Monday 17 June 2013

Antichamber


What's funny about Antichamber is that a few days ago I showed my friend the infamous dog clip from the new Call of Duty, and in a moment of despair he said to me "Find me a modern game that won't make you stupid"  Then it's as if the heavens opened and gave me Antichamber in a Steam sale.

Antichamber is a puzzle game like no other made by one dude who spent a good amount of time and effort creating something that will completely fuck with your brain.  Now don't get me wrong, I have not spoiled anything for you by telling you that Antichamber is going to fuck with your brain because even if you know what kind of game it is going in, it's still going to mind fuck you sideways.

There is no story, no opening cut scene or anything like that, you are just plonked in a small room with an options menu, a map, a mostly blank wall and a window staring at an exit.  It is then up to you to explore, solve puzzles and just generally figure out what the hell you are supposed to do.

Puzzles in Antichamber are extremely clever and basically come in two flavours.  One is bog standard logic puzzles where you use a gun type thing to manipulate cubes to do certain things like open doors or call elevators.  Then there are these strange lateral thinking puzzles that require you to do all sorts of weird thinking outside the box shit that you never usually have to do with a video game.  A lot of the time the block puzzles will be combined with these lateral thinking puzzles to create something truly fiendish.

On top of solving puzzles you also have to deal with navigating your way round the maze of non euclidean space which may have you backtracking round certain areas without you even realising it.

Now I'm going to stop talking about this game here because it would be a damn shame if my gushing ruined the experience for someone.  I'm just going to finish by saying that Antichamber is a truly brilliant little game that you absolutely must experience for yourself.  It's pretty cheap on steam so you don't have to break the bank to play one of the best games of 2013 so far.

Also I've not beaten it yet.


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