Brendan Jacques
Connector Contributor
Created by developer Alexander Bruce as a labor of love, “Antichamber” is a first-person puzzle-platformer designed to mess with your head in every way possible. Dropped into a labyrinth with no context or clues to their surroundings, the player is tasked with exploring their environment in order to find the lone exit which, tantalizingly, can be seen just beyond a window in the starting room. However, getting to that exit is no easy task as the labyrinth is designed specifically to mess with your mind.
How, you may ask? Well, the labyrinth doesn’t confine itself to real-world logic: constantly breaking the laws of physics, geometry, and general reasoning helps to throw the player off the trail. For example, early in the game I was going through a plain white hallway when I came to two staircases, one going up, one going down. For the time being I chose to go down the second staircase only to find myself once again standing in a plain white hallway in front of two staircases. After several tries going up and down staircase after staircase, it occurred to me to try turning around and going up the staircase behind me; I turned, only to find the staircase had vanished and revealed a new area for me to explore.
That example is one of the many different ways “Antichamber” successfully confounded me over the eight hours I spent with the game. The puzzles only get more complex the deeper into the maze you move, with paintings acting as doorways, glowing eyes that transport you into new areas and doors that only exist while you can see them. But what makes the game brilliant is that, for all its complexity, it very clearly follows a fixed set of rules and all the areas of the maze follow those rules – it just leaves the player to figure out those rules for themselves. It’s impressive how well designed the game is for having been developed by only one guy.
Sadly, the fact it was made by only one developer is the reason for many of the game’s shortcomings. From a graphical standpoint, the game is nothing to boast about. The majority of the labyrinth is painted in monochromatic black and white with primary reds, blues, and greens used to highlight important details; while the effect serves its purpose, it isn’t very visually interesting and led to eye strain after a two-hour play session. The game also lacks any kind of musical score, instead opting to fill the background with natural white noise, birds chirping, wind blowing, etc. This comes off as a bit lazy, though, to be fair, a normal game score might have taken away from the game as a whole.
Overall, while the graphics and sound aren’t very good and the puzzles themselves jump in difficulty a little too much around the midpoint, if you’re interested in playing a game that will push your mind way outside of its comfort zone, “Antichamber” is well worth the purchase. The game is available on PC and Mac for $20.
Final Grade: B
