Antichamber is a puzzle game like no other. Designed to break your mind, it will sure make you spend hours trying to solve it.
The game was developed by a single person, a feat that is quite impressive.
This review will have a storyline, gameplay, visuals, and finally, a personal thoughts section. Without further ado:
Table of Contents
Storyline
The game doesn’t have any storyline, except maybe the weird ambiguous ending.
Still, there is not much for debate, as there is no dialog nor clues
Gameplay
Ok, so the gameplay is pretty much… to break the rules of physics.
Unlike the other similar puzzle games, this game doesn’t use core laws of nature like reflection or gravity. Instead, it utilizes paradoxes and creative thinking.
Let’s start from the start.
You begin in a single room with an interactable wall to set your preferences and settings.
There are 2 main walls that matter. The left wall (taking the “settings” wall as a point of reference), which is originally empty, and the right wall, which only has a single square.
Across the “settings” wall is a glass pane that shows a room with 3 doors, 1 of which has an “Exit” sign above it.
The right wall is the main wall. It is essentially your map. You’ll be using it to navigate through the maze. Now, the maze works a bit weird.
First things first, you can exit the maze at any time using the “Esc” key from your keyboard. Doing so will not make you lose progress at all, instead, all your progress will be noted on the map. However, you will lose progress made in that specific puzzle you made if you did not complete it.
Every time you “escape”, you have the choice of returning to any point of the maze in order to re-explore it or take another path (as most intersections have more than 1 choice to take).
Your final purpose is to complete the map.
The left wall keeps the images from the game’s hints. As you explore, you will find many hints scattered. These hints don’t give you the solution, rather, they literally hint towards it.
So, every hint will be stored on the “hint” wall, which you can click to see better.
I mentioned that the game utilizes creative thinking and paradoxes. Time for an explanation.
The maze is not a maze in the traditional sense. You will have to be very creative with your choices.
For example, you might face 2 options of taking the stairs either up, or down, with the correct option being to go back from where you came from.
This is where paradoxes come in. Sometimes, the room you came from won’t exist and will be replaced with a different room, should you go back.
You may find different results and room if you walk, or run.
Heck, you can even teleport to another room simply by looking through some window-like things.
At some point, inside the maze, you will find a “manipulation” gun, which gives you… well, limited manipulation abilities like placing tiny blocks or changing shape sizes.
There are many “manipulation” guns, and I better let you find them on your own.
Generally, this game
So, once you complete the core set of puzzles, you gain access to the exit door, which will lead you to the final puzzles for you to solve. You know that it’s over when the game’s logo appears, a Möbius strip.
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Visuals
The graphics are whacky. I really mean it when I say it. The game will make you feel like you took psychedelic drugs, with all the colors and the mind games. Other than that, it’s an indie game. The graphics aren’t triple-A, but they aren’t pixel art graphics either.
Personal Thoughts
The game is a roller coaster. And I don’t mean it in a bad way.
Generally speaking, this game will probably surprise you with all its mind bending puzzles. The always colorful environment certainly helps with this.
What’s for sure, the game is not going to take you mere hours to finish, like other more story-driven puzzle games. The game will take you days to finally finish, not out of sheer hardness, but from its stubbornness and content.
I certainly recommend this game to all you puzzle lovers as it will surely give you a challenge.
Final Verdict
Storyline: –
Gameplay: 8.8
Visuals: 6.5
General rating: 7.7/10
If you try this game out, let me know how it was and how you liked it in the comments down below.
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