My Thoughts On: Viewfinder

2023-09-10

Viewfinder is a visually impressive experience and the mechanics stay varied throughout. However, a weak story and lack of real challenge combined with its short runtime present the game as more of an interactive demo to showcase the studio.

you can find Viewfinder here


Viewfinder opens up on a balcony of a small, one room building and a large garden attached to it. It's a relaxing environment - even if it's floating in the abyss. Immediately after entering, the voice of "Jessie" fill your ears. Jessie is a passive observer of your actions, commenting on your skills and the world around you. While this fits into the greater theme of the game, her presence often felt patronising, as if I was a young child that needed to be told what to do and how to feel, and then praised afterwards for completing the task. Thankfully, her lines are drastically reduced after the first chapter as she is replaced by Cait, a male cat with a Scottish voice. Cait knows much more about the world the player is tasked to explore, providing backstory of the previous inhabitants.

These inhabitants all have their own spaces, and these spaces host the four main chapters of the story, plus a concluding fifth chapter. The spaces are full of personality, with unique music and decorations. But this is only surface level. Other than Jessie or Cait's voicelines at particular spots, there is no interaction or lore notes. The bulk of the story is told through the main levels, either through sticky note conversations, journal entries or recorded messages on gramophones.


story spoilers
The story is set on "the red planet", a future version of Earth where high rise buildings jut out against a red, oxygen-less sky. The player, with the help of their collaborator Jessie, dives into a virtual environment that was once the workspace of several genius scientists. Apart from recreating the beauty of nature, they were also attempting to solve the climate issue, bringing oxygen and nature back to Earth. It is this object, the "Weather Disruptor", that the player and Jessie are attempting to locate.
The conversations between the scientists are interesting to read and listen to. They all have their own personalities that clash or combine with others. But there's not much development with them. We do see the progession with the game-loving Chi Leung, from the joy of collaboration to the events that made him leave, but this is rare and the other characters often feel one-note as a result.


The main levels are split into segments within the chapter spaces. Each segment typically contains one mechanic, with later segments merging two mechanics together. These mechanics can be split into three types. The first type revolve around the teleporter, the end goal. These mechanics prohibit the use of the teleporter, such as a pad that requires x number of batteries to then charge up the teleporter. The next type of mechanics affect the world, such as world recolouring filters. These are often stunning examples of shader code, but some of the more "retro" styled pixel filters made it hard for me to see and gave me a slight headache. Fortunately, this type of filter is only mandatory at one specific point in the game. The final type of mechanics involve the star of the show, the photos. Placing a photo into the world removes everything behind it, effectively cutting through and replacing with the contents of the photo. The photos are either found in the world, taken through stationary cameras, or taken by the player with their own instant film camera.

The progression of mechanics is very similar to Portal, but while Portal has the stationary portal gun installations that lead you into obtaining your own portal gun to keep, Viewfinder is indecisive with letting you keep the camera. This inconsistency is never explained, and can feel frustrating when your fancy new toy is taken away. It feels that this move is not for story reasons, but instead to prevent the solution to each level being incredibly easy. Even then, the puzzles are rarely challenging. I had two or three levels that I felt stuck, but this was because I was overthinking, as the solution was much simpler. The lack of challenge is often down to the length of each level and the reluctancy to combine mechanics. A typical level is either a puzzle level that involves the use of the segment's mechanic one or two times, or a longer exploration styled level, where the developers show off their technical skills with visual effects. I would like to see longer levels that combine more than just two mechanics together, creating complexity and forcing the player to think.


ending spoilers
Eventually, it's discovered that the mythical "weather disruptor" was never finished, and the scientists' work was a failure. The next task then is to escape, but not before exploring the final space. Here, the camera transforms, becoming not just a tool of creation, but a tool of destruction too. This change to the camera presents an opportunity to raise the difficulty, but again, the use of the mechanic is only needed once or twice per level. The final level of the game is a time trial, where the player must complete 9 short puzzles in 5 minutes. This sudden introduction of a timed challenge, with no ability to preview future puzzles, is jarring and even though I was able to complete it first time, I can see people finding it unnecessarily complicated. Thankfully, there is an option to disable the timer in the settings, but the introduction of it still feels unnecessary.
Earlier on in the game is another bizarre design choice. Instead of batteries powering the teleporter, this level uses a weight plate and a watermelon. To fill up the weight plate, the watermelon must be duplicated. However, the stationary camera used for this is observing a tilted plane that the watermelon rolls off of. In order to solve this level, the player must slice the watermelon in half to keep it stable on a tilted surface so the camera can capture it. Both the weight plate and the need to deliberately slice an object is seen only in this level. I recently wrote a blog post discussing game mechanics and how the introduction of one-time mechanics can often feel forgettable. Instead of feeling forgettable, here it just feels frustrating and redundant.
Just before the final level, where the player ends the simulation, a small piece of lore hints that the collaboration of scientists have discovered a way to heal Earth's climate, but it requires the work of the entire population, and not a grand act done by one. This method is dismissed by the lead scientist, which adds to her arrogant, "all work no play, but only my style of work" personality. After the final level, the player exits with a plant, a symbol of the other scientists work and the culmination of the message of the story: collaboration is the way forward.
While this is supposed to represent hope, it only raises more questions on the story. If the scientists could take items out of their workspace, surely the three of them could reject the lead scientist's dismissal and make an impact on the world themselves. Also, can a mute individual and what appears to be an engineer affect the world more than three world renowned scientists? It's an inconsistent, shallow story that often takes a backseat to the visual effects.


Viewfinder is not a long game, it took me just over 3 hours for a 100% completion, which includes all miscellanous achievements and collectibles. For the price that it asks for, I'm not sure I can recommend it. I also cannot recommend it if you're looking for a difficult puzzler. As it stands, Viewfinder is more of a tech demo for the studio, offering impressive visual effects alongside a revolving set of mechanics that keep things fresh at the lack of complexity or challenge. If that appeals to you, pick it up at a sale.
- tavi

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