4) The Witness
There are clever puzzle games, and then there’s The Witness. Designer Jonathan Blow’s follow-up to the highly acclaimed Braid exceeded all expectations when it arrived back in January. Quite simply, The Witness is one of the most intelligently designed games ever made, and it’s married to an enthrallingly mysterious overarching narrative, set amidst a gorgeously stylized island locale.
The Witness is a master class in puzzle design. Its mazes are deceptively simple but often branch into more sophisticated, mind-bending brainteasers that will make you feel like a genius when that lightbulb moment finally occurs. There’s much merit to be issued with regards to how fresh and varied each puzzle feels, too, and The Witness never becomes same-y or monotonous. For the most part, the puzzles are always challenging but rarely frustrating and unsolvable without references to guides.
The game’s open world structure allows for each of its separate puzzles to be solved in any order, but they do all interconnect and relate to each other, giving an extra motivation to solving the island’s wider intrigue. There’s also plenty of optional activities and things to discover amid its dense environment, adding to a total of around 70 hours of game time, depending on your puzzle-solving acumen.