Jonathan Blow’s The Witness

with Jason Boyd (host), Jeremy Andriano, Patrick Dolan

Broadcast date: 14 February, 2023

Writer: Jason Boyd

Producer: Patrick Dolan

In The Witness, the player wanders around a mysterious and gorgeous island solving increasingly complex line-drawing puzzles. But is that all there is to the game? What about the statues and audio logs that are to be found all over the island and the videos that can be watched in the theatre beneath the windmill? Is there a story or message in The Witness?

All audio clips in the podcast quoted from The Witness (puzzle screens sound effect, environmental puzzles sound effect, walking on/in the shipwreck, audio log of an Albert Einstein quotation, excerpt from Brian Moriarty’s windmill theatre film).

Sources and Resources:

• The Witness Wiki
• Frostglow ASMR, “The Witness: all audio logs”
• Novaphyer, The Windmill Theatre Videos
• Brian Moriarty’s “The Secret of Psalm 46” (from the windmill theatre)
• List of statues in The Witness: https://the-keep.fandom.com/wiki/Statues 
• Joseph Anderson, “The Witness: A Great Game You Shouldn’t Play”
• Electron Dance, “The Unbearable Now: An Interpretation of The Witness”
• Keith Ballard, “Let’s Play The Witness” 
• Jackson Wagner, “Examining The Witness: A Philosophical Longplay”
• Game Maker’s Toolkit, “How Jonathan Blow Designs a Puzzle”
• Mitch Alexander, Slow Games Movement Manifesto (2018)
• Artur Ganszyniec, “In Praise of Slow Games” (2019)
• First Person Scholar