VIEWFINDER

A picturesque puzzler with far more than one weird trick to show you

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Developer Sad Owl Studios

Publisher Thunderful Games

Format PC, PS5 

Origin Various

Release 2023

The first time we pick up one of Viewfinder’s pictures and place it down in the world, it feels like magic. The contents of the black-and-white Polaroid immediately pop into three dimensions, cutting a slice out of the level geometry that was previously there and allowing us to step inside a cross-section of world that, just a few seconds ago, was held in our hands. It’s a remarkable trick, but one for which we’ve been prepared since late 2019, when game director Matt Stark tweeted a few short videos of a prototype he was toying with, between classes for his computer science degree at Dundee’s Abertay University. Those tweets blew up, one of them attracting nearly half a million views, allowing him to turn this student side-project into a full game with a team of up to 20 developers – itself a kind of magic, surely.

What we couldn’t tell from those videos, though, was whether the trick would grow old with repetition. Playing a substantial preview build of Viewfinder, we’re relieved to discover that the magic of those early videos persists. In building out that early tech demo into a game, Stark and team have been careful to extend the concept in as many directions as possible. “We’re trying not to be a one-trick pony,” lead artist