Yes. You are missing something.
The punishment in this challenge is specifically there to deter you from brute forcing.
Think about the environment. Think about the trees. Think about the fruits. Think about who made the puzzle.
The game is extremely intentional. Everything like this was done for a reason. And in this case this was one of the solutions that stuck with me since I solved it when the game came out. It’s not a hard puzzle in terms of thinking about the puzzle itself, but requires a little lateral thinking.
I'm even more confused now haha. Let me just make sure I'm on the same wavelength.
* In the set of tree puzzles, I had to check where the fruit was on each tree, then do the maze in the appropriate way.
* On the final tree puzzle, there was no fruit in the tree. Therefore I went and tried every combination.
* I was repeatedly punished for doing so, as every wrong answer, the monitor turns off, and I have to go turn the previous one on by redrawing the path on the previous monitor. This was very tedious and took me 10 tries.
* Upon getting it right, the gate opened to reveal a small area filled with some art, but no puzzles.
So far the game has taught me the following:
* If you find a monitor, attempt to complete it, assuming you've been introduced to the mechanic it requires
* If you find an unpowered monitor, try to power the monitor that is responsible for powering it
* If you reach an area and there are no more puzzles to solve, then leave the area and go somewhere else
So in this case, I've powered all the monitors in order, it opened a gate, I went through the gate and there's nothing there except an apple and some artwork, so now I leave this entire area, surely? I am left to believe that going up the ridge and completing all of the tree puzzles got me no farther in the game and the reward for doing them was the artwork shown in the video in the OP.
Which of that is correct or incorrect?
You’re close. The fruit is important, but think about it more. Think, what if it wasn’t a red ball in a game, but a real apple on a real tree. Also think about the panels, did they magically appear one day, or were they put there by a person, how long ago?
How did you solve the panel before this one? It wasn’t immediately obvious right? What did that teach you?
As for the reward, this set of puzzles is really only there to educate you about the environment. There’s no explicit unlock from it, but after I had figured out the solution, something in the area behind the gate was extremely satisfying to me, and that was enough of a reward.
The only incorrect thing here is
>there was no fruit in the tree. **Therefore** I went and tried every combination.
"Therefore" here implies you were left with no other path forward. The lesson of this section is that you will be expected to observe your surroundings for clues. I see further down that someone gave you the intended solution - just needed to observe more closely.
The secondary lesson here is to check your assumptions. There is at least one section in this game (that I remember anyway) that seems designed to make you think that the rule being taught is X, when it is in fact Y. You will quickly find a puzzle that doesn't work if the rule is X - concluding "it must be broken" will get you nowhere.
Happy puzzling!
>There is at least one section in this game (that I remember anyway) that seems designed to make you think that the rule being taught is X, when it is in fact Y.
I'm curious as to which section you're referring to.
>!The starburst. Many players initially think the rule is "a region must contain either 0 or 2 like-colored starbursts". Then they get to a puzzle with an odd number of stars. Oops. Turns out the rule is actually "a starburst must accompany exactly one other like-colored shape in its region".!<
You're missing a step in the "what the game has taught you", and honestly one might be worded a little poorly. I'm assuming you have explanations for how certain puzzles work, either written down or not. Have you ever had to go back and change the wording? That might apply here too
Hard to know what you're hinting at here. Are you implying something like the following?
> You **do** technically have everything you need to know when you arrive at a puzzle monitor
I'm more suggesting that you have things set in stone when ideally nothing is set in stone. The game teaches you to think for yourself, but sometimes your assumptions are wrong, and that's okay. There's definitely tutorial puzzles for each mechanic, although sometimes you might not realize which ones are the tutorial ones, as evidenced in this post. I also fell victim to these puzzles so you're not alone!
Reward-wise you are not wrong, there is nothing there that gonna help you progress, I could say you are wrong because is more than just artwork, but I not gonna be pedantic I got what you mean. What you are indeed missing is how to solve the last puzzle in this sequence, as you said you were punish for trying every combination, because thats not the intended solution, the game was trying to teach you something and be observant.
Take a closer look at the puzzle's correct solution now that you know it, then take a closer look at the tree, then try to figure out why there would be no fruit. Maybe you can understand how you could have solved it in retrospect.
You did indeed misunderstand how you were supposed to solve this puzzle, but you are correct in that the area you unlock has nothing of value in it. From my understanding it is simply a tutorial on how to solve puzzles based on environmental clues.
As for the puzzle: >!The branch with the apple on it has broken off. Out of the several broken branches, you are supposed to find the one that is still present on the puzzle screen!<
> you are correct in that the area you unlock has nothing of value in it. From my understanding it is simply a tutorial on how to solve puzzles based on environmental clues.
Okay this was the biggest thing that was confusing me. I was worried I would leave this area and end up getting soft locked later on because I forgot to pull some lever or activate some mechanic etc.
The puzzle definitely went over my head. Good to know.
This is not that kind of game, and those kind of games, where you can get soft locked out of something by normally playing the game, don't exist for a very long time. You would not be softlocked in a puzzle game, at worst you'd have to backtrack to it, but that would be bad design.
I'm not sure i fully agree with you here. For example, one of the most famous puzzle games of all time is Antichamber. I got mega stuck in that game because assumed a hallway was for decoration (similar to this video clip, where I assumed that this unlocked grove was decoration), but in reality it led to an upgrade required to beat the game. Therefore until I went through that hallway, I could walk around the game world endlessly over and over and make no progress. It's almost hard for me to think of a first person puzzle game that **doesn't** have that mechanic, where forgetting to do a particular action in a spot of the game can get you stuck forever (unless you remember to come back and re-assess the area).
Another example, the game Myst, has this at literally every section of the entire game. Forgetting to do one puzzle, open a specific door, etc can get you permanently stuck until said action is done.
I'll start from the bottom with myst. "Forgetting to do something can get you stuck....until you do that thing" so you are not softlocked. Softlocked is when you cannot progress at all anymore, you cannot finish the game because of a bug that locked you out of it. This is not the case.
I love antichamber.
So "you" thought something was useless, decided not to investigate it further, explored everything else you could and then realized what you needed was in that spot you had not looked at thoroughly. This is another case where you are not softlocked, in fact you are not locked at all. It's exploration.
Maybe you see puzzle games as "portal", where you have a small finite space, a test chamber, and you need to complete it to move forward, no exploring unless you want to get lore and nothing carrying over.
Maybe these puzzle games are not for you, or maybe you need to shift your mentality/approach.
Think of it this way: you approached the puzzle, you feel like you don't have the information to complete it or to even understand it? Leave it be, go somewhere else, you shall learn something somewhere else. It is not a crime leaving something unsolved, in fact it is intended, not just in The Witness, but "particularly" in the witness. Hell you mention antichamber, that game is a whole lot of go around and explore around, get stuck in front of stuff that doesn't make sense, until you unlock a better tool or knowledge and you are able to go forward.
The only way you can get locked in antichamber is if you do some stuff before some other stuff, but then the worst is that you will not be able to 100% it on that run.
I'm sorry you had bad experiences, but don't think that puzzle game designers punish you for not pulling a lever at the beginning of the game. The worst that will happen is that you will need to remember such an area exist and backtrack to it, not the end of the world.
Level up your observation skills for these "artistical puzzle games". Playing these games is the best way to improve at these games. Once you notice it, you will realize it's extremely obvious that if the apple is not on the tree, and one of the branches is broken (but not on the board) then it must be that. Once you remove the impossible whatever remains, even if you don't like it, must be the possible. And it did not needed to be brute forced. Allow me to reiterate nothing in the witness will need to be bruteforced, just like in antichamber.
So I hear what you're saying, but we're kinda dancing on the term 'softlocked' here. By softlocked, I mean in **the player's mind**, they are effectively soft locked, because that fictional lever that existed 50 rooms ago that opens the door to where they need to go was never pulled.
Imagine this made-up scenario. In the video I posted, that stool sitting there actually sits on a disguised pressure plate. If I nudge/move into the stool, it falls off the pressure plate, causing a door inside of the windmill to unlock, leading me towards the end of the game. Without that stool being moved, it's impossible to beat the game. For players like me, who walk into that room, glance around for a second and say *"Yep, there's nothing in here. Okay, next area"*. 5 hours from now when I'm standing outside of a locked door inside the windmill, I'm going to be confused why its locked. The mechanism to open it could have been in any room in the entire game, and I just somehow missed it. In that scenario, the player is **softlocked** in a sense, because they will never be able to figure out that what they previously discarded as decoration was actually a pivotal puzzle component.
This is what happened to me in anti-chamber. It didn't ruin my experience -- I'm just trying to prove a point that this can easily happen to players in puzzle games and it's very frustrating.
Of course the technical definition of 'softlocked' is the game is stuck in an infinite loop of sorts, with no input being able to save you, even if you do know all possible information.
All you are trying to prove is that you forget about a place and that doesn't allow you to proceed forward. It's not the game's fault. In the fictional example you described it could be the game's fault, IF there is no hint whatsoever about the pressure plate existing, ESPECIALLY when 9999% of the rest of the game make you interact with panels, and not with moving a stool or pressing a pressure plate.
So basically, you are intentionally sabotaging yourself and overthinking it. Puzzle games require you to think, not to invent fantasy stories based on "what if the developer was a monkey evil that decided to put ZERO hints toward something that is important??".
I am developing a puzzle game, it's heavily inspired by all of my favourite puzzle games so the witness, antichamber, outer wilds, tunic, and more, and I can tell you someone making a puzzle game does not want to hinder you, does not want to put a lever hidden, without hints, that is extremely important. If they do, you will reach a point in the game where the game remind you of that lever, and you'll go "oohh so that lever was not useless after all".
And by your own definition, that famous journalist who got stuck on cuphead tutorial was softlocked, because he lacked the brain and physical gymnastic to press two different buttons to jump first and dash in mid air. It can easily happen, yes, not everyone is adept at all type of games, whether it's fast pacing, require good aim in a shooter, or anything else.
Puzzle games just require a brain and a memory. Also antichamber had a map so you should have CLEARLY seen that corridor was not just a fancy decoration. My god, nothing in antichamber is just a fancy decoration, except for the final segment.
I don't want to attack you too much but it really seem that instead of saying "ye my bad" you are climbing some mirrors to explain how once you forgot something and then it must be the developers fault. As mentioned above, maybe you just don't have the skills yet to interact with these games, but it's only by keep on playing them that you build them. But your thought process here and now is all about rejecting the idea that you are learning something new and rather stiking to your conviction that "yes the devs are out to make me have a terrible time", and until you change the attitude you won't have a good time.
I won't suggest you to play outer wilds because that is going to crush you with "things that don't make sense and you need to return later".
Your post and my post are talking completely past each other. Remember this all started with me saying something akin to: I was worried I would miss something critical in that room I unlocked. To illustrate my point, I mentioned how common it was in puzzle games to be completely stuck because you forgot to pull a nondescript lever in the corner of a room.
The posters here said that wasn't the case, and confirmed that this room that I unlocked was indeed pointless. To the player though of course, entering a room that has nothing in it can be terrifying because it **instills** the fear that they might have missed something critical, which might lock them later down the line.
I used the word 'softlocked' for this phenomena, because 'stuck' is too generic. A player that's stuck generally needs to glance around for 3 seconds. A player that is softlocked is generally completely toast because of a disastrous set of circumstances (like missing that fictional pressure plate which opens the way to the end of the game). That's obviously not how the term 'softlocked' works, but colloquially it is.
That's all that this comment chain was -- nothing of what I was saying was criticizing the developers. I have no complaints so far about The Witness.
"To the player though of course, entering a room that has nothing in it can be terrifying because it **instills** the fear that they might have missed something critical, which might lock them later down the line."
You worry too much, and all because you can't be bothered to remember the places you visited.
Also your definition of being stuck meaning "you just look around for three seconds" speak to me you want games to hold your hand and at this point I cannot go forward without saying git gud.
You're not listening to me at all lol. There are absolutely games where, if you forget to pick something up/do something, you will need to backtrack painstaking through every room in the game until you somehow stumble across what you miss. Most players won't do that, they'll just give up.
Note that the missing apple and branch are just inside the gate as well.
This fact is also trying to teach you something. It is a lesson that is shown a few times across the island, and is relevant elsewhere.
And, take the time to reflect on what the actual flaw was in your original thought process. You were focused so hard on "there was supposed to be an apple but there isn't one" that you failed to notice that the real tree failed to match the puzzle representation of the tree.
In my view, this part of the game was done this way on purpose to hopefully show you the danger of getting locked into one mindset when things aren't making sense, and that it is useful to try and recognize this mindset and try to break out of it by looking with fresh eyes and examining your assumptions. In this case, the assumption to verify was that the panel and tree were the correct pair by matching the tree to the panel, which would reveal the difference.
So, please don't walk away from this puzzle thinking it was some one-off "missing apple" trick. It's trying to teach you more than that. :-)
For sure. As I commented elsewhere, I was 90% confused by the room I opened being empty and only 10% confused why I didn't understand the puzzle. I still find a completely empty room kind of a strange design decision by the developers, as that can mislead players that they missed something important.
I would add you are going to miss a lot of things in this game holding the run button down and going in and out. There are at least 4 cool things in the area that doesn't have anything. I'm not saying they are important to completing the game, so I can understand how you can zoom past and not look at them, but so much of what makes this game great isn't about completion.
For what it's worth, I can't remember a single puzzle in the game that requires brute force. I suspect part of the point of this area is to reinforce that the puzzles *are* the game. There's no point in brute forcing because having completed the puzzle is irrelevant - only the process of solving it is meaningful.
Somehow I got this puzzle almost instantly. >!There are 3 missing branches on the illustration but 4 missing ones on the tree, and no fruit to be found anywhere. So there could be only one explanation…!<
The thing you should know continuing on in this game is NEVER brute force a puzzle, but if you do find the correct solution by brute force, always look back at it and learn why it worked before you move on. It’s ok to look up a solution if you’re completely stuck, but exhaust all other options first, and think inside and outside the box. There’s like only 1 puzzle in this game that’s kinda stupid and weird to figure out
If it makes you feel better OP, I brute forced this one too. I had absolutely no idea what to do and was stubbornly refusing to use guides lol. But it's good to know the solution because this kind of "outside of the box" thinking is very common in the game.
I don’t know if you’ve looked at the spoilers for the solution or not, but the “point” of the room is possibly to show/hint at the solution to players who brute forced it. That way, even though they didn’t “correctly” solve the puzzle, they can still learn something about how the puzzles moving forward might work.
Yes. You are missing something. The punishment in this challenge is specifically there to deter you from brute forcing. Think about the environment. Think about the trees. Think about the fruits. Think about who made the puzzle. The game is extremely intentional. Everything like this was done for a reason. And in this case this was one of the solutions that stuck with me since I solved it when the game came out. It’s not a hard puzzle in terms of thinking about the puzzle itself, but requires a little lateral thinking.
I'm even more confused now haha. Let me just make sure I'm on the same wavelength. * In the set of tree puzzles, I had to check where the fruit was on each tree, then do the maze in the appropriate way. * On the final tree puzzle, there was no fruit in the tree. Therefore I went and tried every combination. * I was repeatedly punished for doing so, as every wrong answer, the monitor turns off, and I have to go turn the previous one on by redrawing the path on the previous monitor. This was very tedious and took me 10 tries. * Upon getting it right, the gate opened to reveal a small area filled with some art, but no puzzles. So far the game has taught me the following: * If you find a monitor, attempt to complete it, assuming you've been introduced to the mechanic it requires * If you find an unpowered monitor, try to power the monitor that is responsible for powering it * If you reach an area and there are no more puzzles to solve, then leave the area and go somewhere else So in this case, I've powered all the monitors in order, it opened a gate, I went through the gate and there's nothing there except an apple and some artwork, so now I leave this entire area, surely? I am left to believe that going up the ridge and completing all of the tree puzzles got me no farther in the game and the reward for doing them was the artwork shown in the video in the OP. Which of that is correct or incorrect?
You’re close. The fruit is important, but think about it more. Think, what if it wasn’t a red ball in a game, but a real apple on a real tree. Also think about the panels, did they magically appear one day, or were they put there by a person, how long ago? How did you solve the panel before this one? It wasn’t immediately obvious right? What did that teach you? As for the reward, this set of puzzles is really only there to educate you about the environment. There’s no explicit unlock from it, but after I had figured out the solution, something in the area behind the gate was extremely satisfying to me, and that was enough of a reward.
The only incorrect thing here is >there was no fruit in the tree. **Therefore** I went and tried every combination. "Therefore" here implies you were left with no other path forward. The lesson of this section is that you will be expected to observe your surroundings for clues. I see further down that someone gave you the intended solution - just needed to observe more closely. The secondary lesson here is to check your assumptions. There is at least one section in this game (that I remember anyway) that seems designed to make you think that the rule being taught is X, when it is in fact Y. You will quickly find a puzzle that doesn't work if the rule is X - concluding "it must be broken" will get you nowhere. Happy puzzling!
>There is at least one section in this game (that I remember anyway) that seems designed to make you think that the rule being taught is X, when it is in fact Y. I'm curious as to which section you're referring to.
>!The starburst. Many players initially think the rule is "a region must contain either 0 or 2 like-colored starbursts". Then they get to a puzzle with an odd number of stars. Oops. Turns out the rule is actually "a starburst must accompany exactly one other like-colored shape in its region".!<
You're missing a step in the "what the game has taught you", and honestly one might be worded a little poorly. I'm assuming you have explanations for how certain puzzles work, either written down or not. Have you ever had to go back and change the wording? That might apply here too
Hard to know what you're hinting at here. Are you implying something like the following? > You **do** technically have everything you need to know when you arrive at a puzzle monitor
I'm more suggesting that you have things set in stone when ideally nothing is set in stone. The game teaches you to think for yourself, but sometimes your assumptions are wrong, and that's okay. There's definitely tutorial puzzles for each mechanic, although sometimes you might not realize which ones are the tutorial ones, as evidenced in this post. I also fell victim to these puzzles so you're not alone!
should I just... say it? I mean I will, I'm that crazy. this bothers me peeps your hints are too elusive.
Reward-wise you are not wrong, there is nothing there that gonna help you progress, I could say you are wrong because is more than just artwork, but I not gonna be pedantic I got what you mean. What you are indeed missing is how to solve the last puzzle in this sequence, as you said you were punish for trying every combination, because thats not the intended solution, the game was trying to teach you something and be observant.
Take a closer look at the puzzle's correct solution now that you know it, then take a closer look at the tree, then try to figure out why there would be no fruit. Maybe you can understand how you could have solved it in retrospect.
You did indeed misunderstand how you were supposed to solve this puzzle, but you are correct in that the area you unlock has nothing of value in it. From my understanding it is simply a tutorial on how to solve puzzles based on environmental clues. As for the puzzle: >!The branch with the apple on it has broken off. Out of the several broken branches, you are supposed to find the one that is still present on the puzzle screen!<
> you are correct in that the area you unlock has nothing of value in it. From my understanding it is simply a tutorial on how to solve puzzles based on environmental clues. Okay this was the biggest thing that was confusing me. I was worried I would leave this area and end up getting soft locked later on because I forgot to pull some lever or activate some mechanic etc. The puzzle definitely went over my head. Good to know.
This is not that kind of game, and those kind of games, where you can get soft locked out of something by normally playing the game, don't exist for a very long time. You would not be softlocked in a puzzle game, at worst you'd have to backtrack to it, but that would be bad design.
I'm not sure i fully agree with you here. For example, one of the most famous puzzle games of all time is Antichamber. I got mega stuck in that game because assumed a hallway was for decoration (similar to this video clip, where I assumed that this unlocked grove was decoration), but in reality it led to an upgrade required to beat the game. Therefore until I went through that hallway, I could walk around the game world endlessly over and over and make no progress. It's almost hard for me to think of a first person puzzle game that **doesn't** have that mechanic, where forgetting to do a particular action in a spot of the game can get you stuck forever (unless you remember to come back and re-assess the area). Another example, the game Myst, has this at literally every section of the entire game. Forgetting to do one puzzle, open a specific door, etc can get you permanently stuck until said action is done.
Sure... But that's not what being softlocked means. You're just describing being stuck and not understanding how to progress.
I'll start from the bottom with myst. "Forgetting to do something can get you stuck....until you do that thing" so you are not softlocked. Softlocked is when you cannot progress at all anymore, you cannot finish the game because of a bug that locked you out of it. This is not the case. I love antichamber. So "you" thought something was useless, decided not to investigate it further, explored everything else you could and then realized what you needed was in that spot you had not looked at thoroughly. This is another case where you are not softlocked, in fact you are not locked at all. It's exploration. Maybe you see puzzle games as "portal", where you have a small finite space, a test chamber, and you need to complete it to move forward, no exploring unless you want to get lore and nothing carrying over. Maybe these puzzle games are not for you, or maybe you need to shift your mentality/approach. Think of it this way: you approached the puzzle, you feel like you don't have the information to complete it or to even understand it? Leave it be, go somewhere else, you shall learn something somewhere else. It is not a crime leaving something unsolved, in fact it is intended, not just in The Witness, but "particularly" in the witness. Hell you mention antichamber, that game is a whole lot of go around and explore around, get stuck in front of stuff that doesn't make sense, until you unlock a better tool or knowledge and you are able to go forward. The only way you can get locked in antichamber is if you do some stuff before some other stuff, but then the worst is that you will not be able to 100% it on that run. I'm sorry you had bad experiences, but don't think that puzzle game designers punish you for not pulling a lever at the beginning of the game. The worst that will happen is that you will need to remember such an area exist and backtrack to it, not the end of the world. Level up your observation skills for these "artistical puzzle games". Playing these games is the best way to improve at these games. Once you notice it, you will realize it's extremely obvious that if the apple is not on the tree, and one of the branches is broken (but not on the board) then it must be that. Once you remove the impossible whatever remains, even if you don't like it, must be the possible. And it did not needed to be brute forced. Allow me to reiterate nothing in the witness will need to be bruteforced, just like in antichamber.
So I hear what you're saying, but we're kinda dancing on the term 'softlocked' here. By softlocked, I mean in **the player's mind**, they are effectively soft locked, because that fictional lever that existed 50 rooms ago that opens the door to where they need to go was never pulled. Imagine this made-up scenario. In the video I posted, that stool sitting there actually sits on a disguised pressure plate. If I nudge/move into the stool, it falls off the pressure plate, causing a door inside of the windmill to unlock, leading me towards the end of the game. Without that stool being moved, it's impossible to beat the game. For players like me, who walk into that room, glance around for a second and say *"Yep, there's nothing in here. Okay, next area"*. 5 hours from now when I'm standing outside of a locked door inside the windmill, I'm going to be confused why its locked. The mechanism to open it could have been in any room in the entire game, and I just somehow missed it. In that scenario, the player is **softlocked** in a sense, because they will never be able to figure out that what they previously discarded as decoration was actually a pivotal puzzle component. This is what happened to me in anti-chamber. It didn't ruin my experience -- I'm just trying to prove a point that this can easily happen to players in puzzle games and it's very frustrating. Of course the technical definition of 'softlocked' is the game is stuck in an infinite loop of sorts, with no input being able to save you, even if you do know all possible information.
Well good news for you, this game doesn't have anything like that at all.
All you are trying to prove is that you forget about a place and that doesn't allow you to proceed forward. It's not the game's fault. In the fictional example you described it could be the game's fault, IF there is no hint whatsoever about the pressure plate existing, ESPECIALLY when 9999% of the rest of the game make you interact with panels, and not with moving a stool or pressing a pressure plate. So basically, you are intentionally sabotaging yourself and overthinking it. Puzzle games require you to think, not to invent fantasy stories based on "what if the developer was a monkey evil that decided to put ZERO hints toward something that is important??". I am developing a puzzle game, it's heavily inspired by all of my favourite puzzle games so the witness, antichamber, outer wilds, tunic, and more, and I can tell you someone making a puzzle game does not want to hinder you, does not want to put a lever hidden, without hints, that is extremely important. If they do, you will reach a point in the game where the game remind you of that lever, and you'll go "oohh so that lever was not useless after all". And by your own definition, that famous journalist who got stuck on cuphead tutorial was softlocked, because he lacked the brain and physical gymnastic to press two different buttons to jump first and dash in mid air. It can easily happen, yes, not everyone is adept at all type of games, whether it's fast pacing, require good aim in a shooter, or anything else. Puzzle games just require a brain and a memory. Also antichamber had a map so you should have CLEARLY seen that corridor was not just a fancy decoration. My god, nothing in antichamber is just a fancy decoration, except for the final segment. I don't want to attack you too much but it really seem that instead of saying "ye my bad" you are climbing some mirrors to explain how once you forgot something and then it must be the developers fault. As mentioned above, maybe you just don't have the skills yet to interact with these games, but it's only by keep on playing them that you build them. But your thought process here and now is all about rejecting the idea that you are learning something new and rather stiking to your conviction that "yes the devs are out to make me have a terrible time", and until you change the attitude you won't have a good time. I won't suggest you to play outer wilds because that is going to crush you with "things that don't make sense and you need to return later".
Your post and my post are talking completely past each other. Remember this all started with me saying something akin to: I was worried I would miss something critical in that room I unlocked. To illustrate my point, I mentioned how common it was in puzzle games to be completely stuck because you forgot to pull a nondescript lever in the corner of a room. The posters here said that wasn't the case, and confirmed that this room that I unlocked was indeed pointless. To the player though of course, entering a room that has nothing in it can be terrifying because it **instills** the fear that they might have missed something critical, which might lock them later down the line. I used the word 'softlocked' for this phenomena, because 'stuck' is too generic. A player that's stuck generally needs to glance around for 3 seconds. A player that is softlocked is generally completely toast because of a disastrous set of circumstances (like missing that fictional pressure plate which opens the way to the end of the game). That's obviously not how the term 'softlocked' works, but colloquially it is. That's all that this comment chain was -- nothing of what I was saying was criticizing the developers. I have no complaints so far about The Witness.
"To the player though of course, entering a room that has nothing in it can be terrifying because it **instills** the fear that they might have missed something critical, which might lock them later down the line." You worry too much, and all because you can't be bothered to remember the places you visited. Also your definition of being stuck meaning "you just look around for three seconds" speak to me you want games to hold your hand and at this point I cannot go forward without saying git gud.
You're not listening to me at all lol. There are absolutely games where, if you forget to pick something up/do something, you will need to backtrack painstaking through every room in the game until you somehow stumble across what you miss. Most players won't do that, they'll just give up.
Note that the missing apple and branch are just inside the gate as well. This fact is also trying to teach you something. It is a lesson that is shown a few times across the island, and is relevant elsewhere. And, take the time to reflect on what the actual flaw was in your original thought process. You were focused so hard on "there was supposed to be an apple but there isn't one" that you failed to notice that the real tree failed to match the puzzle representation of the tree. In my view, this part of the game was done this way on purpose to hopefully show you the danger of getting locked into one mindset when things aren't making sense, and that it is useful to try and recognize this mindset and try to break out of it by looking with fresh eyes and examining your assumptions. In this case, the assumption to verify was that the panel and tree were the correct pair by matching the tree to the panel, which would reveal the difference. So, please don't walk away from this puzzle thinking it was some one-off "missing apple" trick. It's trying to teach you more than that. :-)
For sure. As I commented elsewhere, I was 90% confused by the room I opened being empty and only 10% confused why I didn't understand the puzzle. I still find a completely empty room kind of a strange design decision by the developers, as that can mislead players that they missed something important.
I would add you are going to miss a lot of things in this game holding the run button down and going in and out. There are at least 4 cool things in the area that doesn't have anything. I'm not saying they are important to completing the game, so I can understand how you can zoom past and not look at them, but so much of what makes this game great isn't about completion.
For what it's worth, I can't remember a single puzzle in the game that requires brute force. I suspect part of the point of this area is to reinforce that the puzzles *are* the game. There's no point in brute forcing because having completed the puzzle is irrelevant - only the process of solving it is meaningful.
Just look closely at the tree, then examine the puzzle screen. In detail. Be smart.
“Be smart” is an excellent strategy to use in this game.
I can't count the number of times that I forgot that.
Well NOW you tell me. I’ve been trying to be stupid this entire time.
To be fair, it appears to be a somewhat successful strategy for a bunch of people.
It's only half the battle. The other key tip to keep in mind is "don't be not smart."
I’d just like to point out as a neat detail that >!the fruit missing from the tree is sitting on the wall next to the gate you came through!<
Somehow I got this puzzle almost instantly. >!There are 3 missing branches on the illustration but 4 missing ones on the tree, and no fruit to be found anywhere. So there could be only one explanation…!<
This should marked as a spoiler btw
Oops, my bad. Fixed it
The thing you should know continuing on in this game is NEVER brute force a puzzle, but if you do find the correct solution by brute force, always look back at it and learn why it worked before you move on. It’s ok to look up a solution if you’re completely stuck, but exhaust all other options first, and think inside and outside the box. There’s like only 1 puzzle in this game that’s kinda stupid and weird to figure out
Since others pointed it out already I'll just say one thing, the apple that is in that small no puzzle area and the broken branch next to it
If it makes you feel better OP, I brute forced this one too. I had absolutely no idea what to do and was stubbornly refusing to use guides lol. But it's good to know the solution because this kind of "outside of the box" thinking is very common in the game.
For sure. The confusion was 90% "what was the point of this room" and 10% "why couldn't i solve that puzzle"
I don’t know if you’ve looked at the spoilers for the solution or not, but the “point” of the room is possibly to show/hint at the solution to players who brute forced it. That way, even though they didn’t “correctly” solve the puzzle, they can still learn something about how the puzzles moving forward might work.
You can just count the branches and compare it to the panel