It’s always tough to top a game that’s critically acclaimed and well received by an audience but somehow Kim Swift was able to move on and create something innovative once again. After working on a remarkable first-person puzzle/strategy game called Portal (you might have heard of it), Kim worked closely with her team alongside Square Enix on a new project, one that once again puts things in a first-person perspective but with an array of alternate dimensions that you get to play around with. Welcome to Quantum Conundrum.
Kim and her development team at Airtight Games have gone all out to create a puzzle/strategy game that’s just as involving as Portal but with a whole new twist to entice gamers. In the game, you’re a 12-year-old boy who pays a visit to a mansion owned by an eccentric scientist named Professor Fitz Quadwrangle. For some odd reason, Fitz has gone missing. He’s left behind cryptic clues throughout his mansion, ones that must be solved by you in order to achieve his recovery. But things aren’t often as easy as they appear…
As in Portal, you’re going to be dealing with a variety of objects throughout this universe. The main ones in question are safes which appear quite often, either being spit out by automated generators (ones that literally chuck them out like leftover food) or initially abandoned in the stage in a specific spot. Other objects like drinking birds (the ones that dip back and forth) and hidden inventions can be discovered as well.
The goal here involves the safes. You’ll use them throughout the game in a number of ways to help move you forward through stages. To do this you’ll activate your way through four dimensions which slowly but surely open up to you. And no, they’re not the dimensions you’re thinking of…
The first is the “fluffy” dimension. Once you activate this, everything turns pink and becomes designed by what appears to be a linen style. What’s more, safes become pillows, incredibly easy to pick up and throw around.
Next you’ve got the “iron” dimension. Once you turn this on, it’s almost like something out of Hell with safes turning into giant metal slabs and everything turning a bright orange tint. These iron objects are indestructible, even to lasers. They’re also impossible to move.
Moving on, we have the “anti-gravity” dimension. Once this is activated, objects become devoid of the laws of gravity so if you chuck a safe in the “fluffy” mode, turning this on will make it fly even further than before.
Finally, there’s the “slow time” dimension in which objects move very slowly, despite their weight, and you can move with precision through certain sections. Remember, we said precision.
The trick to Quantum Conundrum is how you’ll carefully switch through each of them, effectively completing a stage by running multiple things strung together. In one stage, you’ll have four huge stacks of safes in front of you. You won’t be able to just jump along these in order to reach a higher platform and work to the next part of a stage as they’re too highly stacked. You can activate a laser on a nearby staircase that evaporates them from existence, but shooting all the safes in succession will give you nothing to jump on!
So, in order to finish the stage and move onward, you’ll need to switch between the iron dimension and regular dimension at just the right times. This will allow you to create a small staircase between the four stacks of safes in order to move up and get to the next platform.
This is a matter of timing, hitting the buttons so that the right safes are destroyed and the others remain, allowing you safe passage to the next area. This is just a small example of Swift’s brilliant design throughout the game, and the later stages definitely get pretty diabolical!
Though not as sophisticated as Portal, Quantum Conundrum introduces a fun, clever world to roam through, one laced with humorous comments by Fitz throughout (at one point he yearns for the return of keytars) and plenty of hidden goods which earn you valuable Achievements. The level design, as we said, gets quite tricky but never impossible, and you feel a sense of accomplishment once they’re beaten. It’s good to see Kim and her team at Airtight Games continue to buck the trend.
Quantum Conundrum unleashes its inventiveness this summer for Xbox Live and PlayStation Network. If you even showed mild interest in the original Portal, this is a game you should tackle without hesitation. Even if you swore to never play with anything “fluffy.”
Published: Apr 25, 2012 11:00 pm