RecommendedSteam player
this game is the biggest coding flex i've ever seen, love it.Show moreShow less
0.6 hours at review925 people found this helpful
Viewfinder
Turning photographs and other images into parts of a puzzle world is Viewfinder’s distinct appeal. Players looking for a solo adventure with exploration and a player-driven story can get it from 
GOG for ≈ $4.04, at the offer’s recorded low. Steam reviews recommend the game at 94%% from 12,221 reviews. That makes this a timely opportunity for anyone drawn to its perspective-bending puzzles, without needing to plan around multiplayer. At $24.99 from GOG, Viewfinder is at the offer’s currently recorded low; 94%% of its 12,221 Steam reviews recommend the puzzle adventure.
All-time low ~ $4.99across Steam & third-party storesat the recorded all-time low
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Price History
Past 36 months · Updated dailyHistorical Low~ $0.002025-12Current Low Across Stores~ $22.49Epic Game Store
Prices cover Steam and 39 authorized stores; only legitimate offers are counted. The chart shows weekly market-wide lows and Steam's official price across the past 36 months.
01About Viewfinder
In Viewfinder, an instant camera changes the rules of the environment: photographs, paintings, sketches, screenshots and postcards can be placed into the world and become part of it. This first-person adventure combines that idea with puzzles and exploration across connected hub worlds. Its player-driven narrative leaves room to focus on solving puzzles or to investigate the world’s mysteries. On Steam, 94%% of 12,221 reviews recommend the game.
Credits
Developer
Sad Owl Studios
Publisher
Thunderful Publishing
Lowest recorded in 36 months
$0.002025-12-29 · Epic Game StoreBase game · same records as the chart above; USD history, not a regional Steam low.Language support
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | Yes | Yes | — |
| Traditional Chinese | Yes | Yes | — |
| English | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Show 10 more languages
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| French | Yes | Yes | — |
| Italian | Yes | Yes | — |
| German | Yes | Yes | — |
| Spanish | Yes | Yes | — |
| Japanese | Yes | Yes | — |
| Korean | Yes | Yes | — |
| Russian | Yes | Yes | — |
| Portuguese-Brazil | Yes | Yes | — |
| Arabic | Yes | Yes | — |
| Spanish-Latin America | Yes | Yes | — |
Steam PC edition data · 2026-10-16
02Before you buy
Gameplay
Viewfinder is a single-player first-person adventure built around puzzles. Photographs, paintings, sketches, screenshots and postcards can be placed into the world.
Language and controls
The Steam PC version has full controller support. English includes full audio and subtitles; other supported languages have subtitles.
03Frequently asked questions
Can I choose how much to explore?
Yes. The narrative is player-driven, and the description presents it as approachable for puzzle-solving as well as rewarding for exploring the world.
How do the puzzles work?
You bring photographs and other images into the environment, changing the world as part of solving puzzles.
How is the world structured?
Exploration spans multiple connected hub worlds with related but complex differences.
Popular Steam reviews
Native-language selection · 10 reviewsSelected helpful reviews in this language show both recommendations and criticisms. This selection does not represent the overall positive rating; opinions reflect the version reviewed.
Not recommendedSteam player
Do not set your expectations too high. I hesitated a lot and I hate to give this game a bad review, but I'm overall too disappointed to give it a positive one. On the bright side, there is no arguing that the main mechanic of the game is one of its kind and expertly executed, the visuals are also impeccable. And I'd say just for that the game is worth experiencing (on sale). However. The game is too short (~5h) for its pricepoint. I found the puzzles to be quickly repetitive and lacking in creativity, diversity and difficulty : - Few mechanics are introduced throughout the game. - Solutions are often the same variation of the same few patterns. - And after finishing all of the optional puzzles, only one left me really scratching my head by its ingenuity. Overall fairly forgettable, but it all remained fun, colorful and satisfying to go through nevertheless. Except they tried to put a scenario in there. Urgh And so, without being inherently bad, the game is unfortunately sprinkled over a unoriginal dystopian setting, that takes you through an unoriginal story about saving this world you have no emotional investment in, leading to a unoriginal plot-twist. I can appreciate the attempt to make this about global-warming as well, but it is clumsily done in a common "telling instead of showing" kind of way. This is in my opinion an unfortunate waste because the way the story is told is very disconnected from the medium. The game offered a wonderful base for environnemental story-telling and connection with the player (almost physical, the world feels like playdoh), but instead they decided to have a cat tell you to save the world. The polar opposite of games like Cloud Gardens, with minimalistic narration but impactful messages through visuals and mechanics.Show moreShow less
5.4 hours at review313 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
You can pet the cat (the cat is very nice)Show moreShow less
0.5 hours at review341 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
This is a wonderful game, I deeply enjoyed it and honestly it was a nice soft fun. The story is compelling and interesting, the emotional beats are well crafted, the companions aren't annoying and all in all it was a nice experience with plenty of easy "aha!" moments that make you feel like the smartest person alive. Do I recommend this game? Unfortunately, I just can't recommend it as a puzzler. At $32.85 AUD it is staggeringly overpriced for what you get, which is a game that's barely 3 hours long and fumbles the capacity to be truly brilliant as a puzzler. This reminds me more of a Naughty Dog game, where the actual gameplay is not challenging to better allow yourself to be immersed in the world and the story. That's totally fine for a linear story telling game, but when Viewfinder is tagged as a Puzzle game (and steam is comparing it to games such as Portal and Portal 2) you'd hope that the puzzles would be the forefront of the gameplay not the story. The puzzles (even the optional "challenge" puzzles) are easy. Really easy. Your biggest puzzle sometimes is trying to figure out where the exit teleport is so you can actually do the simple step to reach it. This is really such a shame, because this game had everything going for it to be a challenging perspective warping puzzler and I just don't think it delivered aside from one or two levels which introduced fresh and exciting concepts but never expanded properly upon them. I feel like this is half a game, that I just finished learning all the mechanics and I'm right about to start applying them and then the game is over.Show moreShow less
2.8 hours at review302 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
The most fun and unique game I've played since Portal. ---{ Graphics }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☑ Beautiful ☐ Good ☐ Decent ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ MS-DOS ---{ Gameplay }--- ☑ Very good ☐ Good ☐ It's just gameplay ☐ Mehh ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't ---{ Audio }--- ☐ Eargasm ☑ Very good ☐ Good ☐ Not too bad ☐ Bad ☐ I'm now deaf ---{ Audience }--- ☑ Kids ☑ Teens ☑ Adults ☑ Grandma ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☐ Check if you can run paint ☐ Potato ☑ Decent ☐ Fast ☐ Rich boi ☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer ---{ Difficulty }--- ☐ Just press 'W' ☑ Easy to Challenging ☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☐ Significant brain usage ☐ Difficult ☐ Dark Souls ---{ Grind }--- ☑ Nothing to grind ☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks ☐ Isn't necessary to progress ☐ Average grind level ☐ Too much grind ☐ You'll need a second life for grinding ---{ Story }--- ☐ No Story ☐ Some lore ☐ Average ☑ Good ☐ Lovely ☐ It'll replace your life ---{ Game Time }--- ☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee ☐ Short ☑ Average ☐ Long ☐ To infinity and beyond ---{ Price }--- ☐ It's free! ☑ Worth the price ☐ If it's on sale ☐ If u have some spare money left ☐ Not recommended ☐ You could also just burn your money ---{ Bugs }--- ☑ Never heard of ☐ Minor bugs ☐ Can get annoying ☐ ARK: Survival Evolved ☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs ---{ ? / 10 }--- ☐ 1 ☐ 2 ☐ 3 ☐ 4 ☐ 5 ☐ 6 ☐ 7 ☐ 8 ☑ 9 ☐ 10Show moreShow less
10.9 hours at review313 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
I really tried to like Viewfinder, but I just can't get past over the game-journalist difficulty. 5/10 From a coding perspective, Viewfinder is one of the most brilliant showcases of mechanics in a 3D First Person puzzle game I have ever seen. I was in awe how EVERYTHING behaves naturally and seamlessly. I can't even begin to describe how cool I think that a game like this is even possible in the first place. While Viewfinder is an incredible achievement in programming, it sadly completely fails as a puzzle game, it never explores the mechanics it introduces. It simply skips to the next mechanic before actually doing anything with what you have learned. The entire game feels like a tutorial for game journalists. Even the more advanced puzzles never got me stuck for more than a minute or two. You are also rarely limited in taking photos even though you have a rewind mechanic . So most of the time I only used 1 or 2 of the 5 photos that i had access to. Viewfinder reminds me a lot of "Manifold Garden" and "The entropy Centre", where these games have excellent mechanics but never does anything with them. It is pretty to look at, but contains no depth. Which just leaves me so disappointed, because I know you can make an absolutely amazing mind-bending puzzle game with these clever ideas. Even if it was on the easier side, I would've been happy with it. But Viewfinder is so pathetically easy that I never really had to think, the solution was already apparent to me the moment I had explored the level. All in all, I wish these game developers good luck in creating a more engaging experience, because Sad Owl Studios clearly have the technical skills to create something really special. You just need to take more time in designing challenges for the players and you got yourself that masterpiece that will set the standard for all the games that come after it. I still look forward to the next game from this studio just because I know there are some incredibly skilled developers behind this technical marvel of a game. Hopefully, they continue working on Viewfinder and add some hard DLC levels to Viewfinder because I am still down to buy them. Because the concept of the game is just that great. If you came looking for puzzle games, I have some recommendations for you. I would suggest playing "Portal (1 and 2)", "The Talos Principle" or "The Witness" in the 3D First Person puzzle game genre or "Baba is You" from the top-down 2D Puzzle game genre. And for mystery games I recommend "Return of the Obra Dinn" and "Outer Wilds", I really recommend playing these two completely spoiler free, don't even look at the trailers. Edit: As some of the people have pointed out below, Manifold Garden contains additional difficulty when you try solve it without picking up god-cubes. But the game never hints that you can do that, which to me is bad design. When compared to Baba is You's Level Keyword or The Witness' Tracing the actual environment it's immediately obvious that you can do some crazy stuff with it. I don't want to have to go through an achievement list or have to look up guides to realise that what i'm looking at is just the surface level and not the entire game.Show moreShow less
3 hours at review289 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
First of all, I'd like to start by saying HOW?? This game has one of the smartest mechanics I've ever seen in an indie game. As a Gameplay Programmer myself, some ideas that's suggested throughout the process of making a game might sound smart, but undoable for most of the time. Sometimes Designers wants something but Programmers says otherwise. In Viewfinder's mechanics, I see myself saying "How would I implement this?"--which I would love to learn because it amazes me to find out about new mechanics and their development processes-- From the look of this game, it seems like Sad Owl Studios doesn't take "undoable" for an answer. After finishing the game in one day, it still blows my mind to think about it because, how and why is this game this bug-free while having these kind of mechanics???? I tested a lot of weird occasions, but no, nothing really bugged it. It was perfectly smooth and still looking good which is annoyingly amazing. But anyways, aside from how good of a game this is as in terms of "Game Development", it's also a pretty good game to experience as a player. I loved how easy it is to grasp the gameplay, I loved the level/game design in each scene and I definitely LOVED the art design for sure. This feels like a really good example to show how each department in an indie game studio works really good as a whole team! To me it never felt repetitive, with new features coming along the way, it made me even more connected to the game. The only downside was that I couldn't really feel attached to the story that was coming along with me through the journey, I was very intrigued with the gameplay itself, I forgot the story but that might be my fault. Also it ends quick, even though I played it for 8 hours yet it felt quick to me :(. I hope they make new levels at the future but for now, just please experience this game. Especially if you like games like Superliminal and Portal.Show moreShow less
7.9 hours at review261 people found this helpful
Received for free
Not recommendedSteam player
An annoying voice will spoil and walk you through puzzles. If the voice could be turned off, both text and sound, I wouldn't care that it's in the game. Telling me I need three batteries before I've even found the first one, or even looked around, is patronizing and insulting. It's not even a useful voice. "Oh, you fell in a hole? Look for a way out" plot twist: there is no way out, you rewind time, and then have to endure a Forespoken-esque "Did that just happen?!" There are so many other games out there for them to not have added a toggle by now, *ESPECIALLY* when people have been complaining about it since before release.Show moreShow less
0.3 hours at review196 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Settings > Audio > Speech Volume = 0% Thank me later.Show moreShow less
0.7 hours at review164 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
The tech is amazing, the concept is there, the art is great but the challenge just isn't there for a puzzle game. While the game does a good job at getting across its mechanics and the ways to exploit them, it just stops there. Most levels are carefully designed around a new interaction but those only act as tutorials, for the whole length of the game, making it insultingly easy. The game overly relies on the gimmickiness of its mechanics but never explores them in depth, never leaves them a chance to truly shine. Weak writing also didn't help make the game feel any less superficial. Would love to see the concept expanded upon.Show moreShow less
2 hours at review186 people found this helpful
Source: original Steam user reviews. Helpful votes are an archived snapshot, not live data. Last collected: 08/15/2026.