I mean, having played The Witness, I have to try this game right? It's very clearly inspired by it, even though the puzzle mechanics are a little different. I'll say this first; it's a good game that's well worth the money. It's clearly a product built with lots of care and love from the developer.

Another disclaimer: I played this game fully aware that it's inspired by The Witness. The developer might claim that it's not THAT inspired and I do understand where he's coming from but being a game developer myself, having one reference that inspires you is vastly different from having two or more. In other words, when having a design block, falling back on one reference and just different from falling back to multiple references. I could be totally wrong about this l, of course, but Taiji to me does feel like at its core, it's building around what The Witness did and adding the developer's spin on it.

The first thing I want to talk about is the camera and layering. There's so much awkward fading in and out of layers in the scene that I can't help but think that it's better if the game is more 3D. A lot of times I was confused why I can't go one way or another and it turns out that I'm not on the right elevation or something, which might be better resolved if I'm in a more traditional third or first person view. That being said, I acknowledge that there ARE things in the game which are better represented in a more static 2D view that the game is using, notably aiding if visualising how to solve certain puzzles, especially the endgame ones.

...

Well, turn out I don't have much else to say. The game does have the same strength and weakness as The Witness. Lots of metaphors, detail in design, art and music that is up to the players to interpret IF they find it (this, I feel, is a core design principle Jonathan Blow has).

It's hard to give a good score. If I hadn't played The Witness, I would have felt that this game is novel and genius in its approach. It is still an excellent game, but I feel it's more of a clever spin and great homage to The Witness.

I guess it's apt to give this game is a (The Witness-1)/10