{"id":87637,"date":"2026-08-17T07:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T11:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/?p=87637"},"modified":"2026-08-17T09:36:42","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T13:36:42","slug":"10-years-later-this-is-still-the-hardest-platinum-trophy-ive-ever-earned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/?p=87637","title":{"rendered":"10 Years Later, This is Still the Hardest Platinum Trophy I\u2019ve Ever Earned"},"content":{"rendered":"<section data-transform=\"mobile-ad-break\">\n<p>10 years ago, a game almost broke me. A wide-eyed 24-year-old, as yet undecayed by nearly a decade in games media, I found myself enraptured by The Witness. Eager to eat up every one of the maze-like puzzles hidden around its island setting, I simply couldn\u2019t get enough. That\u2019s until I hit its final challenge. It was optional, but not for me. This brick wall of a bastard drained brainpower out of me each time I smashed my head against it. But the moment I <em>finally<\/em> broke through was a rush like little else \u2014 the kind hardened soulslike players get when finally striking down a boss after several hours of trying. It\u2019s still the single most difficult trophy I\u2019ve ever earned, and as such, my most prized PlayStation platinum. But while that digital achievement sits proudly in my account, it&#8217;s nothing compared to how it made me feel in the moment, and I\u2019ve been chasing the same sort of thrill ever since.<\/p>\n<p>Indie developer Jonathan Blow\u2019s 2016 masterpiece holds many secrets. The further you explore The Witness\u2019s island setting, the more layers are revealed to you. At face value, it&#8217;s a simple premise: complete the electronic-screen-bound digital mazes in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>10 years ago, a game almost broke me. A wide-eyed 24-year-old, as yet undecayed by nearly a decade in games media, I found myself enraptured by The Witness. Eager to eat up every one of the maze-like puzzles hidden around its island setting, I simply couldn\u2019t get enough. That\u2019s until I hit its final challenge&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":87639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-external"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87637"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=87637"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87641,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87637\/revisions\/87641"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/87639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=87637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=87637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=87637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}