The Witness is a beautiful open world adventure, but the moment-to-moment activities are pretty simple: you move around an island and solve a series of increasingly difficult line puzzles which, when solved, change the lay of the land in both obvious and obscure ways. It's a concept that'd work quite well as a topdown, 8-bit adventure game in the vein of Zelda, and... would you look at that, someone has already done that very thing.
The Wit.nes is the work of indie developer Dustmop. It's a NES ROM, but you can download an emulator and play it on your PC easily enough (instructions are on Dustmop's Itch.io). It's currently marked as a demo, but contains 32 puzzles, 16 screens of map and four-way scrolling.
"Developed over 2 months, this NES ROM stands as a reinterpretation and tribute to the original work," reads Dustmop's description. "Aimed at both players unfamiliar with the full game who want to learn what it's like, as well as veterans that need a fix of new puzzle panels to solve."
If you'd prefer to watch someone else play the demake, check out YouTuber thumbstickathletes having a go below:
