One of the most underrated genres in the gaming medium is puzzle games. At its best, each entry in the genre has a great way of testing your instincts, intuition, and intelligence. The Portal franchise is one of the most notable examples: each test chamber will challenge your problem-solving skills.
Sometimes a chamber can take minutes at a time to solve, but that feeling of euphoria once you figure it out is unmatched. Unfortunately, outside of titles such as Tetris or Bejeweled, which have found a new home on mobile devices, these types of games are becoming increasingly rare.
This is where Viewfinder comes in. Rather than being built on using portals or manipulating blocks, the game asks you to experiment with perspective. Whether it is optical illusions or photos taken on a Polaroid, you are constantly experimenting with how perspective can impact your surroundings. Viewfinder has a fantastic premise and gameplay loop, yet is unfortunately held back by some poor writing, a lacking narrative, and a major game-breaking bug.
Perspective is Everything
Viewfinder is a very peculiar puzzle game. For starters, it’s built on a very simple yet technically profound concept: what if you could insert the contents of a photo into the real world? For instance, say there’s a photo of a wall. If you turn it sideways, all you need to do is press a button, and insert the wall into the real world. You can then use it as a bridge.
This idea of a simple premise that can constantly be experimented with is what makes the puzzle genre so special. While Portal takes the idea of using two-way portals to its creative limits, Viewfinder does the same with photos. Each hub constantly asks you to experiment with the mechanic in new and creative ways.
You start the game with a character by the name of Jessie narrating your attempts to manipulate the various Polaroid pictures around you. You see a picture of a teleporter, materialize it, and suddenly you can access it. As you continue, the puzzles get more and more complex. Sometimes you’re asked to use the photos to create multiple batteries to power the teleporter, sometimes you have to move around photos to create platforms or bridges, and there are even cases where you’re able to take photos by yourself, rather than using pre-existing ones.
That last part in particular is where the game really starts to shine. About halfway through the game, you get access to a camera that allows you to take some of your own photos, similar to ones you’ve seen throughout the game. What I particularly love about this mechanic is that there’s more than one way to solve a problem. Maybe you can use a photo to break apart a wall and walk straight to the teleporter, maybe you can take a picture of the teleporter to materialize it right next to you. It’s so freeing to have that freedom to experiment with different possibilities.
From a gameplay perspective, Viewfinder is an absolute technical marvel. I can’t even begin to imagine what programming witchcraft Sad Owl Studios utilized in order to make this game possible. As the game continues, there are multiple hubs you visit, each with its own set of levels that are required to progress to the next area. Every time I entered a new hub area, I thought to myself, “Surely, there’s nothing else that the game can do to surprise me.” Yet every single time, I was proven wrong.
At later points, you’re asked to stand in front of cardboard pillars with snippets of images on them. If you stand in the right position, those images come together to make one singular photo, which materializes into reality. Multiple artistic styles can also be used to progress, whether it’s watercolors, a Looney Tunes-inspired aesthetic, or even a children’s drawing. Halfway through the game, you’re even asked to work around optical illusions that may hinder your progress. This isn’t even taking into consideration the late game, which is where the level design concepts somehow manage to escalate even further.
What helps is that the gameplay is simply enjoyable to play through. Even as the game further experimented with different mechanics and concepts, I never once got bored. That previously mentioned euphoria when solving a puzzle always remained, and I was always eager to solve more puzzles and to see what else the game had in store for me. I even went out of my way to do the optional levels when possible.
When looking purely at its gameplay, Viewfinder is a technical masterclass that pushes the boundaries of not just the genre but the entire gaming medium. It would be a perfect game, if not for the lackluster writing and narrative, plus some issues that detract from that “technical masterclass.”
“Did You Just Shift Reality?”
When it comes to implementing narratives in a puzzle game, developers usually take varying approaches. Sometimes they go for deep stories, such as with Portal, or perhaps the narrative falls into the background through subtle worldbuilding, a la Inside. Others, like The Stanley Parable, have a story that mostly serves as an excuse to motivate you as the story continues. Viewfinder mostly falls into that last category, yet the specific approach it ends up taking is somewhat disappointing.
The story of Viewfinder asks you to dive deep into an old simulation that may hold the secret to reversing the impacts of devastating fossil fuel consumption. The simulation, created by four scientists, is where you spend most of the game as you manipulate perspective to progress. There are many roadblocks on your journey to “save the world,” but there is a somewhat satisfying payoff at the end.
The issue is that the story is a bit too clichéd for my liking. I didn’t go into the game expecting a massive sprawling narrative, but with how the mechanics are spread out, I almost wish the developers had allowed the mechanics to speak for themselves. The interjections of narrative are more distracting than anything, and the actual payoff at the end feels far too close to other media that focus on the impacts of climate change and potentially reversing its effects.
On the subject of not allowing this game to speak for itself, the narration is rough and more obnoxious than anything. Having narration in a game is always a slippery slope. Sometimes you get a Glados from Portal, who is one of the most charming characters in gaming history, that constantly berates you in every test chamber, but only at the beginning and the end of the test. Sometimes you get a Mimir from God of War, who often tells stories that help to establish the world, and occasionally talks your ear off with advice in combat, which you don’t need.
The narration in Viewfinder, unfortunately, fits into that modern superhero movie style of dialogue. You’ll get a character who’s always trying to make quips every few seconds or saying lines that have become so common that they have crossed the line into parody. There’s a pretty infamous clip online of a YouTuber hearing the line “Hang on, did you just shift reality?!” early into the game and immediately choosing to mute the dialogue. At many points, I found myself wanting to do the same.
That said, the dialogue does get toned down as the game continues, and the character of CAIT, a mysterious cat who follows you on your journey, is a welcome change of pace. Yet even with CAIT, I sometimes wish that Viewfinder would let the player sit in the atmosphere. The sense of atmosphere throughout the game is absolutely brilliant, and I wish there were more opportunities to truly appreciate it.
That feeling of exploring this simulation that almost feels broken and distorted created this eerie feeling. There are a lot of moments where you see logs left by the scientists who created this world, or see the remnants of their work scattered around. This is a world that was once lived in but now feels abandoned, and you can feel that in all aspects of the design, especially with the floating and desolate skybox. However, I was never able to appreciate that sense of isolation because of how there would always be a character talking and interjecting with their thoughts, which was more annoying than it was endearing.
Then there are the technical issues. With a game like this, there are bound to be some problems here and there. Thankfully, Viewfinder actually didn’t have as many bugs as you perhaps would expect from a game with so many moving parts. That said, there was one extremely huge bug that completely prevented all progression.
At one point, you’re asked to take a picture of an optical illusion to create a battery to power a teleporter. If you stand too close to the optical illusion, the battery disappears, and you have to rewind. It’s worth noting that the rewind feature is actually a great function in case you encounter a barrier to progression.
Unfortunately, when you step away from the optical illusion and go to take a picture of it, nothing appears. There’s a completely blank space. The worst part is, upon further research, I found out that this bug originated on the PC version and was later fixed by the developers. It appears that they forgot to fix this bug in the port on the Xbox Series X|S.
All of these issues, unfortunately, paint a clear picture of Viewfinder as a whole. While this is a game with a fantastic premise and a great gameplay loop, it is unfortunately held back by its own shortcomings. As such, it’s hard to conclude whether or not this game is worth your time or not.
The Big Picture
Viewfinder is a hard game to truly evaluate. At its core, it is a brilliant puzzle game that pushes the genre to its creative limits in ways I never could’ve expected. It constantly hooked me with its creative design, ingenious concepts, and constantly evolving gameplay loop. At no point did that loop ever get tiresome, and halfway through, I felt a sense of yearning to play more games similar to Viewfinder.
With that said, everything I enjoyed about the game was constantly undercut by its issues. For one, there was the boring narrative or the irritating dialogue, which distracted from the otherwise brilliant atmosphere. Additionally, the massive glitch that softlocks the entire game ruined any excitement I had to continue the game even further. While the latter can be fixed, the former is distracting enough that it’s worth mentioning as a drawback.
At the end of the day, Viewfinder is a fun time, no more, no less. It’s a brilliant puzzle game, and if you’re a fan of the genre, I definitely recommend checking it out. However, if you’re someone coming off a game like Portal looking for a title with a deep story and great dialogue, this may not be the experience for you.
It all depends on what you’re looking for in a game like this. However, until that major softlocking glitch is fixed, I would recommend waiting a bit before purchasing Viewfinder on the Xbox Series X|S or when it releases later this year on Nintendo Switch. On other consoles, though, you’ll likely have a fun time. Plus, Viewfinder is available at the relatively reasonable price point of $24.99, which certainly helps. Just get ready to mute the dialogue if necessary.
Disclaimer: Thunderful Publishing provided a Xbox Series X|S copy of Viewfinder for review purposes.
