Viewfinder is the debut game of Scottish developer, Sad Owl Studios, and can I say, what a first outing!
Parts of this game truly feel like something I’ve never experienced before.
Not to say it’s perfect, but I thoroughly enjoyed my 7 hours with the game.
My very first thought upon booting up the game was how fast it loaded… So fast in fact that I had to close the game and actually time how long it took.
20 seconds… Only 20 seconds to go from my PlayStation dashboard, to moving around in game.
You might think ‘who cares?’ But it was a refreshing experience compared to some of the long loading times we often get with modern games.
It’s also something that carries throughout the game, most of the loading is lightning quick or cleverly disguised.
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Gameplay
Viewfinder is a first-person puzzler that uses perspective and perception in surreal ways. While there is some story to be had, gameplay is king.
You’re essentially playing through a series of puzzles trying to access, or activate, a teleporter to be able to move on to the next puzzle.
You can reshape your reality by placing 2D pictures into the world and having their contents become part of the 3D environment.
You can find images around the environment, to place and utilize, but you will also get the ability to use a Polaroid camera and create your own ‘puzzle pieces’.
Say you need to cross a gap, you could take a picture of the floor and then use that to create more floor where the gap was, filling it in. Or you could take a picture of a wall, rotate it, and bridge the gap that way. There’s often multiple ways to approach each conundrum.
It’s something that really needs to be experienced to be fully understood.
My heart actually fluttered in excitement the first time I grabbed a photo, placed it down and walked right into it. Even though I’d seen it in action in the trailers, there was something special about experiencing the mechanic myself for the first time.
It shouldn’t be that seamless, it shouldn’t be that GOOD… But it is.
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Another puzzle type required that I position myself just right, aligning parts of a broken picture to reform it, (much like the Riddler puzzles in the Batman Arkham games).
Once properly aligned the picture fixed itself to the landscape, becoming reality. It was another really cool moment that again sent my heart fluttering.
Not all the puzzles are as satisfying however, around the mid point of the game there was a section I found quite tedious and less intuitive than the preceding puzzle types. Though it could just be how my brain works, that those particular problems weren’t as easy to solve as the others.
There’s a handy rewind function to undo any mistakes, you can never really get stuck in the game… Apart from being unable to solve a puzzle.
It’s also handy when you misstep and find yourself plummeting to your death, a quick rewind will have your feet on solid ground again.
For the most part, the game strikes a good balance with its puzzle difficulty. Some I could solve within seconds providing a nice serotonin boost and a feeling of being a big ol’ smarty pants. Others were real head scratchers that required a LOT of trial and error before I finally got them.
There are some optional puzzles which are quite a bit harder, requiring some out of the box thinking. If you can wrap your brain around them they’re really rewarding.
The final level was pretty satisfying and felt like a good culmination of the preceding puzzles. Not only are you putting what you’ve learnt throughout the game into practice, but there are new challenges thrown at you as well that felt like puzzles within puzzles!
Graphics
For the most part, the graphics are a pretty standard 3D art style, I wouldn’t exactly call them stunning. Where the visuals do shine however, is when putting down images that themselves have different art styles. It could be a children’s drawing, a beautiful watercolour painting, a vibrantly colourful cartoon… The world within the image can be of stark and sudden contrast to the regular world.
It’s pretty awesome holding up a screenshot of a retro video game, jumping into it and suddenly feeling like you’re within a completely different game.
There’s also a filter mechanic to change the look of the photos you take; greyscale, negative… There are plenty to choose from. Though they don’t actually affect gameplay which is a shame, it could’ve brought a whole new facet to the games puzzles.
I ended up just using a ‘warm’ filter as the rest were too distracting.
Story
The story isn’t great, it feels a bit like wallpaper for the most part, but it is enough to get you going from one puzzle to the next. Though there was one twist early on that took me unawares that I thought was pretty cool.
I never really care for the type of storytelling in games that rely on audio logs and journal entries to tell their story. I want to experience a story, not listen to one, luckily the fantastic puzzles more than hold their own.
Conclusion and Score
Viewfinder is a short and enjoyable puzzler that brings a lot of cool ideas to the genre.
While not perfect, it did give me an experience I will remember for a long time, an experience I think everyone should at least try once.
A fantastic debut from developers Sad Owl Studios.
Quest Daily Scores Viewfinder:
8.5/10
Quest Daily was supplied a copy of Viewfinder by the publisher for the purpose of this review
