The Witness is amongst my favorite games of all time. However my first impression of this game is that it feels pretty generic but I'll wait for more info before I make a final judgment.

I'm with you on that one, but I do understand it's very much a game to a specific taste. When people tell me actually they hate The Witness it's like, "Well ... yeah."

I just enjoy it as a cozy, pleasant little puzzler with an interesting idea. I can appreciate Braid, too, but find it generally unpleasant to play and overwrought. It doesn't do anything for me, but given when it was released in the early days of the indies I understand the impact it had.

JB is a talented dev/designer no doubt, but he just doesn't stand out in the crowd of indies these days like he used to.

Interesting, I thought it seemed like it failed to make an impact and overall didn't jive with people. Perhaps I'm just not the target audience for these anymore.

I could never finish the Witness. It’s one of those first person perspective games that just gives me simulation sickness very quickly. Like I can play CoD multiplayer matches for hours but the Witness makes me sick within thirty minutes.

So, “Order of the Sinking Star” by Thekla was just announced, which takes several small free games (two of which are mine) and gives them a major graphical upgrade and mashes up their rulesets. I haven’t been very involved but it’s a great concept and looks cool.

...

Additionally, in recent years it has become increasingly clear that Jon’s beliefs/priorities and mine are not aligned. He’s adversarial to people talking about privilege and representation, is dismissive of diversity efforts, has dabbled in covid trutherism, and is pro-MAGA.

I believe Trump is a self serving authoritarian who's dismantling democracy, trying to make trans people illegal, and wanting to set up concentration camps for immigrants - whereas Jon in February called him "the best President we have had in my entire life".

That took a turn. Also the reason why I said that if this falls flat on its face, there's a chance he goes rambling crazyguy mode