The Witness is one of those games I more enjoy reading about than playing. I really love the theory that the game was designed with the goal of just abusing the popularity of the devleoper, and trying to make a game as annoying and time-wasting to play as possible, just to see if the audience would still accept and praise it, because it’s from someone who’s a popular and known game designer. Which is what has happened - the game was really well received. And it’s also true that some mechanics aren’t making any sense and are in direct contrast with the main description of the game on Steam:

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 is blatantly false. There are puzzles that requires you to wait for an hour. Slow moving lifts and contraptions. The whole first part of the game is just the same mobile-game style puzzles, with minor twists in between. And that’s why I love the game from the game design perspective - because if it’s true that it was indeed made to mess with players, it was a success and I really respect that the developer did that.

Also, it has inspired someone to make The Looker, and parody games are my most favorite genre.