Tropes:
- 419 Scam: One of the Fauxlosophic Narration tapes in the main castle area is about a letter Kublai Khan received from Marco Polo, about a city where everything was so impermanent that a visiting prince lost his crown and needs a small cash payment in order to regain it, with the promise of paying back tenfold. Khan considered the letter stupid, because it was sent from a man that traded all of his gold for paper.
- Achievement System: The game's Steam release has ten achievements, most of which are unlocked through progressing through the game, while others require finding optional tasks or getting a high-score in a minigame.
- All Just a Dream: Beating the game plays a clip of the protagonist, still in first-person perspective, waking up in his apartment, then flat-out stating he was in some kind of coma.
- Anti-Climax: When the player first accesses the castle area after the tutorial, the obvious eye-catcher is a large golden box that's connected to multiple power cords. Once it's finally activated by solving all of the ground-level puzzles and most of the parapets (in other words, the majority of the game), it takes a few moments to dramatically open up, revealing the kids' menu from a seafood restaurant with a maze in its activity corner.
- Bait-and-Switch: Nearly every part of the live-action ending has one such moment matching the live-action ending of The Witness; for example, a stack of coins gets purposely knocked over in The Witness, while the protagonist of The Looker gently pats a stack of pennies and says he'd never harm it.
- Banana Peel: In the clip of real life that plays by beating the game, the protagonist ends up slipping on one as he walks towards a maze taped to his fridge.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: On one side of the main castle area is a Hint Button that offers encouragement...at first. The last line of dialogue before it loops has it hesitate, then state that you can't do things on your own, and gloats that you have to "suckle on its teat" in order to gain the validation you need to make any progress.
- Blinded by the Sun: Upon reaching the castle's parapets, the player sees a telescope pointed towards the sun. Trying to look through it makes the entire screen flash white, and unlocks an achievement asking why the player did that.
- Bottom of the Barrel Joke: The final puzzle of the game, only accessible by completing all of the rest, is to draw a line from Start to End to form "The Obelisk of Knowledge" and "The Stones of Reflection"...which, as the protagonist immediately points out, is actually just a doodle of a penis.Narrator: "Oh, wait. It's a giant co-"*smash to credits*
- The Computer Shall Taunt You: One puzzle by an artist's palette has the voice taunt you each time you don't give the solution.
- Cutting the Knot: Some mazes requiring an Outside-the-Box Tactic involve realizing whether the maze's walls are actually made of black lines, as that's the only color that can block your pen. In the ending cutscene, the protagonist solves a maze made out of a cookie and a line of crumbs on a plate (which itself resembles an environmental puzzle from The Witness) by tilting the plate so the cookie and crumbs all fall to the side and a straight line can be drawn from S to E.
- Deconstruction Game:
- The game is specifically a deconstruction of The Witness, but can generally apply to any puzzle game that uses Fauxlosophic Narration, artistry, and unclear instructions to make a puzzle seem deeper than it is, replacing all of the grand speeches about philosophy with complete nonsense and the puzzles with mazes from the kid's menu of a restaurant (literally, in one case).
- It's worth noting that, in a Reddit showcase thread
, the creator stated that his intention for the game was an Affectionate Parody and he didn't make The Looker out of malice (hardcore fans in the aforementioned thread commented that specific details in the game showed that the author was indeed a Jonathan Blow fan). However, Jonathan Blow has gone on record saying he didn't like The Looker at all, which seems to be related to two reasons. First, Jonathan Blow seems to be a creator who overall doesn't take criticism of his work well (as seen from his comments about the infamous 
Joseph Anderson review). Second, despite the game being well received by the hardcore fans (as comments on the Reddit showcase thread tell), in a mix of Periphery Demographic and Misaimed Fandom, the vast majority of The Looker fans (at least, according to the Steam reviews) seems to be players who, to put it simple, "liked The Witness but hated Jonathan Blow" (this is to say, enjoyed it as a puzzle game but disliked the author's pretentiousness that transpired to many aspects of the game), and loved how The Looker pokes fun at what those players perceive as the worst aspects of The Witness.
- Door to Before: Midway through clearing the castle's parapets, the player can find and unlock a door that leads back to the castle's main section. At the end of that section, there's also a door that loops back to the start of the parapets, as well as a gate that also leads back down to the main section.
- Dungeon Bypass: For some puzzles, it's far easier (and sometimes outright intended) to just draw a line around the maze instead of trying to navigate it.
- Elaborate Underground Base: The game begins in a high-tech metallic corridor before the player solves their first few puzzles and reaches the island's surface.
- Fauxlosophic Narration: There are six voice recordings scattered throughout the game that start out sounding philosophic, but quickly degrade into hilarity, such as a discussion about gravity and wavelengths turning into a story about superheroes empowered by different "colors" of gravity.
- Forced Perspective: One of the few puzzles that's not just a maze (though part of it is activated by connecting a line from Start to End) involves a reticule in a fixed position, which you have to look at from different angles in order to "aim" at appropriate targets.
- Hedge Maze: Fittingly, by solving all of the mazes in the castle's ground floor, the player unlocks access to one of these. At its center is a book with mazes that indicate how to solve the puzzle that leads to the final challenge.
- Hint System:
- The starting screen displays some tips. Some are useful (e.g. hold shift to sprint), and others are nonsensical (e.g. press the Double Arabian button to perform a Double Arabian).
- Parodied with the hint buttons. One (mostly) provides useless platitudes when you activate it, and the other reminisces about better days.
- Honest John's Dealership: Another of the Fauxlosophic Narration tapes is a man who has long sought for something...and then it segues into an advertisement as what he sought were better deals at 0% APR than at "Mike's Pre-Owned" car lot.
- Ironic Echo: In the parapets is a room overlooking the giant chess set on the ground, and in addition to one of the Fauxlosophic Narration tapes, there's a two-part audio log next to a regular-sized chess set: the first part is "You can only get good at chess if you love the game. - Grandmaster Bobby Fischer"...and the second part is "I hate chess, I hate chess, I hate chess. - World Champion Bobby Fischer".
- Jaded Washout: Just around the corner from the Hint button in the lobby, there's a rusty Hint Button in the trash with a cigarette and glass of bourbon nearby, which instead talks about how his time has passed in a Private Eye Monologue.
- Jump Scare: In order to access the parapets, the player needs to enter a restricted area. In the area, you solve some mazes where red ink starts dripping like blood, upon which the armor blocking the other path that your back was turned to mysteriously vanishes. Down that path, you watch a ghost walking through a bookcase, and then receive a shotgun. Around the corner, one flash of red and a Scare Chord later, it turns out the armor is just under a red spotlight and can't possibly harm you, and the gun's just used to solve a puzzle.
- Metaphorgotten: One tape of Fauxlosophic Narration found on a rowboat is a parable of a man that took a boat out to sea despite warnings from his peers, and then profited from the insurance money when it indeed sank. The narration then starts to claim everything was a metaphor for something, like how the shipwright was Richard Dawkins and the ship's captain was Albert Einstein, before asking "What the heck was I talking about?"
- Oddly Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo: One of the Fauxlosophic Narration tapes is supposedly sourced from Invisible Cities 2: This Time It's Visible.
- Outside-the-Box Tactic: Many of the game's mazes require this kind of tactic, such as Cutting the Knot or Dungeon Bypass.
- Overly Long Gag: The cube at the end of the parapet section, which is needed to activate one of the game's final puzzles, takes over a full minute to open up into a smaller box, have that box open up to an even smaller laser pointer, shoot a beam in the wrong direction, somehow take multiple 90-degree turns to still miss the target, and then pull out a tiny mirror to make the final adjustment.
- P.O.V. Cam: The entire game is experienced through a first-person perspective; while the player never sees their own face, their arm's wristwatch is used as a pause menu. This is still true for the real-life cutscene at the game's ending.
- Pun-Based Title: Because if you Look at something, you Witness it.
- Red Herring: There's a cottage noticeable behind the hedge maze. The hedge maze is actually closed off in the back; you cannot reach the cottage.
- Retirony: During the ending, the protagonist mentions how he's about to retire from puzzle solving right before he slips on a banana peel.
- Shout-Out:
- One of the title screen tips tells you that you can left click on a puzzle to perform a Glory Kill.
- The story about different-colored gravity wavelengths giving people superpowers mentioned in Fauxlosophic Narration is a reference to Gravity's Rainbow, with the book falsely credited as the story's source.
- One of the game's puzzles is a game of "Snék".
- Following the "Snék" puzzle, the player unlocks a room with a poster for "Ponytail"; trying to connect the S and E in its subtitle (as the letters are used elsewhere as indication of a maze's Start and End) causes time to rewind and your line to undo itself while the appropriate sound effect from the referenced game plays.
- Sound-Coded for Your Convenience: One puzzle has a voice saying "beep". As you approach the spot, the voice becomes increasingly exasperated, telling you that you're so close and it's right there.
- Spoof Aesop: The Witness had an audio log in the shipwreck area which told a parable about a shipowner who sent a ship to sail, despite needing some repairs, because she had completed previous voyages successfully. When the ship sinks, the parable condemns the shipowner because "he had acquired his belief not by honestly earning it in patient investigation, but by stifling his doubts". The Looker has an audio log on a rowboat (already mentioned on the Metaphorgotten entry), which tells the same parable as The Witness, but when it comes to explaining its aesop, The Looker inverts it and pardons the shipowner because "it was grounded in repeated practical experimentation, rather than the hubris of rationalistic, a priori, belief".
- Spoofed with Their Own Words: Four of the six Fauxlosophic Narration tapes are made-up nonsense that parodies actual philosophical quotes. As for the remaining two, one is an actual quote about the tangibility of prayer from a book by Deepak Chopra, and the other is an actual excerpt from an essay about chess by Stuart Rachels.
- Unexpected Gameplay Change: You can eventually play a Rail Shooter mini-game, but instead of shooting targets, you have to quickly solve puzzles that pop out from the scenery.
- Very False Advertising: The game's official trailer begins with the statement "From the Mind Behind The Witness"...and then adds a few more words to turn it into "From The Mind that Was Not Behind The Witness (he doesn't even know about this)". At the trailer's end, looking at the "awards" show that they're all meaningless, such as "PICTURE OF LAURELS with a number under it 2022" and "Winner of NOTHING this game isn't OUT YET".
- Whole-Plot Reference: In addition to taking direct inspiration from The Witness, The Looker intentionally utilizes similar area design; it begins with a long corridor with tutorial puzzles leading up to the surface, the castle has a white energy-grid laser gate just like the first area of The Witness, the Overly Long Gag involving a laser activating a puzzle is reminiscent of activating lasers at the end of each area of The Witness, and the mystical chanting followed by a live-action video at the end (involving waking up in front of a computer, a jar of yellow liquid, a stack of coins, and solving a puzzle in reality) directly parodies the original's ending.
