20 Best Indie Games Of The Decade
3. The Witness
The sheer scope of what Jonathan Blow achieved with his followup to Braid is just as mind-melting, but in an entirely fresh, spiritually uplifting way.
See, you're playing a lost soul awakening on an island of puzzles. The island is luscious, overflowing in vegetation and old European architecture, but gameplay boils down to connecting two dots on a grid.
These grids are scattered across the whole island, and you can tackle them in any order. There's no real "difficulty curve", and each player will "see" different patterns, based on how your own mind works.
The Witness is geared to dissect the very way we take in information, language and how to process the world around us.
The rule for a given section of the island can range from realising it's based on colour, to denoting pitch from surroundings, to all sorts of different symbols and icons that won't "click" until things mentally slot into place.
It's hard to adequately convey the genius of how The Witness reveals itself without playing, but rest assured, it's an experience you couldn't do anywhere other than video games.