to this mystery. It's hard to describe even initials of plot in detail without spoiling it, so I'll just leave it at that. Storytelling-wise, the story is kind of open-ended and up to the player to discover and deduce. It works decently as background flavor to the puzzle-solving gameplay, but I did not feel that it is a necessary nor a must-experience story to be had. You can just skip straight right to the puzzles and still enjoy this game.

The art style adds a unique charm and distinctiveness to Viewfinder, creating an stylized 3D enchanting world that resembles a clay-like aesthetic, while also sometimes going into different art styles depending on the photo or sketch used to change the environment. For example, photocopies of photographs will result in a black and white or grayscale environment.

Artistic drawings, children’s sketches, or pixelated images will come to life exactly as they are. The varying art style changes are cool, but they never really get around to utilizing it and the game just sticks to the main art style for the entirety of the experience, which is a huge waste of opportunity.

Viewfinder's gameplay revolves around the use of photographs and related tools that empowers players to reshape the environment by bringing photographs, sketches, paintings, and other visuals into life. The core mechanic is easy to grasp, making it accessible to players of all skill levels. Players can move around and interact with the environment in a traditional FPS manner. Players can pick up objects, interact with puzzle elements, and utilize different tools.

Observation is a key aspect of the gameplay, you must analyze your environment carefully, the photography related tools available at your disposal, and the actual photographs available in the world to utilize. Once a deduction is made, you must place that photograph into the world and watch it come to life and delete everything behind. How it's placed in the world is all according to your perspective during its placement.

You can rotate these photographs too, so it’s entirely possible to place photos in any orientation. Perhaps a photograph of the side of a building can be used as a ramp, or perhaps a photograph of a bridge can be used as an actual bridge itself.

The ability to manipulate reality by placing pictures in the world is genuinely innovative, although it does feel familiar due to the pioneering mechanics of the game Superliminal. In addition to altering the world by literally placing photographs, the player character can also rewind time, making it easy to redo a mistake, retrieve a lost item, or perhaps overcome being stuck. And believe me, these situations will happen; important world objects can disappear when you accidentally place a photograph in front of them, leaving you no choice but to rewind to progress.

Players are encouraged to explore every nook and cranny to uncover secrets, solve puzzles, and piece together the underlying narrative. The freedom to experiment with the tools and freely rewind adds depth to the gameplay, allowing for multiple solutions to puzzles and encouraging creativity. Throughout the whole experience, the puzzles are consistently engaging and are all satisfying to solve. Speaking of tools, sometimes you are given a camera to actually take a scene and replace it in another location later, sometimes there is a photocopier so you can duplicate photographs, other times there are fixed cameras placed in the environment waiting to be utilized.

While the main puzzles are enjoyable and well-designed, they may lack complexity for experienced puzzle-solving games and the solutions are almost always intuitively obvious to the player. The inclusion of optional puzzles and challenges throughout the chapters caters to players seeking more intricate gameplay, but even with the optional challenges, I found the game to be short and only offers around five hours of content. While the game's length is reasonable, the replayability may be limited, especially for those who will immensely enjoy the unique puzzle mechanics of the game, and will be definitely looking for more.

Conclusion:

Viewfinder presents players with a mind-bending, imaginative, and captivating journey that literally changes your perspective of what games can become. The innovative reality-shaping mechanics offer a truly one-of-a-kind experience. While lacking a little bit of depth and complexity, the player-driven narrative and innovative mechanics still adds intrigue and satisfaction, making exploration of Viewfinder, solving puzzles, and uncovering mysteries more enjoyable.

Mentioned games

Viewfinder

9.0

AbstractRetroPsychologicalFirst-PersonAdventureSingleplayerPuzzleExploration

Get

A fresh perspective on first-person puzzles - Viewfinder Quick Review

PLAY IT OR SKIP IT? Play it! Viewfinder is the kind of game that doesn’t come around very often, the kind that makes you rethink what’s possible in games. While it isn’t very long, it’s packed with fun puzzles that gave me complete freedom to solve them the way I wanted to. Each one felt like watching a magic trick performed right before my eyes, and I could step directly into the illusion the next moment. It’s a game about perspective, and if you’ve ever pored over a book of

TapTap Editor5K2023-07-17