Viewfinder is a puzzle game built around a single moment that I will simply never tire of. Here’s how it works. You see a bridge. You lift your camera and take a picture of the bridge. You take the picture you now have in your hand – the bridge – and then hold it up elsewhere in the world, maybe where there’s a gap in the ground between you and the spot you want to get to. Choose the location, the angle, and commit. Voila! The picture of the bridge is now an actual bridge that you can walk across. Gap? What gap.
ViewfinderPublisher: ThunderfulDeveloper: Sad Owl StudiosPlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Out 18th July on PlayStation 5 and PC.
This is magical. And it’s magical I think because it brings together 2D and 3D worlds and encourages you to mess around with their inherent conflicts. You take a 2D picture of a 3D object, but you can then transport that 2D picture somewhere else and turn it back into a 3D object. There’s also something really lovely about walking out into the picture – something Lewis Carroll would have built a book around. Your 2D/3D imprint on the world is never entirely neat. You will have eaten into the existing 3D surroundings, sometimes catastrophically. You will have sliced up the ground. You will have imprinted a new grayscale horizon across part of the Technicolor sky.
I love all this. Viewfinder loves all this. And it uses this idea to power a bunch of complex yet compact puzzle levels that you wander through, one epiphany at a time. There’s a wider narrative, but it didn’t grab me to be honest. Maybe it will grab you! For me, I was too busy chasing the next moment where I hold up a picture and change everything.
The puzzles are always pleasingly direct. You’ll drop into a 3D environment – walkways, rooms, the odd staircase – and you’ll need to reach the transporter that will lead you to the next puzzle. Get to the exit. That’s it. Sometimes the transporter needs to be powered, which means you’ll need to locate batteries down and lug them around. Sometimes the transporter needs to be reached, which means you’ll need a way to cross gaps. Sometimes the transporter will be upside down or stuck to an inconvenient wall which means you’ll need to work out how to get it back on the ground. Sometimes the transporter will be caged by some kind of violet material that does not show up in photographs. Sometimes it will be actually made of that material! Onwards. Outwards. You get the idea.