Long read: The beauty and drama of video games and their clouds

"It's a little bit hard to work out without knowing the altitude of that dragon..."

If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy.

The Witness costs £29.99, pre-orders now live

Save £1 by pre-ordering it from the Humble Store.

We're one week out from Jonathan Blow's long, long-awaited follow-up to Braid with the Witness arriving on 26th January for PC and PS4. Now, pre-orders are live with the price set at £29.99 on Steam and £28.99 on the Humble Store.

Blow tweeted that the game's official site "has been crushed by massive demand."

The Witness took Blow over seven years to develop. Set on a mysterious island, you must solve a series of puzzles to understand the why such a peculiar place exists. It sounds almost banal in its Steam description ("Explore an abandoned island and solve the puzzles you find there."), but this is Blow we're talking about so we know he's up to something tricksy here and doesn't want to spill the beans just yet.

Our Oli Welsh last saw The Witness at E3 2013, where he said it "has the potential to become more than just an interesting thought experiment by one of the world's brainiest game designers."

Cover image for YouTube videoThe Witness release date trailer