It’s rare that a first-person puzzle game comes along and makes you feel like you’re experiencing something special that brings something unique to the genre. We felt it when exploring the mysterious glitched worlds of The Talos Principle, when navigating the impossible Escher-like corridors in Antichamber, and of course when thinking with portals in one of the originators of mind-bending puzzle design.
Viewfinder looks to capture a place in the growing surreal perspective-based puzzle genre hall of fame, but does it leave a lasting impact like a picture you’d keep in a photo album for a lifetime, or is it a temporary group chat picture you’d delete from your phone to free up memory?
Viewfinder is a reality-shifting adventure where you reshape the world around you with a camera and photos, where you can instantly manipulate the environment in unique ways by strategically placing pictures over the landscape to change your surroundings and solve puzzles.
The game is made up of five hub worlds that each contain a number of panels which instantly teleport you to a series of puzzle rooms. We won’t spoil any mechanics from the game’s later areas, but the game does a good job of introducing new gimmicks that evolve as you progress.
Each puzzle room requires you to find a way to the exit by using pictures you find or take, with a handy rewind function that allows you to go back in time to undo any mistakes or progress any time you like. It works really well, and the tech behind reinventing the map in real-time is impressive and makes for an incredibly fun and well-executed premise for a puzzle game.
From photographing bridges and placing them over gaps, rotating pictures of buildings to create a staircase, or using in-game photocopiers to create more batteries to power exit teleporters – the solutions reward creativity and provide plenty of “aha!” moments when your terraformed creations work.
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While puzzles are contained to one room at a time and require a solution to solve them before moving on, throughout the game’s many levels you’ll find oddities and curiously placed objects and images that add another layer of creativity.
Video game screenshots, famous paintings, and even a functioning tamagotchi are just a few examples of the game’s interactable objects that can often lead to secrets and result in some of the game’s most memorable moments.
Each area also has its own collectables that are hidden in levels, and there are secrets, Easter eggs and quirky moments tied to achievements that act as fun side content you can go back and find if you miss any while playing the main game.
There is an overarching narrative and reason you’re exploring these beautiful worlds to tranquil music. We won’t spoil too many story details here, but the game does a good job of guiding you through the lore with audio logs, notes and a talking AI cat.
The best part is how the characters and voice logs inform the world around you, and you’ll notice things mentioned in conversations pop up in puzzle levels, which is a great little detail and gives everything purpose.
Viewfinder‘s puzzles are streamlined but creative challenges that long-time experienced puzzle players may find a little easy. We finished all levels including the optional ones in under eight hours, which is a nice length, but went by at a fast pace with us rarely getting stuck, and only a couple of the optional puzzles taking us a little longer to figure out.
It feels like a conscious effort has been made to make the puzzle rooms feel snappy with quick solutions that can be executed swiftly, with not much time to soak up the gratification of your solution before being thrown into the next puzzle.
Because of this, Viewfinder never feels boring, but the contained nature of the puzzle rooms and the pace at which new mechanics are introduced can make some of them feel under-utilised. Discovering some late game mechanics are truly “wow” moments, but we can’t help but feel like these are fleeting, because after a few levels, the credits are rolling and we are thinking about all the potential puzzle possibilities that never happened.
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At times, it can feel like Viewfinder is only scratching the surface of what’s possible with its tech in a puzzle setting, which is understandable, as making it work at all is an achievement in itself, and applying it to puzzles that make sense and that can’t be fundamentally broken is a huge task – one that Sad Owl Studios has definitely succeeded at here.
But as a long-time first-person puzzle player, it doesn’t have that mind-blowing additional layer that rewards you for thinking outside the box that you’ll see in games like The Talos Principle with its star puzzles, or The Witness and its environmental puzzles.
Missing this next level of challenge means it doesn’t quite reach the heights of some of the best games in the first-person puzzle genre, which is disappointing, as the mechanics make it perfect for really pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.
This style of first-person puzzle game has gradually evolved into a genre of its own, and it’s interesting to consider the impact each game has had on those that came after.
Games like Manifold Garden, Superliminal and Maquette all released over the last few years, and while Viewfinder easily stands above most of them, it does pose questions about what games like this need to do to stand out and push the idea of reality-shifting puzzle games forward.
Seeing devs bring new ideas and tech to the genre is fantastic, as we want to see boundaries pushed and new games in the ‘mind-bending’ first-person puzzle genre indefinitely, but it might be time to accept that the feelings we felt playing innovators like Portal and Antichamber for the first time might never be replicated, and maybe expecting them to be is unfair.
With that said, Viewfinder brings some cutting-edge ideas to the table and does more than enough to separate itself from any game in recent memory through flawlessly implemented concepts and clever design.
While Viewfinder will leave you wanting more, it is one of the best and most unique in the genre to come out in some time, with gameplay that never gets old as it repeatedly finds ways to surprise and impress. Whether you’re a casual puzzle player or have experience, Viewfinder deserves a spot in the photo album of must-play titles of the year.
Platform reviewed on: PlayStation 5
Viewfinder is out on PlayStation 5 and PC on July 18.
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