Designed by: Dominique Bodin
Witness is a co-operative game where players collaborate to solve puzzles, via the unique medium of whispering.
The game comes with a book of stories and individual casebooks representing their character’s part in the story: at the start, someone reads out the introduction to the story, and then everyone turns to the appropriate page in their own book to see what information their character has on this mystery (there are 64 to play through, of varying difficulty) before the fun begins: now over three whispering rounds, players both give and receive information to and from their neighbours: passing on one bit of information (their own), then two (their own, plus what they learned from their other neighbour), then three (their own, plus what they learned from their other neighbour, plus what their other neigbour had learned from their other neighbour!)
If that sounds confusing, it totally is: a test not only of your ears, but also of both your memory and your capacity to organise the information in your head: after the whispering ends, players must all answer three questions about the case that – in theory at least – they’ve learned during the whispering. Each player gets one point for a right answer, so collectively you score between zero (rubbish detectives!) and twelve (perfect score!)
A unique blend of Chinese Whispers, logic/deduction and a hefty memory challenge thrown in for good measure - Witness is very much ploughing its own furrow. I like the idea of this more than the actual playing, on my limited experience.
None - everyone works together.
None.
The rules are light. The struggle is comprehending and organising the info you've been given into some coherent whole, which can be really hard!
There are a total of 64 puzzles of varying complexity, so if - a big if! - you've done them all, you've most likely forgotten the first fifty and can start over.
4-4
Players
12+
Years
5-15
Mins
Sam says
At time of writing I've actually only played Witness once, and though I didn't fall completely in love with it - I often find the best party games don't come in boxes, though there are exceptions - what I really did like was how unique it felt to anything else I've played. Love the artwork (the game is set in the world of Belgian detectives Blake and Mortimer) and although the mechanics of it are a manifestation of two things I'm often rubbish at (remembering, logic puzzling) it was fun.