I always find Jonathan Blow and Casey Muratori to be great educators and advocates on the “simplicity” end of the spectrum. Jonathan can be super abrasive and comes with some political baggage, but does a good job advocating against what he perceives as unnecessary complexity in software. Opponents would suggest his domain and cherry-picked examples create the perfect environment for his positions and that he does take a long time to ship stuff. That said, he pulls off some compelling games with relatively minimal resources.
elcapitan 7 minutes ago [-]
I found the voice acting in the trailer very annoying, hope this can be turned off in the final game. Or maybe I'm just too used to the "voice" over this game is him ranting about software development, from watching his streams :D
dwroberts 47 minutes ago [-]
Interested to play this but I think the trailer does it a huge disservice. Just a barrage of voice clips and no real structure to it. I think it would help the game a lot if they replace that trailer ASAP
This looks to be the first of Jon Blows games to put writing front and center, so I wonder if the clunkiness goes beyond the trailer. That's not really his forte.
sxzygz 6 days ago [-]
In case you assume novelty, a comment [1] from ArsTechnica reader Jensen404 explains otherwise by linking to [2] a post on Bluesky.
> These games are the starting point, but the bulk of the game is new puzzles combining mechanics from different games together
Seems like the puzzles are novel, but the mechanics are not?
tormeh 59 minutes ago [-]
Seems like the original puzzles were licensed for this game, in which case why not?
embedding-shape 23 minutes ago [-]
> These games are the starting point, but the bulk of the game is new puzzles combining mechanics from different games together.
> I made two free games which were later licensed to be used and remixed in this project.
Seems indeed to be the case. Blow designed (I guess) the mashup and "composition" if you will, but the puzzles themselves have all been designed and licensed by others, so seems the title of the HN submission and article is wrong. Blow didn't design these puzzles at all.
20 minutes ago [-]
serial_dev 25 minutes ago [-]
Because he occasionally dabbled in COVID trutherism, whatever that means… These bsky people are insufferable.
Does that change how good/bad the game someone releases is? Don't get me wrong, being obviously anti-scientist isn't that great if I absolutely have to judge them, but I'm not sure if that has any impact on how fun a game is.
If I'd stop consuming stuff from people/organizations I disagree with politically, I literally would have to move into a cave and start my own hunter-collector society from scratch. Is this really how others make decisions in their daily lives?
57 minutes ago [-]
55 minutes ago [-]
jstimpfle 35 minutes ago [-]
I haven't played any of these games, but "explains otherwise" seems to be a misrepresentation given that the commenter you linked itself says that Blow's game combines ideas and rulesets from several other previous games.
Elsewhere in the arstechnica comments you linked
> But, uh... this isn't a "Linus Torvalds is a jerk" sort of situation. "Controversial" undersells just how outlandish and inappropriate Blow's views are. Blow is a full-bore fascist sympathizer who also doesn't seem to think that women have any role to play in his profession.
What's going on on these platforms? Is there any serious evidence to the strong claims?
pendenthistory 24 minutes ago [-]
He is "controversial", which is politburo-speak for "not adhering to the dogma of the far left". He must therefore be deplatformed like it's still 2020.
mariusor 15 minutes ago [-]
When you support political leaders that push fascist discourse where regular people that happen to have more empathy for their fellow man are presented as the enemy - in Hegseth's book the call to arms against them is literally in the first paragraph - I think it stops being about not far enough left, but about being way too far right.
swiftcoder 24 minutes ago [-]
They have a nice collation of his greatest hits over on Reddit[1]
> What's going on on these platforms? Is there any serious evidence to the strong claims?
The second paragraph in the submitted article has a link to the women claim. I hadn’t seen it before. I have also never personally seen any fascist sympathising but then again I don’t follow Blow that closely. From what I’ve seen from him, though, doesn’t seem hard to believe. He has very strong opinions on a lot of things he knows little about, is enamoured with Elon Musk, and is always going on (dismissively, divisively, and dehumanisingly) about “The Left”.
He also has very poor and obvious fallacious arguments filled with bad faith assumptions. He believes in God and (if I recall correctly) his justification was (paraphrasing) “a lot of smart people are not atheists” (appeal to authority) then went on to rant about “Reddit atheism” (ad hominem) or whatever.
mariusor 21 minutes ago [-]
I've been watching Blow work on his compiler and game for many years. He has gone the deep end in his sympathies for Trump and Trump adjacents, but misogyny I've never witnessed from him.
I think he is the latest victim of the Notch-Rowling slide into rightism. It happens when a relatively benign conservatives have opinions that get the internet mob riled up, bullies them, cancels them and thus makes them dig deeper into their righitst believes and moving more and more into hating said mob, extending that hate to the people the mob pretends to represent, etc. It's a bit sad really. I hope he'll come out of it some day, but in my experience he doesn't have the humility of accepting when he's wrong.
16 minutes ago [-]
phtrivier 48 minutes ago [-]
I wonder how much of the 10 years spent making "a programming language, an engine, and a game" were actually spent on each slice.
Hopefully, jai and the engine will help make the next game faster...
martin_balsam 15 minutes ago [-]
This interplay between different worlds reminded me of Enigmash, by Jack Lance [1]
That's probably no coincidence, Jack Lance was hired by Thekla to work on Sinking Star until his death in 2023.
29 minutes ago [-]
block_dagger 48 minutes ago [-]
Weird that the post above this one in the front page has “Braid” in its title and it’s not about Blow’s famous game.
pandemic_region 7 minutes ago [-]
One of the things I enjoyed most about the Witness were the environment puzzles where you had to align things in the scenery with your viewpoint to complete it. And also definitely the little philosophical voice recordings were great. It's a game that deserves playing with an open mind and spirit in order to fully appreciate everything it offers.
__alexs 50 minutes ago [-]
The Witness was a slog, maybe he's learnt how to make puzzles which are actually fun this time.
block_dagger 37 minutes ago [-]
That slog led to some of the most satisfying feelings of accomplishment for me. I love the lack of instruction in that game.
csantini 34 minutes ago [-]
Curious, it's probably my favorite video-game experience ever.
actionfromafar 44 minutes ago [-]
I was gonna buy it for Christmas!
Laremere 11 minutes ago [-]
The Witness is, in my opinion, simply one of the best games ever made. There are many layers to the game, and moments of insight that the game leads you to, but also trusts for you to make the final connections.
However, I do understand why some consider it a slog. There are many puzzles in the game that people will dislike, indeed many puzzles that I disliked. It seems Jon prioritized finding all of the interesting things that they could say about the puzzles in the game over making sure that all of the puzzles were actually enjoyable to a majority of people. My advice is if you don't like an area, just go somewhere else. You don't need to complete every area to roll credits.
It also may be a matter of expectations. Puzzle games tend to be on the shorter side, but The Witness is lengthy. So jumping in expecting to finish in an afternoon is a way to set yourself up for frustration.
pandemic_region 18 minutes ago [-]
An excellent choice sir, you will have a Christmas holiday to remember.
__alexs 43 minutes ago [-]
I don't hate it but also it's a deeply flawed game. It walked so that Talos Principle could run.
jsheard 40 minutes ago [-]
The Talos Principle came out a few years before The Witness though.
actionfromafar 38 minutes ago [-]
Good tip, thanks, clearly I'm behind more than a decade. :)
Rendered at 11:14:21 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
This looks to be the first of Jon Blows games to put writing front and center, so I wonder if the clunkiness goes beyond the trailer. That's not really his forte.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/12/jonathan-blow-has-spe...
[2] https://bsky.app/profile/draknek.bsky.social/post/3m7qybidq7...
Seems like the puzzles are novel, but the mechanics are not?
> I made two free games which were later licensed to be used and remixed in this project.
Seems indeed to be the case. Blow designed (I guess) the mashup and "composition" if you will, but the puzzles themselves have all been designed and licensed by others, so seems the title of the HN submission and article is wrong. Blow didn't design these puzzles at all.
https://bsky.app/profile/draknek.bsky.social/post/3m7qyfe7b7...
If I'd stop consuming stuff from people/organizations I disagree with politically, I literally would have to move into a cave and start my own hunter-collector society from scratch. Is this really how others make decisions in their daily lives?
Elsewhere in the arstechnica comments you linked
> But, uh... this isn't a "Linus Torvalds is a jerk" sort of situation. "Controversial" undersells just how outlandish and inappropriate Blow's views are. Blow is a full-bore fascist sympathizer who also doesn't seem to think that women have any role to play in his profession.
What's going on on these platforms? Is there any serious evidence to the strong claims?
[1]: https://www.redditmedia.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1jh275...
The second paragraph in the submitted article has a link to the women claim. I hadn’t seen it before. I have also never personally seen any fascist sympathising but then again I don’t follow Blow that closely. From what I’ve seen from him, though, doesn’t seem hard to believe. He has very strong opinions on a lot of things he knows little about, is enamoured with Elon Musk, and is always going on (dismissively, divisively, and dehumanisingly) about “The Left”.
He also has very poor and obvious fallacious arguments filled with bad faith assumptions. He believes in God and (if I recall correctly) his justification was (paraphrasing) “a lot of smart people are not atheists” (appeal to authority) then went on to rant about “Reddit atheism” (ad hominem) or whatever.
I think he is the latest victim of the Notch-Rowling slide into rightism. It happens when a relatively benign conservatives have opinions that get the internet mob riled up, bullies them, cancels them and thus makes them dig deeper into their righitst believes and moving more and more into hating said mob, extending that hate to the people the mob pretends to represent, etc. It's a bit sad really. I hope he'll come out of it some day, but in my experience he doesn't have the humility of accepting when he's wrong.
Hopefully, jai and the engine will help make the next game faster...
[1] https://jacklance.github.io/PuzzleScript/play.html?p=cfdcc6e...
However, I do understand why some consider it a slog. There are many puzzles in the game that people will dislike, indeed many puzzles that I disliked. It seems Jon prioritized finding all of the interesting things that they could say about the puzzles in the game over making sure that all of the puzzles were actually enjoyable to a majority of people. My advice is if you don't like an area, just go somewhere else. You don't need to complete every area to roll credits.
It also may be a matter of expectations. Puzzle games tend to be on the shorter side, but The Witness is lengthy. So jumping in expecting to finish in an afternoon is a way to set yourself up for frustration.