Last updated on January 4th, 2026 at 07:29 am
The Witness – Adventure Game Review
The Witness is a Adventure/Puzzle game from Thekla, inc., first launched in 21st September 2017.
It’s rated 12+ and currently has 567+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes The Witness Stand Out
You wake up, alone, on a strange island full of puzzles that will challenge and surprise you.
You don't remember who you are, and you don't remember how you got here, but there's one thing you can do: explore the island in hope of discovering clues, regaining your memory, and somehow finding your way home.
The Witness is a single-player game in an open world with dozens of locations to explore and over 500 puzzles. This game respects you as an intelligent player and it treats your time as precious. There's no filler; each of those puzzles brings its own new idea into the mix. So, this is a game full of ideas.
This Adventure game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, The Witness is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 2nd January 2026
Recent improvements include:
We have fixed a rare crash during startup.
Download & Availability
The Witness is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
Ive been really enjoying this for the last week but as of this morning when we open it, it just closes ( iOS 26.1) looks like there was an update yesterday? Rebooting phone didnt help. Please fix.
This is our one and only time to ever write a review for a game. Rarity and value vary proportionately. If something is obtained easily, it is cheap, worthless. This is why there is a certain appeal regarding enigmatic or inscrutable art. The Witness is a hidden gem, a work of great love and passion concealed, but not fully, in the noise of the gaming industry. It reminds us so much of the Myst series that first made us fall in love with the puzzle adventure genre, and yet it is an improvement in every way. Puzzles within puzzles, secrets within secrets, and all of it beautiful no matter from what angle it is viewed. We are playing through the entire game again after 7 years to catch all of the secrets we missed the first time around. They say you shouldnt meet your heroes, but we would make an exception to meet the creative minds behind this magnificently intricate game.
We finished 100% the game on PlayStation last year and am impressed how the experience works on touch platforms. Its fun to play it all again. For those comparing to Myst, believe us, it will take you a lot of work, lets say to completing the game for you to realize the depth Blow has given us. No pixel is without purpose. But you have to change your POV, literally and mentally. We had some concern about navigation and your fingers obscuring the screen, but we managed to get used to it. However, it could make some of the more challenging parts of the game a bit awkward. Warning, this is a game you cannot look up answers, if stuck – move on, a transcendent experience awaits.
This is a five-star game for us that we highly recommend to people, even general non-gamers. That being said, it DOES have a specific viewpoint and flavor that is not like a lot of other puzzle games. We think it needs to be approached with an open mind. The mechanics of the game consist of repeatedly solving puzzles. But the point of the game is to experience deciphering the language of the puzzles from first principles, in ways that evoke all kinds of ways we have have and continue to learn about the world. We took that journey and think it really succeeds at that, and love defending that. But this game does not hold your hand. It does not help you get unstuck. It requires patience. It requires some confusion, some assuming, some process of elimination, some introspection, and some flexible thinking those are features, not bugs, in this experience. Those run counter to a lot of modern games features, and do so deliberately. But believe us that, if you feel like taking the plunge, DONT look up answers or hints be okay with the fact that you can get really stuck, and believe that you can get yourself unstuck if you reflect and continue to investigate. Outside help robs you, forever, of this games aha! Moments. There are very few experiences like this in gaming. For us, it felt really good to work through and conquer. Play alone or with someone who wants to take that journey too, but progress in this game means taking the challenge seriously. Serious can be fun too. We think its extremely fun. If that doesnt sound like your cup of tea, we respect that. It does cost money, after all. It just disappoints us to hear people write the game off as being pretentious because it was crafted as a different kind of challenging experience. We didnt leave this game feeling like we were toyed with. The rules are not arbitrary but like so much about experiencing the world, they take some time and a little faith to learn to follow.
As this game can now be downloaded and run on the mac, is there a chance you could improve the experience there a little? It doesn't have to be a full blown desktop experience, but just making it useable would be great.
We get the distinct feeling this is how the creators meant for this game to have played. Ive played this game on desktop, but its not the same. This version looks great and plays great. The controls do take some getting used to but feel perfect for this unique experience.
There are so many puzzles and secrets puzzels as far as eye can see ;).
Excellent puzzle game. Not for everyone, but we love it. If you can't think outside of the box and look for alternate solutions that don't fit the paradigm or what you might "expect," you will have a hard time. Also, it is best played on iPad with an Apple Pencil or a mouse. We can't imagine trying to hit all the touch targets on a little iPhone screen. Also, it is important to realize that The Witness tries to get you to ponder on deep questions to which humanity has no sure answer. If some things in the game seem unexplained to you, that is why.
This is literally everything you could ever want in a puzzle game. Puzzles that make you think and learn, BEAUTIFUL graphics, open world, this game isnt just another game this game is literally the game. No internet connection needed to play, controller support, like perfect. Absolutely perfect.
The graphics are perfect, the puzzles are unique and make you think outside the box. (No spoilers) If youre thinking of downloading this game, you may have read in other reviews that some puzzles are based on chance. This is absolutely NOT true. It may seem that way at first, but its not (hint: look at your surroundings!) Others complain that there is no story, or that its too confusing. There IS a story, and yes, it can be confusing, but it will clear up if you look in the right places. Many say the puzzles are easy and repetitive. The game is repetitive in that most (not all) puzzles occur on square panels, but the similarities end there. There are many different factors within the panels that make each section unique. Are they easy? It depends. The first ones you encounter in the game are very easy. They get much more challenging. Some we had been stuck on for months. Also, the game has 50+ of hours of playtime. There are many puzzles and secrets to discover. We have been playing for 2+ years and am still finding things out. Trust us, the experience is worth it. There is a LOT more to this game than meets the eye. It won Game of the Year for a reason.
Chock full of puzzles. Some straightforward, many abstract. You can finish the game without even completing all the puzzles or really figuring out the mystery behind the setting. Great replay value for people looking to solve every last puzzle and get every hidden achievement. Our only question: Why is it available on iPhone, iPad, and MacBook, but not Apple TV?? It seems to make no sense to us, especially considering it is optimized for playing with a controller. We can play on our tv using the screen mirror feature with Apple TV, but it has a slight lag and is in a square format instead of widescreen.
This is an immersive world. Despite other reviewers saying the navigation is wonky, we find them easy and accurate. Im only a few levels in, but we love it so far. We can tell Ill wish there was a hint system as the difficulty increases. Great dev support. We had a small issue due to the settings on our phone, and they resolved it with an email exchange inside a day. Thank you.
Just play it. Don't read about it. You only get an experience like this once.
This game is a work of art and no doubt took hours and hours of thought and labor to create. It is an achievement in gaming and all involved should be proud. However, for us, in addition to joy and admiration for the game quality, there was a lot of frustration with this game. Unclear rules, sometimes tricky navigation, puzzles that were bordering on… Cruel. If you love puzzle games, this is the ultimate test and worth your time. If you want a puzzle game that is fun and doesn't make you work too hard, this might not be for you. We'd still recommend it highly for the right person.
We know a million people have said this, but this is a really good game. Without spoiling anything, this is a game about drawing lines on a grid, and theres a lot of cool ideas there, despite the simple concept. There are a few minor gripes, such as how long the game takes before it allows you to move in certain spots (experienced players know which moments Im talking about) but with those exceptions, this is a really good puzzle game. We would not recommend the mobile version though. The tap to move control scheme is not great and the graphics are a bit better on pc and console.
The game is nice and we love the fact that there is a section for each puzzle element and each section introduces a new mechanic so you dont accidentally start learning a new mechanic when you have just barely started learning another, but Ill suggest a small thing, controller compatibility. The movement would be just like a normal game that uses controllers but the puzzles can be solved with the left stick and to change between free roam and puzzle mode just click ZL/ZR and the other can be wired to sprint.
On new iPhone 12 Pro Max with maxed out GB, game wont launch… So sad as we had heard such great things about this game. – Update: Issue has been resolved. Thank you.
We dont understand the acclaim for this game. Its well done, but its main mechanic is the same puzzle over and over again, in endless iterations. There is no variety, no story, and the little bit of Myst-like environmental integration is negligible.
Nice graphics and lots of play time. We didnt have the patience to work out the harder puzzles without walkthrough help. Ending was disappointing.
This is a very large game with several brilliant puzzles. Content wise it is well worth the purchase price. However the game was clearly not designed for IOS. Too many of the puzzles, especially the environmental ones, require pixel perfect positioning to solve them. With the touch to move mechanic, you have to look away to tap a new location and it is a game of guess and check. You also cant look down far enough for slight movement so finding the required perfect position is down to luck. It is very frustrating when you solved the path for the solution, but just cant do it because of controls. The puzzles are also slightly harder because your finger covers the puzzle as you try to solve it. This is a really good game with brilliant logic puzzles and really does make you feel accomplished when you solve them. If this is the only way you can play it, it is worth the $10, but we recommend playing the game on another platform if possible.
This game is beautiful but it is overwhelming hard. We grew up on games like Misty, we specifically look for games that mimic its game play. We absolutely adored games of that genre but this is beyond frustrating. We are not a stupid person by any means, this game make us feel like an idiot. That said the interface is great as well as the graphics. Bravo well done. The exploration of the world is exactly the kind of game we look for. But not all players play the same way, some have harder times than others with visual concepts, musical concepts and or mathematical concepts. Quite a few games dont take this into consideration. Some people just see things in different ways. It would have been a great game if there were more than one way to figure out the puzzle patterns.
The controls are so annoying to the point where u just want to quit honestly if we had a chance to speak with the creator of this game we would tell him to improve more on the controls. And we also liked the puzzles but at some point we were so confused there was not a helpful guide to tell us how to play the puzzles.there should be a tutorial instead of just throwing the player at the game assuming they know how to play. We know it was created to be challenging but some of them totally didnt make sense to us. And we literally had to figure it out by trying over and over till we clicked and realized. The graphics were AMAZING we would love for u to fix a lot on this game so we could rlly enjoy playing it.
For people who are curious about the port (iPad Pro 10.5): The controls are tap-to-move with a few details that make the game feel great to control. No issues there. The game looks really good for mobile. It looks low-fi compared to playing on PC, but the art style didnt really suffer and the resolution is high enough that the game looks good (not native, but close enough). The framerate is rather poor though. We dont think it ever holds a remotely steady framerate or ever even touches 30fps. From the looks of things, we dont think theres much more they could have done to make it run better short of sacrificing a lot more on the resolution and general quality side, so we wont really complain too much (docked 1 star for it though because we would have at least liked the option for better performance even if it meant tanking the resolution). At least its not like the game requires super high responsiveness to play well. TLDR: Its as good as you could expect a port of a 3D game to mobile could be, and the framerate is sub-30fps. For people who are new to the game: The Witness is a polarizing puzzle game to say the least. We like it a lot, but dont want to go into much depth because most of what makes the game special for us is in spoiler territory. If you like tougher puzzle games, dont mind being expected to experiment and explore with no real guide, and like things that are a little pretentious youll probably love this. If you prefer easier puzzles, a tutorial for every step of the way, a clear story, and a clear path, this might not be for you. *update Feb. 2024: Some pretty bad graphical artifacting makes this unrecommendable now.
Some of the puzzles make no sense with the given solution. Extremely hard to navigate movement with iPad. Save your money.
We got pretty far in the game and it will no longer load. The app just closes when we try to open it.
We were really looking forward to play this game on our iPhone. Little did we know how much of a disappointment it turned out to be. This is a puzzle game in which player position is key to solve many of the puzzles, but for some reason the decision to make the movement to work ONLY with tap to move was made. This decision alone completely destroyed and of the most enjoyable aspects of this game, exploration. For a game that focuses so strongly on exploration and character immersion, to not be able to freely move your character around is one the worse restrictions this game has. To us, this particular version of the game, is unplayable.
First, best view ever, high resolution makes this game outstanding.Second, background music is fantastic.Most of all, the true meaning behind the witness is deep and thinkable:see things in different ways, youll find this world fantastic. Love it.
This is a wonderful game, and we would've loved to keep playing it. But after several years of no updates, Thekla (or whoever is running this circus) decided to release an update that bricks the app. Can't open it, restarting the device does nothing, reinstalling the app does nothing, the only links provided for the developer take you to a broken website, and since we haven't done a complete backup since we bought the game days ago we have nothing to rollback to. If there's clear evidence they've fixed this then you should absolutely get this game. But unless and until that happens, don't bother.
At the end of the game where the puzzles off set the third one does not work we have done everything up to that point watched 5 of the videos and Im looking for the sixth and did all of the eviremental puzzles and its a great game but we are now not able to even try to finish because you can not click the puzzle can you please fix this.
Make a witness 2 the puzzles are the best make more please.
This is a close tie for us with The Talos Principal as being the best iphone game we've ever played. Really makes you think. May not be for some people.
Hi devs! We love this game and it's well worth the money. We've been having an issue lately though where the game just crashes on our phone when we load it up! If we try to move around or load a save it just crashes. It works fine on our iPad but not on our phone. It used to work but for the past few weeks it hasn't. We tried reinstalling the app as well as deleting our icloud saves. Any idea why this might be happening? Thanks.
This is the full game experience you get on console/PC, and we bought it for our iPhone 8 because thats the only device we have that can play it at decent graphical settings. There are some parts where the slightly janky controls become frustrating, and there are some parts where doing a puzzle with your finger actually blocks part of the screen where the puzzle is. But 99% of this game is comfortably playable on mobile, and of course the $10 price tag makes the 1% of frustration easier to swallow. Im quite impressed with whoever was responsible for porting this. Great job! We will say that if you have the choice to play this on console or PC (maybe MacOS as well?), you absolutely should because the visuals in this game are very nice to look at and having a bigger screen with better graphics to show them off will make the 20-80 hours you spend with this game more enjoyable. And a mouse/keyboard is the optimal input method for this game as well, although we will admit that being able to touch the panel puzzles is a pretty cool gimmick.
There are many popular snarky reviews out there about this game. They are just noise. This game is for those who enjoy paying close attention. Its also for those open to an earnest discussion. If you cant do either, dont bother. If you are able, then there is no better game out there.
If you give this game a fair shot and dont LOVE it within a few days, then you just dont like interesting puzzles (or else you are not nearly as good at puzzle solving as you think you are). Yes, there is a bit of a learning curve, but the developers have done a great job of teaching you everything you need to know to solve each different TYPE of puzzle. And to the pedants who insist that the puzzles are all the same just because you draw a line path to solve each one, you couldnt be more wrong. The Rules for each category of puzzle vary dramatically, and get progressively more difficult, as well as being further combined in interesting and even more difficult ways. Indeed, much of the difficulty/fun is discovering exactly what the rules are. In the beginning, it is usually pretty obvious and unambiguous how the pieces interact with each other and how the lines must be drawn. But as the game progresses, it is very possible to have a slightly wrong interpretation but still be able to solve a few easy puzzles in the progression only to find that something doesnt work as you expected and you have to rethink everything. But it is these AHA moments that provide the most fun and are unexpectedly delightful. And there are a lot of joyful surprises when you suddenly notice a (obvious in hindsight) clue that allows you to do something almost magical and discover something new. And, IMHO, the best part is that we have not yet encountered ANY brute force type problems (which we hate). There are only a few that require something other than pure logic and Ive been able to find the appropriate clue by simply exploring the glorious, beautiful, gigantic environment and paying careful attention. Five Stars is not enough.
Hello, our iCloud sync isnt working! We get a message that says WARNING: Unable to save your progress! We have many hours invested in this game and we would like to sync our progress to iCloud so we play it on other devices. Please let us know how to fix this. – EDIT: we managed to get rid of the warning by deleting the app, turning off iCloud and reinstalling it but now the sync is completely broken. When we try to load a saved game it shows iCloud 0% in the bottom left corner. Looking for a support email but unable to find one. Please let us know how to resolve this. EDIT 2: we finally resolved this, albeit months ago. The fix was completely convoluted but we managed to get it to work by manipulating the extra iCloud saves. This is an excellent game. Glad the official fix is finally available.
We enjoyed the various venues and amazing detail. We took our time and wandered around. For us, that is the best part. Each part of the island was a puzzle of its own. It was easy to re-enter where we left off by selecting start and choosing the last saved game. The Caves was quite unexpected; loved it. We are not into intense gaming but love exploring, so Witness was spot on for us. However, we found the puzzle panels to be tedious after a while. Just way too many of them. The Quarry is our favorite because it had more variation in getting around, not just puzzle panels. The least favorite was Shady Trees. The audios were interesting but the videos not so much. It was worth the cost even though we did not complete everything there was to do; but did almost all. Thanks to Theica and Mr. Blow! June 2020.
Yes, we beat it and got the secret ending. We have near 100% completion (497 panels and 46 environmental puzzles) and will 100% the game, but itll probably take a walkthrough. Up until now, Ive only needed one once in the shadow based area. This game is great, but bad at communication. We feel like a lot of the aha moments could become pure frustration to someone who doesnt understand them. If you dont understand a concept, the game will NOT guide you. It will simply cross its arms and shake its head. So why is it 5 stars? Because our experience with the game was amazing, and because this will most likely not happen to you. The game is phenomenal, from the opening to the end, its full of thought-provoking puzzles and ideas. Granted, dont get the plot, its an unnecessary part of the game, but its still there if you want it. We LOVE this game (except the Jungle and shipwreck, they can rot in Hell, but theyre optional unless you want secrets). The way that some puzzles have parts covered by something or are changed by color is ingenious to us. The way the mountain flips the ideas on their head, making the puzzles move, messing with perspective, obscuring certain parts, giving you a seizure, making looping puzzles, it all feels very Baba is You esque, but without the Baba is you, and with waaaaaay better visuals. The ideas are communicated mostly by showing you an oversimplified puzzle with no prior knowledge, the player trail-and-erroring the first super-simple puzzle, figuring out the rule, and then applying the rule in super complicated ways. This is how the jungle, quarry, zen gardens, orchard, keep, marsh, bunker, and more teach you their principles, and its an effective yet ineffective way of doing things. We assumed a tutorial would be somewhere, and as a result was stumped for the first 3 hours of the game in the town because since its right there, you would think its the next area, but we gave up and then realized its close to the endgame. Other than the few problems, the game is almost perfect, but also absolutely infuriating. Great game, dont recommend.
The app keeps crashing. Please help. Thank you.
This is a really cool game. Challenging, beautiful, and fun. We had to put it down though because it really needs to be played with a controller. We picked it up again after iOS 13, and started to play it with our Xbox controller. We were excited when it worked. Unfortunately that excitement only lasted a few seconds, because the game freezes. The games isnt bad without the controller, its just the kind of game that greatly benefits from having one. Ill keep checking back to see if theyve addressed the issues.
The game has an infuriating bug. When you download it on iPad it will auto install onto your iPhone as well. You are playing the same game on both devices, which is very cool. Unfortunately there seems to be a bug that causes the devices not to keep in sync (so you may solve some puzzles on one device but the other device shows a previous state with less puzzles solved). Heres the problem: If you start playing on the device that shows the older state you will lose all the progress on the other device (they will both sync to the older state). So you appear to lose any progress you made. We had solved the entire Keep set of puzzles and thought we had lost them all. Blech. Luckily the various states are stored and you can reload (go to the main menu and hit Load Game). Earlier review: Professionally executed, but as others have said, the puzzles are repetitive (you draw lines in maze like patterns, over and over again).
We love puzzle games, but this is ridiculous. So why 2 stars? It looks cool. And occasionally the puzzles achieve a satisfying balance between challenging and solve-able. Otherwise, Ive had to resort to walk-throughs numerous times, and even then dont really understand why the solution is what it is, or why the solution we had was wrong. Our husband always knows when Im playing, bc Im constantly muttering something along the lines of, we hate this game, or, this is so stupid. But we keep on playing, so we guess that says something.
If you are a fan of actual puzzle adventure games like the room, rusty lake, house of da Vinci, etc, you will hate this. Its the same puzzle over and over. You just walk around to find more of them. Terrible.
Nice visuals & colorful. But movements are not near as smooth or quick as other games. The scenes are cartoonish & not as realistic as say Myst or Talos series. Also, once lost, you had no clue where you are in the game: beginning, middle, or end! Some puzzles are too convuluted, even by the account of some of the guides that refer to the puzzles. We tried to avoid the spoilers & looked only for guides, but couldn't find a single guide that explained the rational behind some of the puzzles, as if the reviwer him/herself didn't know eeither. One is very often forced to guides that seem disoriented & incomplete, a refelction of the comvultion of the game. Anyways, even though it cost us about $10, we figured cut our losses was best to avoid the torment of back-&-forth betweeen the game and intenet searches for advice. We deleted it away.
The first section was fun to complete, but after entering the next section, the game keeps abending causing us to be back in the first section. This is a 6th gen iPad running the latest iOS 13.5.1. Abend is an abnormal end of the game, in otherwise crash. Dont buy this game. The developer is just going to run away with your money.
We bought the IOS Version and am playing on an iPad mini. After opening the door at the beginning of the game, it was too dark too see anything. We turned our screen brightness up to 100% and there wasnt any improvement. Our other games show up just fine. :(.
The first 30 minutes is the sweet spot for this game. Over that its the same draw a line. Some of the mechanics are very unclear. Other line the sun game make sense for the first 3 puzzles and then nothing. We have it a 2 because the graphics looks nice. Edit: we couldnt take this crappy game anymore. Tired of the controls. Tired of the puzzle mechanics. You have to line things up just perfectly to get it, which is near impossible because the controls. Then when you do line up perfectly it still says some puzzles are still wrong. We had to look them up because of the stupidity of them. Stay away from from this game. It is the worst game we have ever played on our phone. Period.
Fond of the same finger puzzle over and over ? Like linked, random selection puzzles that make you go back and reset after a wrong guess? Enjoy solving seemingly meaningless puzzles with no clues or theme ? Then take out a $10, burn it, and save yourself the aggravation of this pointless adventure.
We dont like the controls, why is so hard to give us controls like the console. Updated for iOS 13 and still not control support Please.
We are stuck. Clicking around us only gives little Xs. And with no other way to contact support, we are forced to write a negative review.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.98
- Size: 2,212.97 MB
- iOS: 13.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or References
- Developer: Thekla, inc.
Last updated: 2nd January 2026 | Genre: Adventure, Puzzle | Developer: Thekla, inc.