Antichamber

Difficult in a way that has nothing to do with solving puzzles or navigating escape rooms made up of impossible geometry. This game... has these frequently appearing squares of text that interrupt you as you explore the map. You are forced to stop and read and absorb their meaning. It is more difficult to process these darn things than it is to process the puzzles you are presented with. In other words, each text box can twist you up way more than the game's puzzles twist logic. Every single message lands. Every one is a reminder of what you have yet to resolve in your own life outside of this digital maze. You stop mid game as your POV is trained on a little black box with some white text accompanied with a simple graphic. The message doesn't offer any real answers. You are looking at something you do not want to read even though you need to. you long press ESC. you can come back to it later. It can't hurt you. It's just a game. Life, It's a labyrinth. You are a mouse and you are trying to find the cheese. There's no roof on the labyrinth so you're all exposed and vulnerable. While you are disoriented and hungry and scared you are being observed as you struggle on your quest to find some fricken cheese. Instead of helping you get the cheese the detached observers just kind of take notes on your descent into madness trying to find this godforsaken cheese that you can smell but you just cant seem to locate. They do not care that they have given you an impossible task. You are just a mouse. Why would it matter that the cheese is a lie?

This is the work of a genius, one of the best puzzle/logic/maze games ever made – somewhere on the level of The Talos Principle, and perhaps even surpassing it thanks to its minimalist simplicity. An incredible experience. And that feeling of Clarke-esque alienness and cosmic Zen! PROS: - the puzzles are challenging without being unreasonable, and often very original - it’s not just ordinary Portal-style pathfinding; there’s also exploration and a certain degree of brainf***ery – you genuinely feel like you’re being tested by an alien civilization communicating through the language of geometry, mathematics, universal principles, and strategies - the philosophical aspect is a great addition and definitely doesn’t feel superficial – rather, it feels like glimpses into some kind of general evolutionary heuristic; together with the slow pace and the music, it creates something timeless, cosmic, and at the same time deeply Zen - the music accounts for half of the atmosphere, with the boundless minimalism providing the other half CONS: - I would have liked a more explicit tutorial for the “weapons.” I probably failed to notice what the green and yellow ones were supposed to do, and ended up going around in circles for no reason (I had to look up a guide to figure out their abilities) - I wouldn’t have minded seeing more experimentation with 2D/3D paradoxes and changes in gravity In recent years, I’ve often found myself getting bored with games because they almost never bring anything genuinely new to the table. After a few hours, they tend to turn into monotonous, exhausting work. This is definitely not one of those games. I started playing in the evening before bed, just to see what it was about. I ended up playing until morning – completely exhausted, but happy. Every second of lost sleep was worth it. It's a gem. 10/10

[h1]The metroidbrainia ancestor[/h1] [hr][/hr] [b]Antichamber[/b] is a game about philosophy and insanely creative puzzles. The game doesn't usually require you to spend 30 minutes stuck on a single puzzle, which is something that many puzzle games fail to avoid, and it's a huge advantage for this game. From the start, you don't really know what the game is, and it doesn't really change throughout the game. You're just solving puzzles in an abstract world, sometimes finding secrets and pondering some philosophical quotes that are scattered all over the game. The game mechanics are kept simple, but every time you discover something new, it feels mind-blowing. The ending of the game is something that will stay with me forever. I loved this game and I want to say more about it, discussing it, but just for the review I'll say this: if you played [b]Outer Wilds[/b], [b]Tunic[/b], [b]The Witness[/b], [b]Manifold Garden[/b], or [b]Superliminal[/b], you'll most definitely enjoy this game too, so give it a try!