I'm not entirely sure if it's correct to put a thumb down on this review. Unfortunately Steam does not give me any other option and between the two this is the one that suits my experience better. While being careful about possible spoilers, I encourage new players to read thumbs up reviews as well. Also unrelated, my game time is actually way more than 10 hours, I have more than 20 but playing offline on the Deck does not register it correctly unfortunately.

First of all, I think this is a puzzle game with one of the best introduction out there. You wake up in a cave, go out and almost immediately you're presented with a seemingly gorgeously designed island, full of places that just beg you to go there and explore. After walking around a bit and clear out the first puzzles, which are rather intuitive and easy, you start catching up with what the game is about. The island is divided in areas and each one has different themed puzzles. You'll know when you cleared the area after you manage to activate a laser beam, which conveniently faces the peak of a mountain, likely the last place you'll need to visit.
Now, there are a couple of problems which come out of what I just explained about the game.

The first point I want to talk about here is different themed puzzles. The game is actually based on just one type of puzzle, go from point A to point B by tracing a line on a panel and choosing the correct route for it. For each area, the way this route is determined changes, it follows different rules and you have to figure them out by yourself. I think this is an interesting design choice, especially because for each individual (I mean you, the player) the difficulty will feel different based on what kind of reasoning your brain is accustomed to. Now, the problem for me here is that while it's interesting it's not... fun. Each area as a lot of panels to clear and difficulty goes up quite a bit by the end. The puzzle basic concept doesn't change in the end so deep down you feel like you're doing the same thing over and over again. I understand this might be an exaggerated comparison but to me it felt like eating salad hundreds of times consecutively, only with a different dressing each time. The content of the salad and taste slightly changes periodically but it's still salad, you'll want meat or dessert at some point, right? Well spoiler alert, you'll never get either in this game.

The map or better, the scenery, at first looks very promising. Lots of vivid colors for different places to visit, makes you think they're full of mysteries to be discovered and that you'll have fun while doing so.
Having found a few of them I know there are secrets in the game but for the most part you'll not be presented with any of this. Just panels and their puzzles. There's not much exploration to be done, the only thing I got was a bit of frustration because sometime you don't know where the next panel you activated is and end up going around aimlessly for a while. The environment itself is used for puzzles as well, but not that much.

I've read on other reviews that this game gives you little motivation to go on because there's no story at all and the ending is no satisfying either. I think this critique is mostly agreeable with. If you somewhat need a plot to get till the end, then The Witness is not the game for you. I will say though, the regular ending felt very unique and convinced me to go look for explanations about the whole lore behind the game. The stuff is there, just quite hidden. Was it the right design choice for this game though? While I admire the developers for having the courage of committing to this design, personally I would have thrown some more clear hints here and there, just something to get players more interested in solving the puzzles and even do other secrets.

I can't honestly recommend this game in good faith. The graphics and scenery are amazing, but the panel puzzle mechanic being hammered to death (which is needlessly limiting to the game's potential for clever puzzles) forces you to spend all of your time away from the nice views of the game. The puzzles aren't effectively linked to the environment (yes I am aware of the environmental lines but those have absolutely no effect on gameplay) and function on esoteric rules which are sometimes not effectively communicated to the player. The puzzles feel meaningless and repetitive without any sort of plot or narrative to justify their existence, and combined with the pretentious vague gesturing at some kind of narrative it gives the impression that the game does not respect your time in the slightest (which isn't helped by the slow walk speed and animations, and also the maddening detail that there's an invisible wall on every ledge). Also the complete lack of soundtrack makes the game feel soulless and sterile. Also the game costs about four times as much as it should. Go buy the Talos Principle instead if you want a good puzzle experience, which is somehow less expensive.

解不动，认输