Viewfinder Review

Introduction:

I feel truly lucky to have experienced 2023 with the ability to play many of the years biggest titles. Of course, I didn’t have enough funds or time for every game, and missed out on some giants like Dead Space Remake and Lies of P. There were also a few indie games that simply passed me by, one of them being Viewfinder.

It’s hard not to watch a trailer for Viewfinder and raise your eyebrows. The idea of taking a polaroid and using it to alter reality is extremely cute and fun. It’s an idea just begging for puzzles. Much like shooting two portals that connect to each other, it’s a simple concept that should become properly confusing yet rewarding by good level design.

Gameplay:

There are miniature hub areas throughout the game, and from them you access multiple strings of levels. Each level has roughly the same end goal; reaching a teleportation device. Reach all the teleportation devices and you have completed a string of levels. In the first few levels you feel like a reality shifting god of sorts. Your powers feel limitless. If you need to access a teleporter floating far away from you, just take a picture of a wall, aim it at the empty space, and rotate it to create a bridge. But of course this wouldn’t be a puzzle game if more problems didn’t arise. Batteries are a must in order to power these teleporters, and some of them are in hard to reach locations. And then there are stubborn structures that don’t get picked up by your camera, meaning you can’t use them the way you want to. Like any good puzzle game, it leaves the player going “Oh? Guess I need to figure something else out.”

I get a similar feeling while solving the puzzles here that I did while playing Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom. A feeling of “Was I supposed to do that? Who cares, it worked!” Because your polaroid powers are so useful, I certainly felt like there were multiple solutions to many of the levels. Of course, this comes at a cost in this specific genre: difficulty. Viewfinder isn’t a very challenging game. There were a handful of times I had to stop and think, but the solution was never far off. In the very last world, there were three levels I found genuinely tricky. Which is great, but might not be enough for diehard fans of the genre.

Presentation:

The word “cozy” is starting to be tossed around a bit too much when describing games lately. And I’m sure some developers will play into “coziness” to hit specific audiences. But I can say happily that Viewfinder hits a certain level of coziness without ever feeling like it tries too hard. The game takes place in a reality not unimaginable in 20-30 years. A reality where people can log into a machine, and be brought into a digital landscape of their choosing. Virtual reality. It feels like the way the Metaverse was once described to me. There’s no need to put on work clothes and do an hour commute to the office; when all you have to do is strap on a headset and you’re in a digital office. And as the protagonist of Viewfinder, you’ll be exploring these digital offices.

The developers did a good job of making these digital offices feel like they were actually once inhabited by workaholics. You’ll find coffee mugs, dumbbells, couches, pictures and art supplies everywhere. I got the sense that people didn’t only work here, they lived here. Either by choice or necessity. After working on formulas and whatnot for hours, maybe they’d take a break by painting on a canvas or lifting some weights. But these places have long been abandoned, and the player is left to explore them.

There was a viral video of somebody playing Viewfinder and shutting the dialogue volume all the way down after hearing a Marvel-esque line of corny writing. I’ve had Marvel fatigue after the very first Avengers movie in 2012, so I was worried about that. But after playing through the game I didn’t feel like it was much of an issue.

The last little detail I’d like to mention is sometimes you’ll find something with a different “art style” then the rest of the game. For example, a crayon drawing of a forest. Well, if you take a picture of that drawing with your camera and impose it onto reality, you can actually walk through that crayon forest. Little stuff like that always wins points with me even if it doesn’t serve much gameplay function.

Story:

There’s actually a decent bit of a story here too! Your protagonist is silent, but through your partner, you find out why you’re exploring these floating dreamscapes. These spacey locations serve a secondary purpose- scientific research. And you and your partner are searching desperately for one specific piece of information. I won’t go any further for spoiler purposes. It’s not going to blow your minds and it’s not the main point of the game, but its cute and functional.

Overall:

You will probably see Viewfinder brought up in the same conversation as Portal or The Witness. If you’re going in with the expectation of being stuck on a puzzle for a while like The Witness, or a really engrossing story like Portal, you’ll be disappointed. Viewfinder actually feels like a good set of training wheels for those games. It’s a game that will stump you once or twice, but never frustrate you. And with its brief playtime of about 4-5 hours, it’s the perfect game to play on a rainy Sunday with a cup of coffee or tea.

I liked Viewfinder.

(In an effort to move away from traditional numerical scores, I will use the following metric: Hated, Felt Neutral, Liked, Loved, Can’t Stop Thinking About).