by
He Who Watches
Developer Bobby Vanden • Publisher Bobby Vanden • Release September 2, 2026 • Platforms PC
It’s human nature to find inherent joy in challenging your mind. It’s why activities like Sudoku, Mahjong, and chess are some of the oldest and most revered recreational intellectual contests in the world. At their core, these activities offer opportunities to push yourself to your limits and grow mentally stronger. He Who Watches, oddly enough, feels like the modern embodiment of those timeless activities. Much like solving a Rubik’s Cube, it’s video game puzzle-solving in its rawest form. While there is a visual theme present, the story and lore of the world you find yourself in are little more than a backdrop. The game instead focuses on building a strong foundation of rules that ultimately serves as a massive playground for testing your mental strength.
He Who Watches is a first-person puzzle game packed with dozens upon dozens of challenge levels that gradually build on the rules of the world. Each level challenges you to navigate to an exit door using your magic bow. The only catch is that each exit door becomes increasingly entrenched in obstacles.
When it comes to audience reception, puzzle games are always fighting an uphill battle. There’s an expectation that they’ll be just the right difficulty so that people of all skill levels can feel simultaneously accomplished and challenged. There’s an expectation that difficulty will increase logically, so solutions feel fair and the reasoning behind them makes sense. There’s also an expectation that there will be both big and small victories throughout to motivate the player.
He Who Watches says to hell with your expectations.
This is a game that marches to the beat of its own drum. It gradually rolls out the rules of its puzzle system, compounding them over time. At first, you simply shoot a button to trigger a door. Then, the game introduces the need to place an object on a button. Before long, it’s asking you to change the direction of an object’s momentum to hit a button in an otherwise unreachable location.
It’s this constant expansion of the rules system that never seems to break under its own weight.
Each level provides a hint door if you’re stuck, but the game does not hold your hand or show restraint when it comes to complexity. Within an hour of playing, you’ll find yourself in a mental maze akin to the Infinity Castle in Demon Slayer.
The game feels like it’s paying homage to the visual design of Inception. On any given level, you’ll need to orient yourself, take stock of the physics at play, and move objects around multiple 3D planes, all while managing your core archery ability, which all the puzzles revolve around. It’s a lot, but it doesn’t feel any more imposing or unfair than your average game of Sudoku or Solitaire.
That’s the beauty and the beast of He Who Watches. Your love for this game will depend on how much you appreciate it as a straight-up brain game. There are no characters or lore bits to give you a reprieve.
That also means the level designs have an opportunity to truly shine. The amount of creativity and thought that went into every level becomes instantly apparent, and somehow, the game always seems to have some new trick to introduce.
So many tricks, in fact, that sometimes I found myself mentally exhausted after just a few levels. Part of this was due to the fact that I was pushing my mind to its limit, trying to reason through each level. The other part was that, after 30–60 minutes of playtime, I would experience motion sickness during the majority of my sessions. If there were any red flags, this would be one of them.
This is a game where every wall, floor, and ceiling can reasonably be assumed to be part of the solution. On top of that, your movement is tied to a snap-based grid system, which results in jerky movement. Coupled with the first-person perspective, I think a lot of players could find themselves feeling dizzy or nauseous. It’s not egregious or unbearable, but I did find it difficult at times, especially when I was stuck moving in circles on levels that had me stumped.
Discussing any game is subjective, but I’ve found that to be especially true of this game. It nails most aspects of game design, and the puzzles feel fair. I think the movement mechanics are also quite solid, aside from the fact that the first-person nature of the game could make some players a little motion sick.
From here, it’s a matter of personal taste. Just as it would be hard to review a game like checkers or Jenga, it’s hard for me to do so here. So I’ll lean back on my opening comparison: for those of you who enjoy the primal satisfaction of challenging yourselves as a pure test of mental prowess, I think He Who Watches is a great candidate for your next hobby.
Leave a Reply