10 Times Developers Abused Players To Make Better Video Games

3. The Witness's Swamp

What They Did: Understanding how The Witness works, what it means and what creator Jonathan Blow was going for, involves deprogramming the very way you think about language. It involves - in much the same way Braid forced you to rethink the progression of time - approaching various puzzle solutions from a number of abstract, unique points of view.

The entire game is teaching you to "read" the environment and factor simple shapes into grander designs - itself a comment on the function and enlightenment at the heart of various religious teachings or wider commentaries on life itself. It's heavy stuff, but your first taste of how cognitively messy things can get comes during the Swamp level, where one particular Tetronimo puzzle will likely break the majority of players.

Why You Had To Endure It: Again, the previous areas - and granted, you CAN go anywhere, but the bright swamp is a notable draw - fell back on pretty easy ideas that are simple to process. Mirror puzzles, ones involving separating colours, yet it's the Swamp where you'll be genuinely stumped for some considerable time - until you learn to let go and repproach from a completely new methodology.