Viewfinder

Sad Owl Studios has delivered a puzzling experience that's both instantly approachable and inventive enough to keep you guessing throughout. Viewfinder is simply wonderful – a breath of fresh air that shouldn't be ignored.

Viewfinder is a beautiful and heartfelt journey that challenges the player in different ways. Perspective means everything in this game, and the challenges you face will give you a whole different view on puzzle solving games. Each puzzle is interesting and never feels repetitive or overly complicated. This game is a ton of fun, I can’t recommend it enough.

Viewfinder seems harmless, like a little game that you'd happily put on the pile of cool games you'd like to play some day. But that would be a mistake. It offers much more than a simple puzzle game experience. Viewfinder is innovative in more ways than one. It tries to get a number of messages across, it tries things, it leaves us free while keeping us captivated by its universe, and it offers a fascinating visual journey to anyone willing to look beyond what the main art direction suggests. Viewfinder isn't just a fun game, it's a real little nugget. No matter how you look at it.

Viewfinder was the game I needed. It goes alongside those narrative puzzles with a strong emotional and playful impact such as Superliminal, The Stanley Parable, Mainfold Garden and others that I won't list otherwise the review becomes a "Top Ten Best Video Games Ever". And just like the latter Viewfinder finds a mechanic to revolve around and tells a story that hits and leaves its mark, teaching anyone who plays video games out there that there's no use shooting high with a thousand skill trees or additional options that no one will use never, except to add color when doing the marketing campaign. The video game is made of good playful and narrative design and a small spark is enough to transform a sketch of an idea made on a napkin into a real work of art. Just send a specific message to the user, a message that doesn't matter if it's shared or not because it's your personal message and to do that you have to make sure that each piece fits well with the other like in a perfect machine. Viewfinder's message is clear: the planet is dying and we are killing it, it's time to do something about it. Maybe we should listen to them.

Viewfinder is a smart puzzler that pushes the boundaries between reality and challenge, building both beautiful and creative levels.

This is a truly fantastic puzzle game, one that stands out in a saturated genre and leaves the player with a sense of wonder and amazement after every level.

Viewfinder is as serine as it is challenging. From the very beginning, this game will captivate you through its unique image manipulation puzzle design and narrative. The explorable areas complement the experience as the situation becomes more complex as the narrative is revealed. The clever and unique puzzle designs set the stage for a very special adventure.

Viewfinder’s unique gameplay mechanics encourage you to think outside the box, and the aesthetically pleasing spaces, intriguing lore, and surreal image manipulation left me wanting more. Despite its brevity, Viewfinder is a solid puzzle game that represents an elegant step forward in the puzzle genre.

Viewfinder’s shining achievement is its brilliantly executed set of reality-bending mechanics that are such fun to play with that its tenuous story and relatively simple puzzles are easy to overlook.

With so many ideas in visual and level design, Viewfinder is a must-have title for any puzzle game enthusiast.

Innovative puzzle design and truly astonishing visual trickery make this puzzle game a must-play—even if it doesn't quite have the space to make the most of its best ideas.

Viewfinder doesn’t have the tonal mastery of an exploration game like Myst, but it’s puzzles are second to none in the genre. You should definitely challenge yourself with Viewfinder, the most beguiling puzzle game of the year.

While the story is pretty obvious from the jump, I still enjoyed it and the great sense of atmosphere that abounds — I was eager to dive deeper, and the flexibility of the puzzles always made me feel clever. In that sense, Viewfinder is an experience I’d readily recommend to anyone, whether they’re a puzzle aficionado or not.

Requiring creativity and spatial imagination, this puzzle game draws you in from the very first minutes. If only it told its story better and dared to be more difficult and bolder, it would be nearly perfect.

Viewfinder satisfied my recent puzzle curiosity and my search for new mechanics. Perfectly executed.

If you like puzzles and games with "original" mechanics, you should try Viewfinder. Its premise is as unique as fun. Too bad it's a bit short and doesn't reach its full potential until almost the end. Maybe the studio in keeping it for sequel? I hope so!

Viewfinder is a first-person puzzle game that never stops surprising and impacting with its gameplay, but it lacks depth and its duration is short. One of the most original and interesting video games of the year, essential for lovers of puzzle games.

Viewfinder is a unique puzzle game that both experienced problem solvers and fresh-faced novices will find enjoyment in. Filled with several hours of fun and plenty of hidden treasures to reveal, there is no doubt that Viewfinder is setting a new standard for creativity and innovation that should raise the bar of players' expectations out of games adjacent to it in the genre.

Viewfinder is a wonderful demonstration of what games can be and how they can be played. While its story really struggles to come through, the brilliant puzzles, lovely world, and ingenious play more than compensate.

Even though its driving motivation didn’t resonate strongly with me, this might be one of the most refreshingly inventive puzzle adventures to come out in recent memory.

At its debut, the small Scottish team Sad Owl Studios hit the mark by offering a puzzle game like rarely seen before, where the solution to each enigma is a point of view. The decision to focus the entire formula on photographs and perspective exposed Viewfinder to various risks, but the studio managed to create a puzzle-based adventure with very few flaws, all of which revolve around its short duration and the difficulty of the puzzles, which only in some cases truly put us to the test.

Viewfinder is an innovative puzzle game with authentic ideas and a unique way of tackling them. However, it has shied away from some of its more unique ideas and stuck mainly with camera-based puzzles.

Viewfinder is magical, then, but also short-lived. Even with the optional puzzles, you can easily finish the whole thing over two or three evenings, and it never quite capitalises on the promise of the camera, the promise of getting lost inside picture after picture after picture. Each level is bespoke, tiny; although the very final sequence, a timed dash through puzzle after puzzle, hints at a grander potential. I’m left dazzled by the possibilities, but ultimately wanting more.

What Viewfinder lacks in story substance and compelling characters it more than makes up for via the pure, mind-boggling exhilaration of its perspective-warping puzzle solving. Its superb, photo-based environmental deformation doesn’t just break ground – it bends and stretches it into entirely new shapes and forms in the wake of each puzzle completed, while also introducing regular game-changing parameters that forced me to continually think outside the frame of my shots. The ability to transport yourself into paintings and screenshots makes for a journey that consistently captivates in between each carefully considered camera capture, and the rapid rewind function emboldens you to get creative with puzzle solutions without fear of retribution. Spellbindingly surreal and stimulating to the end, Viewfinder is the freakiest form of photo mode in which every snap is a happy one.

Viewfinder is a puzzle game that invites us to reflect on perspective, optical illusions, and the manipulation of reality. The puzzles are different and presented in an uncommon and innovative manner. The adventure also has a touch of mystery surrounding it, with old recordings hinting at something beyond just the puzzles. It's charming, entertaining, and just challenging enough.

Viewfinder invents an entirely new kind of puzzle, then proceeds to flip it around and explore it from every possible angle. Despite a disappointing narrative, the creativity and character packed into that simulated world is inspirational and bloody good fun.

Viewfinder is a delightfully fresh and enjoyable puzzler. The unique photo dropping gimmick is implemented perfectly, and repeatedly built upon over the course of the campaign. Some elements outside of the gameplay could have used work, but this is still a solid debut effort.

Viewfinder is a great indie game that doesn't quite know where it's going with the narrative, though. The basic puzzle premise is ingenious and doesn't wear out over the short playtime. Solution approaches are repeated, which diminishes the puzzle's fun a bit. The game was often compared to Portal in the run-up and the gameplay is very close to Valve's puzzle hit. We hope that Viewfinder will take the same step as Portal and follow up a very short but fun first part with a really great sequel that could revolutionize the world of puzzle games.

Viewfinder is fun while it lasts and has more than one moment that will leave players with a smile on their faces. It doesn't live up to its full potential, but it's still a solid game and one that will hopefully inspire others to explore similar concepts. It's easy to see how Viewfinder's picture-to-reality idea could be huge for something like a horror game or even a first-person shooter. Applying the brilliant idea at its core to something with a better story and more content would be the makings of an instant classic. What's here is still certainly worth the price of admission, however.