izigame.me

Overall: 7/10
Story:
When I started this game, I honestly wasn’t expecting to care much about the story. The gameplay about reshaping reality through photos and drawings is what caught my attention, and in all honesty, they're more than enough to carry the experience. You absolutely don’t NEED to engage with the story to enjoy the puzzles, but to my surprise, the narrative ended up being a lot deeper and more meaningful than I anticipated.
At its core, Viewfinder is set in a bleak future where Earth has been devastated by the burning of fossil fuels. Most nonhuman life is gone, and the planet is essentially a dystopian wasteland. With that setup, you step into a decades-old VR simulation in search of designs for a machine that could potentially reverse climate change, which are rumored to be located somewhere within said simulation.
What I found interesting about the narrative is that Viewfinder doesn’t lay out the deeper lore in a clear or linear way. As you progress from hub to hub, the basic narrative context comes from Cait, the cat companion in the simulation. While he gives you the broad strokes, most of the deeper lore is tucked away in optional audio logs, sticky notes, and personal journals scattered throughout the game. It’s all a little fragmented, and while the game moves you through a series of hubs in a linear fashion, you’re able to revisit earlier areas and levels, which personally gave me the impression that the logs/notes you find could've be out of chronological order. Because of this, I feel like some of the information you find leaves a lot of the lore open to interpretation and invites you to connect the dots yourself.
By the end, I found myself far more invested than I expected to be. The story touches on climate anxiety, human ambition, and the complicated legacy of people who tried to fix a grueling issue. A lot of it is subtle, but that made it all the more rewarding.

Gameplay:
Viewfinder is one of those games where its core appeal becomes immediately obvious. The idea of manipulating reality by placing photographs and drawings into the world is just straight up awesome. It’s a mechanic that’s incredibly fun to mess around with, and the game wastes no time showing off how wild and mind-bending it can be.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not really a puzzle game person. They’re just not my thing, so I can’t speak to the difficulty from a seasoned puzzle gamer’s perspective. That said though, as someone who plays puzzle games VERY casually, I still found Viewfinder to be on the easier side overall. I definitely had a few levels where I got stuck and needed to step away for a bit, but I don't think any of the puzzles stumped me for an unreasonable amount of time. I even realized after the fact that most of those puzzles I felt were suddenly difficult ended up being optional bonus levels anyway. Still, even with my hiccups, I finished the game just past the four-hour mark.
And that brings me to the core of my experience: Viewfinder is a game that's absolutely carried by its incredible central gimmick, but that gimmick doesn’t really evolve in a way that leads to many deeply rewarding puzzles. Once I got past the first hour or so, I really got into that “problem-solving mindset” where you understand the game’s logic and mechanics, and you’re excited for some critical thinking… but then the game just kind of coasts. It rarely pushes you. It feels like the mechanics were so open-ended and powerful that the developers struggled to create restrictive, cleverly-designed puzzles around them.
Even with the later-game additions like the violet buildings that can’t be overwritten or the data corruption mechanic that erases whatever you just captured, there’s so few moments that made me go, “Oh wow, that was a REALLY challenging puzzle.” Instead, a lot of levels felt like filler. Not in the sense that they weren't fun, but more so I'd complete one and then kind of wonder why it even existed, because it didn’t really teach me anything new or challenge my understanding of the mechanics. The number of interesting applications for the core mechanic is just so limited that it rarely feels like you’re doing something meaningfully different.
While that might all sound a bit harsh, I genuinely did enjoy this game. It’s very casual and a little short, sure, and maybe even a bit pricey for the runtime when it's not on sale, but I personally prefer a tightly crafted, original experience that ends before it overstays its welcome way more than sitting through a bloated game that drags one idea across too many reskinned levels. By the end, I felt like Viewfinder had given just enough content without dragging it out.
World:
The actual world/level design is pretty straightforward. Most of the spaces are clean, minimal, and clearly built around the mechanics rather than exploration or complexity. You’re rarely stuck wondering where to go, so it’s more about HOW to get there, which keeps the focus on solving puzzles with the tools the game gives you.
That said, what really stood out to me is the amount of environmental storytelling packed into these spaces. Even though the levels themselves are simple in structure, as I previously mentioned, there are subtle details everywhere like notes left behind, voice recordings, visual cues, etc. that hint at the world beyond the puzzles. It’s a cool contrast: the layout is direct and easy to navigate, but there’s depth if you take the time to look. I found that the more I paid attention to my surroundings, the more the story resonated, even without cutscenes or dialogue-heavy exposition. It makes the world feel lived-in, even when you’re just walking through what looks like a simple work stations.
Visuals:
I kind of have mixed feelings about the graphic design. Mostly because of the core visuals having that unmistakable "Unity Engine" aesthetic where things can look rubbery, overly clean, and sometimes oversaturated. That familiar vibe would occasionally break the immersion for me, reminding me of the engine behind it rather than letting me get lost in the world. It’s not outright bad by any means, just a little generic and worth noting.
However, what really impressed me and honestly gives the visuals the individuality it's lacking is how the visual/art styles from drawings, photos, or filters remain totally consistent once you place them into the world. Even when you pull an object out of the scene, the colors remain consistent to the original photo. Whether it's a pencil sketch, an old-school CRT look, or some abstract filter, the transition from 2D image to 3D space is seamless.
So while the base environments don’t always wow me, the creative use of visual styles through images is where Viewfinder really shines. It’s a cool contrast: the world might start off looking kind of standard, but the way it transforms through YOUR actions adds a lot of character and variety.
Music/Sound Design:
The music is one of the biggest highlights for me. It's very chill and atmospheric, which fits the vibe of the game perfectly. As you're moving from puzzle to puzzle, the soundtrack really gives you space to breathe and relax while it sets this calm, reflective tone that makes the whole experience feel really smooth and thoughtful. I rarely buy OSTs on Steam, but I genuinely wish I could for this one. The soundtrack is just such a vibe.
As for the sound design overall, I have more mixed feelings. The actual sound effects are solid; nothing is mind-blowing, but definitely immersive and functional enough to help sell the world. Where it loses me a bit is the voice acting. It's not bad or anything, and I can see what they were going for, but it felt a little too quirky for my taste. Just enough to pull me out of the moment every now and then. Not a dealbreaker, but it didn’t quite click with me.