While I tend to get excited by games that deliver on intensity and a bit of craziness, there’s no doubt that slowing things down to relax and take in something a little more cerebral makes for a nice change of pace. Having played a number of environmental puzzle games over time, most notably both Portal titles, but including others like The Talos Principle and some others, what little I understood about Viewfinder sounded like it could be fun. The good news is that it absolutely delivers the goods on some mind-bending challenges that will make you do some hard thinking, but I’d say that on the story front it doesn’t manage to be nearly as compelling.

The main thing you’ll need to know about the game is that it gives you the power to take photos, or even art, and imprint what’s in it into your virtual space. Early on the applications of this tend to be pretty obvious, allowing you to set up a bridge to span a gap or a stairway to get to another level. Pretty quickly though, you’ll find that you’ll need to chase the concepts your abilities open up further down the rabbit hole, especially when you start making copies of images to re-use, need to set up your own photos to then make use of, and more. This will require some leaps of faith and experimentation at times, and while I’d imagine most seasoned gamers shouldn’t get lost along the way, I could see more casual ones perhaps needing to consult a guide to wrap their heads around what needs to be done and how.

There is an attempt to throw some story into the mix, and while to some degree the effort is appreciated I can’t say that it caught my interest in any significant way. Indeed, it’s so easy just to skip anything story-related at all that it feels like the developers understood it wasn’t going to have the appeal of something as wildly entertaining as the Portal series in particular, and included it more as a side dish for those who’ll take the time to continue to look for it. In the end, this entire experience really comes down to the strength of its puzzles, whether they’re intuitive to the given player, and enough to sustain interest over a rough handful of hours. From my perspective it was a fun challenge, but your mileage may vary depending on your tastes and how well you’re able to keep up with what it throws down.