Viewfinder REVIEW - A Portal-like?
163Viewfinder is a game about taking polaroid photos and then, magically, materializing them back in the world at the exact spot you hold the photograph to. Does this novel mechanic carry an entire game?
#Viewfindergame #indiegame #Viewfinder
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Video by: Tom Arnold
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Viewfinder immediately blew me away, it’s a game about taking polaroid photos and then, magically, materializing them back in the world at the exact spot you hold the photograph to--and it’s not only incredible but also allows for some ingenious puzzles, like having to photograph a bridge and placing it down elsewhere to cross a gap or using it to slice a hole in an existing wall as the new geometry slices through the old one like a hot knife through butter. But can this novel mechanic carry an entire game?
The photo mechanic works SO well that it’s easy to take for granted how impossible it seems--and I can only imagine the coding nightmare it must have been.
The game starts off simpler by giving you pre-taken photos to play around with, but it’s not long before you’re given the freedom of taking your own photos with a special camera, where you’ll have to keep in mind things like composition and distance from the object, as it directly affects how it’ll appear when it’s rematerialized back in the world, such as ensuring a new platform is within jumping distance. And considering you can even rotate photos before deploying them, there can be a lot of creativity involved in figuring out how to reach the teleporter at the end of the level. Thankfully, the game is very forgiving with a rewind feature that allows for very quick do-overs. Even better, you can instantly rewind to any key point, that the game automatically logs based on when you took or placed a photo.
Now the goal of each level is to find and power-up a teleporter that’ll take you to the next stage. The catch is that powering them up is usually a puzzle in and of itself. . It might be as simple as placing a battery on the nearby Power Pad. Or it might need multiple batteries, in which you might find yourself taking photos of batteries to duplicate them, or possibly even using a photocopier to copy the photos, therefore making even more batteries!.
Later on there are powered filament tubes that are cleverly designed to break if they’re entirely contained within your photo This restriction leads to some photography challenges to try and fit everything in one shot, and clever puzzles that require linking power together.
Viewfinder feels relaxing at first, but it eventually throws in timers to add some light pressure, although it never gets too intense…mostly.
The small level size combined with the limited amount of photos you can take, ensures the amount of options never feels overwhelming, even if even when puzzles demand some creative thinking like photocopying specific elements or even taking photos OF photos Although there times you might be able to cheese your way through.
For better or worse, the game takes away the camera for a period of time near the end of the game, and focuses instead on puzzles with a colour filter into the world, that you need to be match up with another colour pane to move on.
It’s a weird change of pace, but The achievement for doing it is: “I’ve had my fill(ter)” and yeah, I did as I just wanted to go back to the camera! There were also some trickier 2d perspective puzzles in the game and while not as intuitive at times, they did push me more to figure out an answer.
Now hear me out: We had a lot of time during the Viewfinder review period, which made me worried that the developers knew I’d get stuck on certain puzzles for hours. Which on the one hand was nice that I never truly felt and impossibly stuck. But on the other, I wouldn’t have minded a bit more of a difficulty curve , at least on the optional challenge levels, Since I found myself usually figuring out a puzzle in 2-3 minutes, the “Aha’s” and sense of accomplishment didn’t feel as high as it has in other puzzle-focused game Thankfully, The last world is pretty fantastic.
The story does end in a satisfying way with a cool final level that’s both unique and offers a good challenge, and it serves both the gameplay and story well. And the fact that it has a positive message that I connected with about the environment is the cherry on top, although I preferred hearing the scientists stories more than hearing from the cat by the end. ,
Overall, Viewfinder’s core mechanic is outstanding and brilliantly polished, but I feel it could have done even more to push its limits. The story and setup was well done and kept me wanting to find out the end of the mystery, but does f-stop short of the excellence of something like Portal. While It didn’t end up as the surefire game of the year contender I hoped it would be, I still liked Viewfinder a lot as it offers a polished experience featuring a unique mechanic I haven’t seen anywhere else