Comparisons to Portal are immediately obvious despite the game’s stubborn lack of portals, white walls, lemons, or insane super-computers. It’s a first-person puzzle game with a bit of platforming, lasers, occasional floors covered in acid, a “do mad stuff for science!” angle, and using the game’s main gimmick in many clever ways which make you think outside the box so hard your head hurts.
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| Fluffy universe makes things fluffy |
Think that’s unfair? I could be describing any first-person environmental physical platform-puzzler, like The Ball for example? Well, the difference between that game and the duo of Portal and Quantum Conundrum is that Kim Swift’s dynamic duo have humour. Not to belittle The Ball, which is still a great game, but those two are genuinely funny and this keeps you pressing on even when you get utterly stuck.
Centre to this is the always-entertaining omniscient voiceover, who in Quantum Conundrum is the mad Professor Quadwrangle played by John DeLancie (forever immortalised as ‘Q’ in Star Trek, a letter of the alphabet that appears). He’s no GLaDOS since he would actually like to see you, his nephew, survive and is a lot warmer – at least to his inventions. DeLancie does an excellent job as the barmy Quadwrangle (lost in a limbo universe), and I was delighted to find lots of hidden asides from him by finding secret areas and comments on the Quadwrangle Mansion’s many paintings. Granted he interrupts himself now and again, but otherwise it’s not just a plain voiceover – he adapts to what you’re doing. Not many developers would go through that effort.
The Mansion is a real Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, full of weird books, suits of armour, changing paintings, and robot mouths that vomit furniture and safes. It also represents the biggest change between this and Portal - the style. Whereas Valve’s world is clean, clinical, machine-built and more than a little sinister, Airtight Games’ mansion is colourful, soft, inviting and playful, with sweet barfing robots, drinking birds called Desmond, and a cute inter-dimensional imp called Ike popping up regularly. You’re not there to stop a mad computer and escape with your life, you’re there to save your uncle and have a bit of fun doing so.
The gimmick (or rather four gimmicks) that the game is based around, and I’ve hinted at it already with little Ike, is dimension-shifting. At the press of a button (Q, E, 1 or 3, which are a lot more intuitive than they sound) you can turn the world Fluffy, Heavy, Slow or Reverse Gravity. Fluffy makes everything in the world light as a feather, which is good to pick heavy things up but they do tend to blow away easily. Heavy is the opposite (making even the lightest book weigh a ton), Slow puts the entire world into super slow-motion, and Reverse Gravity, well, I think you can work that one out for yourself.
Sound too complicated? I mean, the two Portal games got pretty mind-destroying just utilising a movable Entrance and Exit. Fortunately, and seemingly amazingly but actually more thanks to some damn fine design, Quantum Conundrum’s four dimensions never become complicated. Tricky, yes, in fact it gets damn hard in the last few levels, but never to a “you can’t possibly do this puzzle this game sucks” degree. Supreme control is required towards the end, but there’s so much build-up to this it becomes just another level of challenge to overcome. Excellent.
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| And this isn’t even a puzzle room! |
The first point of good design that allows the game to stay doable is one Portal also utilised to perfect effect: slowly introducing new features to the player, including not giving you control over them at first. You won’t get hold of all four dimensions until near the end of the game, and whenever a new dimension is introduced for a long time you’ll be forced to only use that one – ditto for room features like conveyor belts, robots, lasers, and the corrosive “Science Juice”. The other great point of design which allows all four dimensions to be utilised with ease and without complication is simply never forcing the player to have to use more than two in quick succession. You can concentrate on using just two powers (or two buttons), and you’ll always have some sort of breather before you have to start using the other two.
I really mean that you know about the great design – each and every puzzle room has been polished to utter perfection, right down to John DeLancie’s subtle clues. Not many game developers have to work out the exact speed, angle, and velocity that three robots need to vomit tables across a room so that a player can slow down time and use them as a floating path to reach an exit, but Airtight Games are clearly the masters. At no point was a puzzle rendered impossible by shoddy design, and each and every room is great fun to solve. These guys have clearly been spending their development time well. I also particularly like the way paintings change depending on what dimension you’ve got activated.
Sadly however, outside the puzzle rooms themselves (and John DeLancie’s painting comments) the mansion is in less good shape. “Filler” areas between challenges repeat several times (and some of these are quite large), with lots of re-used textures and paintings, and I always suffered frequents bouts of slowdown as the next area was loaded. It’s not a deal-breaker since the puzzle rooms are the main part of the game but it’s definitely noticeable, especially when you have to traverse the same giant room three times.
I also have to say that story-wise don’t expect an epic here. Yes there’s a general twist (that’s given away after the first generator is started), but there’s no huge final boss, challenging encounter utilising all four dimensions cleverly, or an amazing ending. The puzzles get continually harder, there’s a brief final room that doesn’t even have a puzzle in it, then the game stops. Cue a song, credits, and DLC. I enjoyed my way all through the game, but it most definitely doesn’t have a satisfying ending.
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| One of the more normal rooms |
I’m also rather distraught that there are basically no graphics options. It’s just resolution and brightness, which is annoying since I’d quite like to turn off bloom as it becomes quite blinding in the Fluffy universe. Anyone with lower-spec machines might not even be able to play it yet, as there’s simply no way to turn off any features at all. Higher-spec machines aren’t much better off as there is no support for any resolutions above 1200x768 (although there’s already a fan fix on the Steam forum). I’m prepared to bet this will get fixed in the first patch, but here and now it’s a bit annoying. In terms of length depending on how stuck you get it should last you roughly 6-8 hours, and there's a little bit of replay value in finding secrets and attempting speedruns.
Anyone looking for a fun, light-hearted (but with a mean edge – the list of things you’ll never get to do with your life the game shows after you die for example) and challenging environmental physics-based puzzle game that isn’t Portal will do well to pick up Quantum Conundrum. It’s funny, it’ll push your mind to breaking point but never go over, and is expertly designed and polished to perfection. Well, at least in its puzzle rooms, which are basically the entire game so we won’t worry too much about the repeating filler rooms. Yes there’s barely any story, finale, or graphics options, but unless you’re deeply opposed to entertainingly clever first-person puzzle games I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t enjoy this. That’s two for two Kim Swift, three if you count Narbacular Drop. Just don’t do a kart racing game next and we’ll get on just fine.
I could say a number of rooms, but I have to go with John DeLancie’s Quadwrangle revealing that his Ice Gun is called “Freezey Ray Vaughn”.
Platform Played: PC
QUANTUM CONUNDRUM VERDICT
Anyone looking for a fun, light-hearted (but with a mean edge – the list of things you’ll never get to do with your life the game shows after you die for example) and challenging environmental physics-based puzzle game that isn’t Portal will do well to pick up Quantum Conundrum. It’s funny, it’ll push your mind to breaking point but never go over, and is expertly designed and polished to perfection. Well, at least in its puzzle rooms, which are basically the entire game so we won’t worry too much about the repeating filler rooms. Yes there’s barely any story, finale, or graphics options, but unless you’re deeply opposed to entertainingly clever first-person puzzle games I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t enjoy this. That’s two for two Kim Swift, three if you count Narbacular Drop. Just don’t do a kart racing game next and we’ll get on just fine.
TOP GAME MOMENT
I could say a number of rooms, but I have to go with John DeLancie’s Quadwrangle revealing that his Ice Gun is called “Freezey Ray Vaughn”.
