Viewfinder is a First-Person Perspective Puzzle Game developed by Sad Owl Studios and published by Thunderful Publishing in 2023.
Four scientists — Aharon, Hiraya, Mirren, and Chi Leung — have collaborated to create a virtual realm for the express purpose of scientific research. There, deep within that space, they have worked on their greatest achievement: a Weather-Control Machine capable of altering the world's climate.
With your best friend Jesse providing assistance from the real world, you explore their virtual reality and solve various photo-based puzzles to progress further within. Your chief goal is to locate the machine and get it working so that it can restore the world's climate to safe levels. And given that the sky outside in the real world is currently a seething crimson, said goal is of the utmost priority.
Gameplay consists of finding (and later creating) images and positioning them so that they replace whatever was behind them with image's contents. For example, you can gain access to a fenced-off portion of a level by erasing the barrier with a blank photo or one with only bare ground.
This video game contains the following tropes:
- 100% Completion: You can unlock photo filters by completing optional challenges as well as by some other hidden means. Each area also has a group of collectibles themed around the main character of the area.
- Awful Truth: That the Weather Disruptor was a failure is such an unwelcome revelation that CAIT begs you not to press on with your mission in the lead-up to the surprise.
- Cruelty Is the Only Option: In the final level of the game, in order to break out of the simulation and escape to the real world, you have to trigger the failsafe that erases the entire virtual reality...including CAIT, much to his chagrin.
- Cassette Futurism: The game is set in the future, yet the simulation contains several analog-era objects, including gramophones, '80s-style boomboxes, and film-based instant cameras. The latter is justified, because the reality-warping requires physical copies of pictures.
- Featureless Protagonist: Your player character lacks any identifying features, and neither of the characters you interact with gives any identifying characteristics away. Even when you get the ability to take selfies using timed fixed cameras near the endgame, they still feature the PC as a glitchy silhouette.
- Green Aesop: The solution to the world's climate problem is not a Weather-Control Machine, but making plants grow again.
- Hub Level: The levels are accessed through teleporters on a series of hub levels connected by a cable car. Once you finish a level, it can be revisited through any of the teleporters leading to already finished levels.
- Magical Camera: Some time into the game, you come across several fixed cameras that can take the same reality-changing photos that you've been encountering from earlier levels. Later on, you get access to your own portable camera that likewise does the same.
- Mission Control: Your best friend Jesse fulfills this role, keeping in touch with you as you explore the virtual space. Even when she loses the ability to directly contact you early on, she will still provide intel and guidance through phone calls and voice mails.
- No-Sell:
- You cannot take photos of anything affected by the violet corruption, nor can you erase them with your photos — they will simply overwrite anything depicted within. This proves critical in several levels.
- The final level contains the virtual reality's failsafe which, when triggered, begins a five-minute countdown until the entire virtual space is erased. No matter how much you abuse the Time Rewind Mechanic there, the countdown will never be rewound. Your only hope if you screw up too often is to restart from the beginning.
- Ominous Visual Glitch:
- During an early level, you're faced with a puzzle involving a photo containing itself on a table. However, the more copies of that photo you place to get to the Level Goal, the more distorted and glitchy they appear and the more bugged-out Jesse's voice sounds. With enough photos, the virtual space crashes, necessitating you to head to the power supply and reboot it to proceed.
- In the endgame, the camera you've been carrying with you begins shaking ominously. Sure enough, when you take a photo of something, the entire area that was captured is destroyed, leaving only a pixel-filled whirlpool into a black void.
- Portal Picture: The central gimmick of this game is finding (and later creating) images that can then be placed in front of you to make manifest whatever is depicted within at the expense of whatever was behind the photo. The photos may also contain extra content that is hidden by its viewpoint (for example, a hidden nook that contains another photo). One variant of this trope comes in the endgame, where you use timed fixed cameras to create selfies, and then use those selfies to teleport into otherwise inaccessible locations by swapping places with your captured likeness.
- "Ray of Hope" Ending: Even with the Weather Disruptor unusable and the scientist's virtual reality purged by the failsafe, the finale reveals that there is a healthy sapling thriving near a dead tree in the space's last remnants. You take the sapling and exit the virtual space...and Jesse is surprised that you've somehow brought it into the real world. In the end, the research the scientists have made did produce something meaningful.
- Red Sky, Take Warning: One of the major signs the real world has seen better days is that—when you need to fix the virtual reality machine's power supply early on—you can take a look outside and see the sky is a constant, worrying shade of red.
- Renaissance Man: Downplayed. In addition to being a scientist, Aharon was also a skilled artist. There is one level containing several images in diverse styles, all implied to be his work.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: In the end, the Weather Disruptor that you were looking forward to using to save the environment ends up breaking down just as it gets ready to clear the sky.
- Simulated Fantasy, Post-Apocalyptic Reality: The bulk of the game is set in a utopian virtual world used as a laboratory and rec room by a group of scientists in their efforts to save the planet many years ago, and you're the explorer sent in to uncover their research via your ability to warp the simulation. In the real world, Earth has been ruined by climate change and industrial overdevelopment: the sky is a hellish red, the environment is dominated by derelict high-rise towers, Jessie admits she's never seen a tree up close, and citizens have to wear a personal oxygen supply whenever they leave their sealed skyscrapers. Your goal in your exploration of VR is to uncover a Weather-Control Machine that the researchers developed in the hope of using it to restore the planet... and society is so fractured in this apocalyptic future that you're one of only two people at work on the project.
- Solar Punk: The areas inside the simulation are nice, clean, powered by solar panels and wind turbines. Of course, the world outside the simulation is quite the opposite.
- Taken from a Dream: As you leave VR for the final time, you happen to take a seedling from a simulated desert - and somehow end up bringing it with you into reality, suggesting that you've managed to find a means of undoing the environmental decay after all.
- Team Pet: CAIT was the scientists' companion cat and data keeper for their research into the environmental sciences.
- Timed Mission: The final level gives you five minutes to clear, since that's how long it takes for the failsafe to wipe the virtual space. And no, rewinding time will not rewind the countdown.
- Time Rewind Mechanic: You can rewind time to undo mistakes in placing pictures or save yourself from falling off into the void. However, the mechanic will not affect the failsafe's countdown to virtual space erasure.
- Video Game Caring Potential: The game gives you several opportunities to pet CAIT and hear him purr contentedly. As the cat himself notes, petting a cat can indeed be a soothing experience.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: You get an achievement if you slice a Dustinnote in two or throw it off the cliff. Trying to copy or slice CAIT wouldn't work though.
- Virtual-Reality Warper:
- The game takes place almost entirely in a VR environment in which the player has the ability to warp the structure and laws of the simulation by superimposing photographs and artworks on top of it, allowing you to bridge gaps, explore areas that didn't previously exist, and even duplicate otherwise one-of-a-kind items - including yourself.
- The scientists who built the simulation were even better at it than the player character: not only did they create the various areas as their laboratories and even homes, but the levels are littered with post-it notes on how they've managed to improve the sensations associated with actions and foods to the point that they've become virtually indistinguishable from the real world.
- Weather-Control Machine: The scientists who were working on the virtual reality space you explore were also attempting to find ways to control the climate and undo the damage that civilization brought upon it. Your ultimate goal is to find the fruit of their efforts deep within the space.
- Wham Line: After you go through so much effort to find the Weather Disruptor the scientists were working on, CAIT can only offer the Awful Truth when it falls apart in front of your eyes:CAIT: It didn't work. It never worked.
