While the puzzle genre has been ubiquitous since the dawn of gaming, it’s typically one that we ignore as a lesser gaming experience. Sure we have things like Tetris and Puyo Puyo that end up remarkably popular, but for the environmental puzzles, only a few end up captivating players, most notably games like Myst and the 7th Guest. That doesn’t mean that they’ve stopped being made however and the genre has propagated for decades, slowly refining experiences and making new and innovative leaps while other types of games have stagnated by comparison.
Enter Viewfinder from developer Sad Owl Studios and publisher Thunderful Games. Viewfinder is a unique game that takes narrative puzzle solving to the next level, combining it with surrealism in a way that few games have even attempted. Imagine taking a game like The Bridge or Monument Valley and turning it into a first person experience. Now add cameras, filters, and perspective shifts. That gives you just a glimpse of what Viewfinder is all about.
This is a fairly short game that’s focused on the narrative experience in addition to the puzzles so we’re going to minimize coverage of the story here, but suffice it to say you’re in a computer system and unlike Assassin’s Creed, you find out relatively early on. This is not reality but instead a work tool and the real world is not where you’ll be spending your time. The story is very interesting and well-written, but told in bits from dialogue with Jessie and Cait, and by audio clips and Post-it notes left behind by the scientists who created the world you’re in. There’s definitely a reason you’re going through all the strange levels you do, which makes them that much more gratifying, even though Viewfinder would be fun without them.
As you might have surmised by now, this is a puzzle experience in first person. You are in a world that has its own rules and you’ll have to discover them one by one as you explore. There’s no open world here, only small, contained areas where the researchers that designed the place lived and worked. Exploring their world builds an understanding of the kind of work they are doing and the strange perspectives and puzzles you encounter are part and parcel of that work.
Viewfinder is broken down into stages and worlds. Each world contains a number of stages and each stage is a single puzzle you’ll have to solve to proceed. This is where things get interesting because to solve the puzzles, you’ll need to toss away the very fabric of reality itself. That’s because photos and images can be overlaid directly on top of the real world, fundamentally changing the nature of your reality at the tap of a button. Have you ever held a picture up and looked at it to compare the world outside to the picture? Now imagine that by holding that picture up, it became the world outside, merged with it, and then you could step directly into the image itself! That’s how Viewfinder works.
Initially, you’ll be provided with photos that you can use to solve the puzzles, overlaying locked doors and blocked gates, stepping into photos to retrieve the items within, or walking directly through a children’s drawing or a video game screen to accomplish some task. It’s honestly hard at first to wrap your head around the puzzle design, but the genius of Viewfinder is that the entire game leads you to logical conclusions without outright holding your hand and that feeling of new discovery permeates every level of the game. It is genuinely fun to figure out the rules and how to apply them, activate and reach each transporter, and move further through each level.
The game evolves as you play as well. Once you’ve figured out the basic rules, new ones start to appear, new abilities start to arrive, and you’re pushed to constantly shift your thinking in order to solve increasingly complex puzzles. Eventually, you’ll end up with a camera, allowing you even more freedom, but photocopiers, speakers, and other items will let you further test your creativity as you learn to navigate the strange environments of Viewfinder. After a while, Cait also shows up and between Jennifer and Cait, you learn a fair bit about the world you’re making your way through and start to understand the value of your journey. What’s truly wild about Viewfinder is that it’s a heavily directed game with clever level design but you are able to impose your will upon it as you wish. Photos can literally be placed anywhere, radically changing the environment you are in or even the ground beneath your feet and you can use walls, ceilings, floors and even furniture and toys as part of your approach to activating each transporter.
Puzzles range from simple to hair-pulling frustration, but that’s not bad design at all. Instead it’s just challenging to think outside the box with minimal prompting. Depending on how your brain works, Viewfinder may be an incredible challenge or a walk in the part, but there’s no question that there’s a lot of inspiration from surrealists like M.C. Escher here. The solutions are not necessarily obvious, though once you get the hang of the design, some of the levels are so easy to solve that you can absolutely zip through a whole series of stages in a few minutes.
Don’t do that however, because there’s a lot of background information in each stage. Post-its, audio logs, and clever design elements abound here and you can sit and take in the sights in a number of places that allow you to take a moment and digest the ideas the game proposes as you wind your way through increasingly convoluted labyrinths. This isn’t just a game about solving puzzles (though you can absolutely do just that). Instead it’s very much a journey that you are on that allows us to reflect on the state of the real world and how people are thinking. Some games incorporate places to sit and take in the view as almost an afterthought, a “this is pretty so check it out” kind of thing. Viewfinder is different in that the somewhat minimalist art style doesn’t create the same type of sweeping vistas that other games might have but the placement of places to sit instead encourages contemplation, slowing down the pace and letting you feel the story more if you use them. It also doesn’t hurt that there are collectible sets in each level to find to help people spend a bit more time in each level but the designs alone are enough to do that most of the time and the achievements you get from some activities and collectibles are just a nice added bonus which reassure you that yes, some of the wild things you can do are in fact all by intentional design.
That design aesthetic sometimes feels like it’s straight out of a Salvatore Dali painting too. Angles meet abruptly, planes of buildings tilt drunkenly, and the floor might also need to become the ceiling or a wall in order for you to proceed. All of this is couched in other complexities as well. Filters change the way the world functions, drawings can become something you can walk through, and objects can be added to areas to change their very nature. Some are even only semi-permeable! This is all done with a fairly minimalist design. Some objects seem more real than others, some less so, and while there are details, they aren’t incredibly complex because tearing them apart at a structural level would be difficult with detailed texture mapping and complex polygons. That reliance on a malleable environment means that Viewpoint looks more simplistic much of the time in terms of detail but that also adds to the unique visual presentation of the game and ends up creating consistently beautiful scenery as the developers leaned heavily into the look of the game.
The music is mellow too, with each area having its own set of themes and tracks that suit both the ongoing plot and the individuality of the characters you are picking up the pieces of. Ambient sound effects sneak into the background in unexpected ways, but Viewfinder is a quiet game, so don’t expect any raucous music or huge musical pieces. Instead the quiet tunes suit the style of the game and both relax and inspire. In the hub of one stage, it’s constantly raining with a soft jazz slipping through with the drops. The late afternoon lighting adds to the effect to create a soft, introspective mood that ended up slowing gameplay to a halt just so we could sit and listen. It’s not often a subtle soundtrack manages to hit this hard but the game absolutely nails it and the way visuals and music complement each other is exemplary.
There aren’t really any bad things to say about Viewfinder. Some of the load times between stages were a bit slow, but that fits with the story of the game and they were only slow by comparison with other games that load nearly instantly. Sure, placing pictures can often lead to a sudden fall into nothing, but unlike other games where the levels are floating in the air, you can literally just rewind whenever you need to and that weird nervousness about falling with your character that some people get is not present here thanks to that system. Rewinds also have checkpoints that allow yo to quickly jump back if you make a mistake with your photo placement or encounter other issues, jumping you back through the level to try again with no penalties. The only exception is the final portion of the game which forces you to work under a crushing timer, something that doesn’t exist in the rest of the game, though if you fail enough times, you are given the option to ditch the timer, a nice nod from the devs for different types of players.
There’s really no question that Viewfinder is worth your time. It’s only a short journey at around 5-6 hours depending on your skill level with puzzle solving (a couple were real head-scratchers at first) but that handful of hours is incredibly satisfying. The portability of the Switch for playing a game like this is particularly fantastic because it’s almost like you’re out in the world of Viewfinder by looking through the screen like a photo in the game. Sure, it’s a short game but the immersion and quality make it more than worth the $25 price tag and honestly, this was more fun than some of the AAA stiff we play precisely because it was such a focused experience. Viewfinder is a must play that will be over quickly but will stay with you for a long time afterward. Definitely don’t sleep on it!
This review is based on a digital copy of Viewfinder provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and played equally well on both. Viewfinder is also available on Playstation and Xbox as well as on PC for Steam.
Nate Van Lindt has been a gamer since the days of yore (aka Commodore 64), and has played a bit of virtually everything out there. He's also an avid comic book collector, both vintage and current, and reads a fair amount of sci-fi and fantasy. On top of that, he watches a fair number of movies and TV shows as well. Oh, and he has a family, a full-time job, and lives somewhere in the urban wilds of Southwestern Ontario, Canada, foraging for old video cables and forgotten game soundtracks.