Game Maker's Notebook Braid and The Witness Creator, Jonathan Blow
May 9, 2021
Jonathan Blow, independent designer/programmer behind Braid and The Witness, talks about deep puzzle craft and creating a new programming language. He explores personal expression in games, the nature of true "aha" moments, building vast combinatorial level systems, and using commercial projects to validate engineering tools.
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Design Puzzles Around What Players Realize
- The value of puzzle design lies in the content of the realization, not merely the 'aha' feeling.
- In The Witness Blow focused puzzles to teach linked conceptual realizations that connect across many moments, not isolated cleverness.
How The Witness Teaches Through Nonverbal Puzzle Progression
- The Witness uses abstract grid puzzles that gradually integrate world elements like light, shadow, and color to explore fundamental spatial concepts.
- Blow notes some puzzles function as nonverbal jokes and that players outside game design saw them as comedic beats.
Games Build Large Learnable Systems Players Master
- Games uniquely build intricate, learnable systems that players internalize over many plays, forming structures akin to long-form TV or complex emergent games.
- Blow contrasts this with fiction: games' structures are mechanical systems players learn to navigate (e.g., PUBG phases).