Antichamber: Review

Ever wondered what it would be like to explore one of those impossible pictures? The type where the staircase always goes up, where doors are on every surface? Well Antichamber answers those questions whilst delivering a truly unique puzzle experience.

Right from the start, Antichamber throws out the traditional rules of level design. As you explore down each corridor, you’re never quite sure what you’ll find next. You could end looping back on yourself, finding a secret path or witness the level changing before your eyes. The game pushes the boundaries of what is possible with geometry; completely breaking traditional linear level design. An early example you encounter is a room full of cubes. Looking into the cube from each side shows you something different, which should be impossible, but isn’t in this world: and with a bit of searching you find one side of a cube turns out to be a path into an entirely different part of the game.

It may sound mind bending and it certainly looks it, yet its complex design is delivered in a simple way we all understand. You learn the game through play. Exploring areas teaches you the game mechanics, you learn how to overcome each obstacle and then use that knowledge to progress further when faced with more complex challenges.

The controls are kept simple. You can run, walk and interact with pictures found on the walls. The pictures often compliment the puzzles you just solved, showing how they can be a metaphor for an aspect of life. These moments can be quite thought provoking and left me wondering why the designer didn’t keep the original working title, “Hazard: The Journey of Life”.

Some complexity is added to the game as you progress; giving you more tools to approach problems that previously seemed unsolvable. As you travel, you come across some gun like objects. These allow you to manipulate coloured blocks if different ways and each adds new controls on top of the previous one. And with one simple instruction on the wall, the game has given you everything you need to get past the puzzle in front of you and carry on.

For me, playing Antichamber swung between a few emotions. I’d start off intrigued, discovering the crazy areas ahead of me, understanding where and how far I could progress. Then I’d switch to frustration as I’d fail to solve anything and get stuck. Finally, a few minutes later I’d have a moment of inspiration and break through the barriers in front of me with a real sense of triumph, and start the cycle all over again. In many ways, that’s a familiar description of any puzzle game. But I’d say Antichamber can often linger too long in frustration as it’s not an easy game and it doesn’t offer much in the way of hints.

Due to the game’s non-linear design; you will have to remember how the various paths you can travel connect to each other in weird ways. There is a map in the hub area that highlights where you currently are and the path you just travelled. Both useful pieces of information, but it doesn’t clearly show which bit connects to what, which means you’ll end up mousing over a lot of it to display the more detailed information. It does helpfully show branches off areas you’ve been through, so a glance at the map will show if you haven’t fully investigated an area or remind you that you may need to come back later.

Occasionally you will see some arrows appear in the game to give you a hint in what direction you’re meant to be travelling. You will need good peripheral vision to spot them though as they’re quite subtle. These helped me out on a couple occasions as I got lost on more than once, often finding bonus rooms that revealed how some of the game design worked, which was a nice touch, yet a little disappointing when I thought I was making real progress. A possible improvement would have been an easy mode that gave a more prominent guiding hand to steer you in the right direction.

Of course as a puzzle game, the difficulty is subjective. If your logic is in synch with the game, you could find it to be an easy game. I did end up having to consult a guide towards the end as I had decided the path I was meant to be following was a dead end. In fact it was the same puzzle twice in a row, I just had to repeat the solution as I didn’t realise the location I was in changed.

The clear positive of Antichamber is its design. There are all sorts of nice touches that make it such an interesting title. You can quick travel between any areas you’ve accessed simply by hitting the escape key. This takes you back to the hub room and you simply click on the chamber you want to go to. The hub room also contains all the game’s options on the wall. It seems a bit trivial; yet interacting with an options menu in a first-person view is a little novel.

The aesthetic choice is stimulating throwing a lot of vibrant and varied colour at you to break up the clinical white corridors. It’s used to highlight various puzzle elements adding consistency into the world. This is complimented by an ambient music soundtrack that includes various intriguing sound effects to emphasise certain puzzle elements.

This is definitely a game that was difficult to make a decision on. A big part of its appeal is the experience playing it, exploring and understanding the curiosities around you. But if you get stuck, then that’s taken away from you, leaving you looking for a solution. For myself, I got a lot of enjoyment from Antichamber and if you’re looking for a puzzle game, this should top your list after Portal and Portal 2. It’s incredible to think that this title was developed by one person, Alexander Bruce. He’s created what can be honestly described as a truly unique experience.

Thomas Was Alone

When describing Thomas Was Alone, I feel that I should avoid tarring it with the ‘indie puzzle platformer’ brush; as those words alone could easily put someone off one of the best games in the genre. It seems like there’s a new title in this over saturated genre every other week, popping up in places like Steam’s Greenlight section. What makes Thomas Was Alone stand out from the crowd is that its genre merely describes its function, whilst its form offers so much more. Ostensibly, the game focuses on a curious character called Thomas, a red rectangle who’s about to have a very inquisitive adventure.

Dropped into a quadrilateral world, Thomas sets off to discover and observe everything he can. This driving force rather neatly sets up the structure of each level, as Thomas endeavours to reach the white doorway at the end. And of course has to overcome a series of ever more complicated puzzles to reach it.

The game’s story is excellently narrated by Danny Wallace, who won a BAFTA for his performance. The narration really brings to life the character of Thomas and the companions he will meet along the way. The first new face you bump into is Chris, a rather squat little brown square. And as soon as you meet him, his jealousy of Thomas’ fantastic jumping skills is revealed. Accordingly, the layout of the levels takes a twist, as now they have to work together to reach the goal. To begin with, this mostly consists of Thomas giving Chris a hand reaching the next ledge, and Chris having a good sulk about not feeling useful.

It seems a little silly to say, but the characters in Thomas Was Alone are more fleshed out than your average grizzled space marine; despite only being little coloured quadrilaterals on a journey. And it’s not just the excellent narration found in every level providing that definition. There are a number of smaller subtle touches that define Thomas and his friends. Simple elements such as each character having their own jumping sound effect.

As a puzzle plat-form game, it provides a good and varied mix of mechanics throughout. Each level is made up of a number hazards or difficult obstacles which you conquer using Thomas and company. The story does a good job of keeping things fresh, by providing you with different characters at different stages. So the game doesn’t rely on simply adding new tricks in a bid to try and keep the difficulty curve going up.

I never found myself getting particularly stuck on a level, although there are a few awkward time critical puzzles that can be a bit frustrating with the control scheme. It’s not complicated by any means; simply move left, right and jump. Where it falls down is how you select which character you are currently controlling. You can use the number keys to directly select a particular quadrilateral, or scroll through them using ‘q’ and ‘e’. This would be fine, but the characters you have on each level aren’t consistent. So it becomes difficult to remember the key bindings and select who you want, when you want them without constantly glancing at the bottom right of the UI. Crucially there a very few levels where you can actually get stuck, reducing the amount wearisome restarts.

Backing up the excellent story is an equally fantastic soundtrack. It provides in interesting mix of chip tunes and minimalist classical music, which compliments the events and tone of the story as you progress.

What really caught my attention as I was playing where the extracts from developer diaries that appear at the start of each chapter. These tell a second parallel story to the narration, a much more subtle tale about AI that adds an intriguing extra layer of context. However, for all the positive words I have to say about the story, it also provided my biggest disappointment by ending rather abruptly. It left me wondering what happened next to everyone Thomas had met on his three hour adventure. Not a long game by any means, but equally it won’t over stay its welcome. Worth a purchase for the story alone, and if you’re looking for a puzzle platformer as well; Thomas Was Alone will be the perfect title.