The next game from my Steam backlog that I decided to try was Viewfinder, a first-person reality-bending puzzle game.
This is another game that seems right up my street on paper, but does it live up to the hype? Let’s dive in!
Reminder: For the Year of Gaming Challenge, I have to play a game I’ve never played before (one of the many games I bought in Steam sales and never got around to playing), give it a fair chance and write up my thoughts by the end of each month. (That may not sound like much of a challenge, but as a father with a lot going on right now, it will be hard to fit it in!)
Viewfinder
Viewfinder is a first-person puzzle game developed by Sad Owl Studios, released in Summer 2023. The main feature of the game is the ability to pick up photos and place them in the world, allowing you to walk into the picture.
I remember hearing a lot of good things about the game from critics and my friends at the time. However, for whatever reason, it sat unplayed on my Steam wishlist for ages, and I thought it was finally time to fix that!
Story
Without going too far into spoiler territory, there has been a natural disaster in the real world, and your character has entered a simulation created by a group of researchers looking for a way to set things right. Working with a partner in the real world and a Cheshire-cat-like AI, you travel through the simulation, reading notes and listening to audio logs left behind by the researchers.
The story is pretty light, and, to be honest, didn’t quite seem to fit with the gameplay. Most chambers feature audio logs or cryptic diagrams on a whiteboard, but the story isn’t what drives you through the game. What you are mostly doing is trying to complete all of the puzzles in each hub area so you can move onto the next. You venture into the real world on one occasion, but you never actually meet the character who’s been talking in your ear. Nor do you get to really see the consequences of your actions when you reemerge at the end, so there’s not a lot of payoff.
The problem with this kind of game is that it inevitably ends up being compared to games like Portal and the Stanley Parable. And Viewfinder doesn’t have the sense of humour, likeable characters or plot twists. You could argue that it’s unreasonable to expect that in a six-hour-long game, but the first Portal wasn’t much longer than that! It’s not bad, by any means, it’s just not the game’s strongest feature.
Craft
I cannot overstate how well-crafted this game is. The visual and audio design are truly top-notch. Subtle audio clues inform you when you’ve successfully completed a puzzle. The art style is gorgeous too… or should I say art styles! There are moments when you can walk into a painting, and suddenly you’re walking on beautifully animated cartoon grass and listening to birdsong. You can also pick up a poster or a black-and-white photo and enter it, and each new micro world is gorgeously rendered.
The scene transitions are also *chef’s kiss*. When you go to a teleporter and the scene erupts from the screen, or when you place a picture and then walk into it, the way they handle the shifts in perspective is incredible. Personally, I like how everything is viewed through a camera, including the options menu and the rest of the interface. It made me miss the days when I used to carry my DSLR with me wherever I went.
I could keep gushing, but it just feels like such a polished and well-made game (particularly compared to the wonderfully janky Star Trek: Resurgence, which I reviewed last month!).
Gameplay
The gameplay is excellent, too. The central mechanic of being able to place the contents of the photo into the 3D world is hard to get across in text, but it is a really interesting mechanic for a puzzle game.
Early on, there is a puzzle where you need a battery to power the teleporter at the end of the level, but there’s no battery in the game world. There is, however, a Polaroid photo of a room with a battery in it. You’re able to hold up the Polaroid in front of your face, and then the contents of the photo appear in 3D in the world. You can then walk around the frame and step into the room from the photo, where you are able to pick up a black-and-white, pixelated battery to activate the exit. Later on, you get your own Polaroid camera and are able to take and place your own pictures, limited only by the amount of film in the camera. A lot of situations can be resolved by taking a photo of a wall and rotating it to make a bridge, or taking a picture of the sky to ‘delete’ a section of fence, but be careful not to delete a battery or the teleporter!
They do such a good job of tutorialising it, slowly introducing you to the initially mind-boggling mechanics in a way that didn’t feel overwhelming. If anything, it may have been done too well! There were moments that left me scratching my head, followed by the cathartic release as I found the solution. But I found it odd that it gave me so many photos on some levels; I’d end up taking two photos when the camera had five pieces of film in it, and sometimes it felt like I had blundered into a solution that wasn’t exactly what the level designers had intended. Also, many of the puzzles can only be solved by trial-and-error. It’s impossible to look at the elements in the level and know exactly what steps you have to take to reach the exit. Fortunately, another key mechanic is that you can rewind time if you mess up. You are often required to try something, see what happens, then rewind time when you find out that what you just did wasn’t part of the solution.
There’s a definite difficulty spike in the penultimate zone, but then the last few main chambers didn’t feel particularly challenging. That being said, I was quite annoyed at the final level, where you suddenly have to solve puzzles against the clock, which you’ve never had to do in the game before (and rewinding time doesn’t rewind the timer!). A final level/boss is supposed to be a test of everything you’ve learned up until that point, it isn’t supposed to pull a completely new mechanic out of its backside!
But those are nitpicks in an otherwise excellent experience. A lot of it was not particularly mentally taxing, but the general experience – combined with the excellent sound and visuals – resulted in a more zen and less stressful experience than a lot of other games, and there’s something to be said for that!
The Stats
(I may not have time to finish a game within the month, so I will always let you know how far through a game I got, and whether I’m willing to continue playing).
- The game was bought for me from my Steam wishlist as a gift. It costs £19.99 (currently discounted to £9.99).
- I finished it in 5.5 hours, completing all the main and optional levels, but didn’t find all the secret items.
- I probably won’t replay it or go looking for the secrets I missed; I feel like I’ve seen all there is to see.
Final thoughts
The best thing I can say about the game is that it made me feel like I did when I played Portal for the first time. But, as I said earlier, the problem with a game that makes me think of games like Portal and the Stanley Parable is that it pretty much forces me to compare it to them. It’s a well-crafted game that introduces its mechanics in a way that makes you feel clever without being overwhelming, despite its reality-bending nature. But it doesn’t have the depth or the personality, twists or stakes of those other games.
However, like with the first Portal, the main thing I was disappointed by was how short it was. I just wish it had… more! But given the relatively low price, I’d say it was worth every penny and would highly recommend it.