Beyond anything and everything Sad Owl Studios get pitch-perfect correct with Viewfinder, perhaps the most surprising revelation to find in this brief, five-hour, first-person puzzle-adventure is just how quickly the studio are willing to reveal what might be perceived as the game’s biggest “secret” of sorts. The kind of revelation most games would often leave dangling to the very end. The kind so often teased or at worst used as a sort of crutch to somehow excuse a game’s otherwise weaker impact. And here’s Viewfinder – a game so confident in its execution, the “twist” per se is revealed no sooner than a mere handful of puzzles into its tale.
And you know what: it works. Not because the reveal is shocking, even if the grander narrative at play does lend itself to an assumption or two that the studio are prepping some deeper narrative investment later on. Take a moment to think of the manipulative nature of the major gameplay mechanic and of its setting alike and I’m sure a few may cotton on to what’s going on before the game itself makes it abundantly clear. Rather, it works for a number of reasons – the primary and most important one of all is, as noted, that Sad Owl Studios are so confident in what they’ve built that the secondary support of its narrative needn’t be relied on to excuse some otherwise failed shortcoming elsewhere. And that confidence is, I’m pleased to report, well-placed. It’s not everyday that a game’s final moments – when a character remarks on how it’ll miss your presence in a kind of unexpectedly-pleading"please, don’t go!“manner – offers a similar dose of melancholy in response: “sorry…I have to.”
That blend of satisfaction with the experience and dissatisfaction on seeing it finally reach its conclusion proves just how well Sad Owl Studios structure their five-act puzzle game. The core mechanic governing Viewfinder being the manipulation of one’s surrounding space by way of placing/rotating Polaroid-like photos in the world. Starting off simple-enough and easy to grasp: insert a black-and-white photo of a door where a wall is and that colored, vertical surface is instantly replaced by said grey-scale image. Rotate a shot of an interior by ninety degrees and those prior walls suddenly become floor and ceiling alike for you to trudge through. But eventually, adding to the formula and at times mixing it up via subtraction of such. Viewfinder is a game that doesn’t overstay its welcome – striking just the right amount of puzzles to solve and altered circumstances to work around. The end result isn’t flawless by any means, thanks to the briefest of mild annoyances and more personal hopes not met. Arguably the most questionable, if not entirely detrimental implementation, is the notion of depth and how it might’ve benefited from an ability to alter the distance with which an image can be placed. But overall it’s hard to find much in the way of glaring faults here – a fantastic debut from Sad Owl Studios that’s both charming and most important of all for this genre, consistently creative throughout.
The instant gratification of Viewfinder – of the experimentation side more so – isn’t just with how space and even physics come into play, but most importantly and surprisingly of all, how the solutions feel governed by a player’s own voluntary and keen involvement. More specifically: how complex you read into the conundrums posed. You could, theoretically keep constructing solid ground to form a bridge of sorts, but whose to say the solution isn’t as simple as merely rotating an image or two? The ease of exploration with these tools is made even more easier by the inclusion of a rewind system. Tap a button once to manually reverse your work, or double-tap it to revert to a prior, notable action. A crucial inclusion given how easy it is to overwrite (and subsequently, delete) the vital teleportation devices in levels that act as the gateway between levels, but it means that a more sandbox-esque style of play is not only employed, but encouraged so as to work out what’s possible and what’s not.
That presence of trying, failing and trying again becomes even more prominent in later parts when Viewfinder eventually introduces new mechanics and in some cases, alters how the act of placing found/captured photos alters the space around you. In more simpler situations, the game will even go as far as to not only limit how many times you take a snapshot to then render it in the environment, but in some parts, will take the actual camera away from you completely. Your only means of capturing photos restricted to static positions. It’s this variation that means puzzles throughout Viewfinder seldom feel stale or that one should feel too comfortable with the tools provided. That sense of not getting too ahead of one’s self culminating in a climax that is both unexpected and tense. A climax that funnily enough may wind up dividing the player-base between those that love its unexpected placement and those that hate it for exactly the same reasons. But this very notion of surprising up to the very end only adds more credence to the idea that Viewfinder makes excellent use of its modest run-time. Complete with optional puzzles for those keen on a little more than what the main story path entails.
Regardless, a common expectation it might be that any puzzle game will continue to incorporate new ideas until the very end, it’s surprising just how well Viewfinder introduces new elements and alternate ideas that, at their best, truly make you think twice about not only the moves you’re making in the moment, but the next two or three thereafter. And again, in what might seem self-deprecating but is crucially more celebratory of Sad Owl’s design ethos here, some of the best puzzles to be found in Viewfinder are those that seem complex (to the point of convoluted) but are more simple once the penny drops. One instance involving a cage had me dumbstruck for what felt like a while…and then that eventual epiphany hit – another fond but deservedly-earned reminder of just how well Viewfinder strikes a balance between difficulty and transparency. On puzzles involving multi-step solutions and those that simply rely on you identifying the rules governing its mechanics.
So then you factor in the more narrative elements, as alluded to previous and all that does is elevate the sheer confidence Sad Owl clearly profess. In building a tale with its clear points of world-building and pivotal story beats, that in no way feels vital or detrimental to the gameplay lying at Viewfinder’s heart. It’s there for those curious as to the setting and the backstory, but easily avoidable for those who don’t. Yet bizarre as it may sound, much like its prime method of puzzle-solving, it’s that openness to player involvement that makes the narrative of Viewfinder all that more interesting to see fulfilled. To spend momentary spots reading/listening through random logs of work colleagues and staff talking of the big picture, but at times of the smaller picture alongside. Of staff rambling and exchanging banter between one another. A kind of small-scale world-building that reminds you favorably of something like Arkane’s Prey. Even at what the developer dictates is Viewfinder’s most pivotal of reveals or moments meant to illicit some kind of response, Sad Owl thankfully decide against dictating to or even lecturing its players on the game’s own assumed sense of self-importance.
That idea on leaving players to determine whether secondary material is worth the look-in goes doubly so for the rather more eccentric, but similarly optional finds. Collectible-fashioned images that take on the form of contrasting visual styles and aesthetics. While some are required to solve puzzles – one instance involving switching visual filters to navigate a series of gates – others are left to be toyed and messed around with at the player’s leisure. A Tamagotchi-style screen-grab that results in a life-size interpretation of such, is but one of the many surprisingly-enjoyable examples to be found. In fact it’s these instances of shifting aesthetic and playing with the visuals of Viewfinder, while novel, that also plays host to the most notable flaw, if one could call it that.
Perhaps the most pressing criticism to draw from Viewfinder is that despite how surreal and somewhat odd the shift in visuals can be, you often wish the game would get crazier and more odd still. An early part – as featured in the prior public demo – having you frequently transport one’s self between numerous aesthetics of varying illustrative and textural qualities is the furthest Viewfinder goes in this regard. Another instance of picking up a screenshot of what resembles the original Legend of Zelda on NES can feel like a missed opportunity to delve into the idea of multiple spaces and pocket dimensions. As interesting and well-integrated the photo-placing mechanic is, it’s only because of this immediate success with its concept that these inclusions, optional they may be, can find their limited integration seem disappointing as a result.
Closing Comments:
Some occasional frustration with mechanics and personal expectations not met aren’t enough to prevent Viewfinder from winding up an all-round terrific debut from Sad Owl Studios. Crafting a game that is confident not only in the ideas it wants to explore, but in the execution that underpins it all. An optional undercurrent of a narrative too that only elevates the appeal, but at the same time takes nothing away for those simply here to solve puzzles. Wherever your preferences lie, Viewfinder’s knack for building out, subtracting from and even mixing up entirely the formula at just the right moments is a trait few puzzle games can lay claim to. Cleverly orchestrated from start to finish, Viewfinder’s consistent originality and unmistakable confidence on top marks itself down as an easy recommendation.
Viewfinder
