Jonathan Blow wants The Witness to deliver adventure gameplay that doesn’t suck

When Jonathan Blow demos his new game, The Witness, he lets the player drive — alone. In the puzzle adventure, you start out in a room with a door. You open it by completing a very simple task, drawing a line with your mouse or controller from one point to another. The door opens and it leads to a single passage, which then leads to a garden. You solve increasingly complex puzzles to open more doors. And then you’re free to roam around an island.

It seems simple enough, but Blow has been working on The Witness since 2009. As an independent developer, it takes time to finish his titles. But he scored big time with his first major release, Braid, which debuted in 2008. He earned a 90 out of 100 rating on review-aggregator Metacritic for Braid, and the sales from the game financed The Witness. With luck, Blow said that he’ll be able to finish his latest experience by the holidays. But he won’t ship it until it’s done. He is targeting it first for the PlayStation 4, and then it will come out on the PC and iOS after that.