Finally, on 27th July, Blow noted the “whole industry is having a hard time” and then, when asked how many of his development team are working on the compiler for programming language Jai, Blow replied: “None, because we can’t afford to pay anyone because the sales are bad.”
Oof. I don’t like Jon Blow, but I do like Braid. Sad to see nobody really cares about it anymore.
Braid was a solid game all its own, and a remaster certainly wasn’t needed (yet or at all). The Witness was freaking phenomenal, and I hope there will be other iterations of games like it to come. Blow can go blow away though. He’s an anti-vaxxer and Covid conspiracy theorist, and that is something I can write off as anyone worth acknowledging. Plenty of other amazing games in the sea.
I appreciate letting me know about the anti-vaxxer conspiracy stuff. Makes me feel better about never finishing The Witness (not because I didn’t enjoy it, but because whatever filters were on there, it made me cripplingly motion sick for hours every time I played it).
I never finished The Witness either, but I kinda wished I would have, as the philosophical nature and puzzles were both very engrossing, such a unique take on the “walking simulator” style of game. Granted, it was much more than that, and I’d actually compare it closer to Myst and Obduction than such. The puzzles were repetitive but just incentive enough to be engaging and twisted in just the right way, though they got devilishly difficult later on. Sucks about the motion sickness though. Wonder if there was an .ini swing which could’ve turned the filter off?
Though, all in all, this was definitely a difficult “separate the art from the artist” scenario.
Yeah, I had the same reaction - The puzzles were definitely “learn how to think a new way,” my favorite kind. I ended my play on one perspective-shifting pattern puzzle that I was so close to beating, so I kept pushing myself through the motion sickness, and just ended up disabled on the bed feeling ill and unable to move for two hours (without completing the puzzle).
I tried a bunch of things - permanent reticle in center of screen, disabling walk shake, etc. I still play high-motion FPS shooters with no issue. It’s just some games (The Forest was another). I am guessing it’s a middleware-introduced visual filter that adds 15-25ms delay to screen latency, just enough to mess with inner ear visual/motion sync in sensitive people.