Supposed to be better than portal...just without the personality portal had
http://www.ign.com/videos/2013/01/30/antichamber-gameplay-commentary
http://www.ign.com/videos/2013/01/30/antichamber-gameplay-commentary
PREPARE TO USE YOUR BRAIN...A LOT.
→ JANUARY 31, 2013 If I could display some of my favorite digital puzzle games on a shelf, I’d put Antichamber next to the Portal series. Antichamber lacks personality and its narrative feels pointless, but its puzzles are expertly crafted and wonderfully inventive challenges. If you pick up Antichamber, then prepare to put your brain to the test and for surprises from start to finish.
Antichamber forgoes any sort of initial tutorial or plot development and drops you right into the game world. You start out in a small room that serves as both your hub and the game’s main menu. It’s an inventive way to handle the traditional menu and an example of how Antichamber defies typical video game conventions. From here you also teleport into the first of Antichamber’s many rooms and can, at any time, transport back by simply hitting the Escape key.
Antichamber doesn’t waste time before presenting you with mind-boggling puzzles. You play entirely in first-person, and thus have a relatively limited field-of-view. Antichamber takes advantage of this, screwing with your surroundings in unexpected ways. For instance you might wander down a hallway and turn around after you hit a doorway to find that everything behind you has changed. Or you might get up close to look at something then pull away from it and find that nothing is as you left it. Walkways and staircases might appear out of thin air right beneath your feet. It makes every moment unpredictable and every step forward exciting, since that might just be the key to unlocking another puzzle. In short: you learn almost immediately to doubt what you see on the surface, and to try options beyond the obvious.
Sparingly-used visual cues help push you to explore. Many of Antichamber’s puzzles use of color in an otherwise black and white world helps point you in the right direction or
Antichamber
JANUARY 31, 2013
Antichamber is a mind-bending psychological exploration game, set within an Escher-like world.
signal the start of something new. Then there’s the host of pictures scattered throughout Antichamber’s rooms. They occasionally give a crucial hint for a nearby puzzle, but they’re equally likely to present cute bits of advice such as living by your own time, not someone else’s. Even when they’re not particularly useful for gameplay, they still come across as sincere and endearing. They, alongside implementation of color, push you to overcome what’s ahead, because they signal something new, and you never know what to expect next.
The drive to keep going is important, because Antichamber teaches you that trying something new is the best way to learn. Every time I thought I would misstep, or miss a jump, the designers behind Antichamber seemed to predict my mistakes and turn them into teaching opportunities. Years of playing games have taught me to go forward to progress, for instance, but with environments that constantly transform behind you, you often need to turn around and head “back” to go forward. When I see an instruction floating in the air that says “Jump?” and a pit, my instinct is to try and jump it. But in Antichamber this response is only one of many that will take me somewhere new. When I fall down a pit because it’s too big to jump, or keep running forward in an infinite loop, Antichamber makes light-hearted quips via the pictures to challenge me to think beyond my experiences. You essentially can’t fail, and instead use these instances to help make a mental breakthrough or learn something about the underlying logic informing Antichamber’s puzzle design.
It’s the way you build a repertoire of skills that gives Antichamber such fantastic pacing. Exploring Antichamber’s halls inevitably places you in situations you can’t overcome – at least not at first. As you progress you’ll learn new things about the environment and will actually gain new ways to interface with the world, so backtracking to older areas often results in major advances. These puzzles essentially serve as knowledge checks; they keep you from getting into areas before you’re ready, and make retreading previously explored areas rewarding. If you’re stuck in Antichamber, then you need to pop back into the main menu and move through areas again, seeing if any newly acquired skills will change the way you perceive them. Chances are they will, resulting in a constant feeling of progress rather than frustration.
I know I’m dancing around explaining the specifics of Antichamber’s puzzles, but that’s because if I did I’d spoil the bulk of the experience. The plot and ending of Antichamber are vague and inconsequential, and it’s not doing a whole lot with its visuals to tell a story, either. It will inevitably be compared to Portal because of its smartly-designed puzzles, but Antichamber has little in the way of personality outside of the quips you get in the previously mentioned pictures. The thrill of exploration, the rush of endorphins that comes with finally overcoming a puzzle or seeing it in a new light – these sensations make Antichamber special. I won’t take that away from you.
THE VERDICT
Antichamber has some of the more clever puzzles of any game I’ve played. It doesn’t have much in the way of personality, and its bizarre ending left me wondering why it was included at all, but it makes the act of exploration utterly thrilling. Each step becomes a chance to learn something new about Antichamber’s world, and you gain new skills and encounter unique and rewarding puzzles right up to the end. If you own a PC and can run an Unreal Engine 3 title, then you owe it to yourself to experience Antichamber. I wager you’ll get plenty of mental exercise and maybe learn a thing or two about life and have a blast while doing it.
