A central design element to the game was how these puzzles are presented so that the player can achieve a moment of inspiration through trial and error and gain that comprehension themselves.

Blow desired to create a game around non-verbal communication, wanting players to learn from observation and to come to epiphanies in finding solutions and leading to a greater sense of involvement and accomplishment with each success.

[13] The player can also encounter a theater where short video clips, such as from James Burke's Connections series or the ending of Andrei Tarkovsky's Nostalghia, can be viewed.

[20] The name The Witness is derived from the core gameplay aspect of making the player attentive to the surroundings to discover meaning and solutions to puzzles without verbal communication, similar to the approach taken by Myst (1993).

[23][24] Part of the game's concept is a balance between puzzle-solving and perception, giving the player the freedom to explore The Witness's world and creating a non-linear approach to gameplay.

[16] These audio logs were initially intended to be more story-driven, but Blow opted later to replace these with more obfuscated and obtuse information, similar to the text elements used in Braid, to avoid directly relaying the story to the player and allow them to figure out the narrative for themselves instead.

[16][27] Blow saw achievements as hollow and false rewards for the player in comparison to puzzle-solving epiphanies and only implemented them because of requirements for certification by the game console platforms.

[16] Blow was also concerned about the immersion-breaking pop-up messages that announce achievements, as he considers The Witness a "subtle kind of game" and external cues can be jarring.

[33] Blow gives much credit to Orsolya Spanyol, a freshly graduated graphic artist he hired around 2011, for transforming the original sparse imagery of the island to the more vivid scenery that was included in the final game.

[3][37] Blow had to seek out additional capital in February 2015 after exhausting the Braid revenues, but believed that regardless of the costs of extra development time, the debt would be justified in the long run.

Blow and his team developed an unconventional means of serializing the game world into text files that would have revision control while at the same time making it easy to find conflicting edits.

[42] The design and layout of the island in The Witness has been nearly consistent since the start of the game's development, with the team working on populating the world with specific puzzles, and detailing the landscape and other art assets.

[25] Over the course of development, the power cable aspects remained, but the designers changed how easy they were to trace across the landscape as a means to guide the player towards potential objectives.

[25] The island has been structured to provide a fair mix of puzzle-solving, exploration, and narrative elements while avoiding a "paradox of choice" by giving the player too much freedom and confusion about where to go next.

[44] This introductory area was also meant to serve as the game's tutorial, helping players to understand the fundamental mechanics of switching between solving puzzles and exploring the environment to find others, and Thekla spent a great deal of time fine-tuning the details to be clear without verbal explanation.

[48] Blow said that the guidance and advice of the architects helped to craft the island in a way that "feels more immersive just because the details are in place, and your brain kind of picks up on it".

[50] Lackey layered the various sound effects to enable many different variations depending on the player's location on the island while also providing a seamless transition from one environment to the next.

[35] At the time of the 2010 reveal, Blow had anticipated releasing The Witness on Windows and iOS devices, and on an unspecified set of consoles, including possibly the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Sony also sought out independent developers like Blow to learn about the upcoming PlayStation 4 in preparation for its launch, while Microsoft had not yet released firm specifications for their console.

[59] In September 2015, Blow announced that the game's release was set for January 26, 2016, simultaneously for PlayStation 4 and Windows, with the iOS version to follow shortly thereafter.

[62][63] To help promote the game, the development team created three "long screenshot" videos, inspired by the experimental film Koyaanisqatsi, that slowly panned across the island and its features without additional commentary.

[64][65] Blow stated that they had been in discussions with publishers for a physical release of the game, but opted to not do that step initially, citing the additional time that would have been needed for the manufacturing and distribution processes.

Blow stated that they were working on a patch to allow players to adjust their field of view, disable the head bobbing, and enable faster movement options.

[67] In August 2016, the Windows version was updated to provide support for Nvidia's Ansel extension, which allows players to compose shots to be rendered in ultra-high resolutions or for 3D and virtual reality devices.

[70] Blow said in August 2016 that they were looking into porting the game to mobile devices, but it would require them to reduce the quality of the graphics and investigate an alternate control scheme that would work on touch screens.

[90] Justin McElroy of Polygon gave the game an 8/10 rating, describing it as "uplifting but frustrating"; he criticized the length of time involved in solving certain puzzles while expressing concern that less-patient players would take shortcuts.

Though he praised its visuals and setting, Mackey found the puzzles to be very difficult, saying that "there's simply too much going on to give me the proper feedback about what I'm getting wrong" and suggesting that "Blow was maybe a little too close to his work".

[91] In attempting to analyze the meaning of the game, David Roberts of GamesRadar+ said he felt that The Witness was about the nature of epiphanies within the scope of epistemology, the theory of knowledge.

[92] He later specified that first-week sales were over 100,000 copies, with gross revenues over $5 million, on track to break even with development costs, with which Thekla would start considering porting the game to other platforms, potentially including iOS, Android, OS X, and Xbox One.

He had opted to forgo strong digital rights management for the title, as he believes "people should have the freedom to own things", but has said he may change his mind and software piracy controls "might happen on the next game".