Antichamber

Sun, 24 Mar 2013

So, I’ve totally been meaning to get some work done around here, sort out certain linking issues and the what not; but instead, I’ve been sidetracking myself in the best way possible by playing Antichamber all weekend… Well, actually there was some time spent drinking involved too. But even then through the boozing, the vomiting and the mandingo fighting, my mind was thinking all about this insanely good puzzle game.

Developed by one guy (Alexander Bruce) over several years, it’s a first-person puzzle game that’s set entirely in a non-Euclidean geometric world, where the levels are all very smartly designed to ignore typical notions of normal space and the puzzles are cleverly made and fiendishly taxing at times; though that’s probably because your sense of logic and reasoning just haven’t quite realigned as much as needed yet. And oh, it will.

As you navigate through the levels, the levels can change on you, based purely on your perspective and how you move through them. This, in tandem with the game’s brilliant minimalist ascetics, creates a wonderful psychological backdrop that forces one to constantly readjust their thinking in order to solve the puzzles and explore the game.

It can sound frustrating at times, and at times it can be, but the puzzles themselves aren’t of malicious design and often the solutions are revealed to be quite simple in their complexity and totally rewarding when you solve them.

Brilliantly inventive and refreshingly good on every level. This is totally something for fans of puzzles, games, art and basically anything good. This is one of them.