As one of the first games presented during the PlayStation 4’s unveiling, it was originally assumed that Jonathan Blow’s The Witness would be a launch title for Sony’s new-generation console. But here we are in the first month of 2015 and the Myst-inspired puzzler is still no where to be seen. But it looks like the development team has just reached a major milestone.
In a post on the game’s News Blog, Blow wrote that The Witness is now “Puzzle Complete,” meaning that all of the game’s 677 puzzles and “high-level creative decisions” have been completed. The developers said that there’s still work to be done on some “story stuff” and “the menu system,” but for the most part, all that’s left is polishing and playtesting:
It does *not* mean that the game is done. We still have a lot to do! But it *does* mean that the nature of the work changes and becomes simpler, because we don’t have to be making high-level creative decisions any more. It is now much more about turning the finish-the-game crank (making sure stuff plays well and polishing it up) for anything related to game design, modeling and texturing.
However, the bad news is that The Witness still doesn’t have a release date. So we’ll all just have to continue to wait patiently for the game, which will launch first for the PC and PS4, then on iOS, and on “other platforms” after that.