ANTICHAMBER

Since the digitization has opened the door wide to independent in the small world of video games, the puzzle games have continued to multiply on virtual stores. Platformers point-and-click or even FPS, each genre has seen its diverted to accommodate its share of puzzles and mazes sometimes twisted putting our nerves strained codes. After several years to grow rewards, it is the turn of Antichamber to join the ranks of those securities intended to transform our brains into oatmeal. And the least we can say is that this puzzle game in the first person working hard to achieve his ends.

VERY MAD TRIP

Antichamber - ScreenshotA just launched Antichamber proclaims its difference. No title screen, no menu options, no opening cinematic. After a brief logo Unreal Engine likely required, the player goes directly into the skin of his character in the middle of a black cubic room. One wall displays an image, another controls and graphics options, a third impassable bay window behind which we taunted a gate called EXIT. On the latter, a small white square above which prompted us to click. Never mind, the gaze turns to him and we execute. Without transition, the black becomes white and the wall has disappeared. Instead, a chasm, and in the air, a written question using cubes: jump? Why not after all. After a generous backswing, we rushed forward in the air ... to begin a fall from a good twenty meters. The reception is painless and we were greeted by a sign that you can see a sheep jump into the void. No doubt, the sheep, it is us, and the game pays our head. Never mind, this corridor and cover them borrow our lost honor.

Antichamber - Screenshot A series of right-angle turns later, we are made in front of two staircases. On the left, down the stairs and are bathed in a red glow. A right ascension is symbolized by a blue light more welcoming. As connoisseurs of the work by the Wachowski brothers, we choose the red pill. Down, turn several times to the right, go straight ... and welcome back to the stairs. If the first direction does not work, try the second. To achieve the same result. While our brain starts to drip on the desktop, we try a third option: go back. And miraculously. More stairs, but a succession of turns green, yellow, red, blue and a new door finally stands before us. It opens when we pass a laser, then let into a room with no way out, a cul de sac. On the wall facing us, a sign, drawing Esc. Returning, we find that the door has disappeared, giving way to another wall displaying the same message. After execution, we are instantly transported into the dark room where it all began. But instead of just one square at a time, a map began to take shape, made of multiple quadrilaterals connected by what appears to be the corridors. We then understand that a click we can go in all the rooms have already been explored. The journey has just begun.


IF YOU'RE FAN ESCHER

Antichamber - ScreenshotEn one minute, Antichamber managed to mislead us, make fun of us, amaze us, and especially make us doubt our certainties player, all without ever taking control of the avatar prohibit us any manipulation. The proof is by returning later to the scene of the first crime, many paths that we had not been able to see during our initial passage we discover. And few permutations of the environment are a fraction of what we can expect to reach the exit door. The universe of this antechamber runs as would sail in the dream of another. The laws of physics do not have over there, any more than the Euclidean navigation, and simply focus our gaze on a point of privilege decor or reverse the race can carry us into a new place, without as we are aware. Surprise is the watchword, even after ten hours of play a midbrain but curious will discover all the rooms: it is impossible to know what that action will lead before the experiment.

The discovery is an integral part of the pleasure that the game, it would be cruel to detail all the mechanisms put in place to distract us. At most, we can talk about the first tool available to us to solve the puzzles of certain rooms. Taking the form of a kind of blue gun, it just helps to suck and spit cubes present around crossings rooms. These colored blocks are initially used to activate switches or prevent doors from closing but quickly become more powerful since we used basic materials to stair construction and the ground when it runs. Developments of the weapon offer the following new features you need to solve some puzzles.

Antichamber - Screenshot The problem is that the cubes are rare and we are removed through certain magnetic fields or when they return to the selection room levels. Therefore, careful management of our resources is absolutely essential to see the end of some puzzles. Sometimes it is also necessary to move a row of cubes, like the old Snake and in these cases, handling a little fishing. Management depth is not copy itself. It is perhaps in these situations qu'Antichamber is lowest. Even when they are well thought out, these puzzles are often quite conventional and contrast with the scenery offered by the dynamic geography of this pristine world.


THE GAME OF LIFE

This restrained aesthetics, with a discreet and calming music, is another strong point of the game because it is perfectly level design. In addition to a proven artistic pretensions, it mainly reflects a desire to simplify the navigation and help the player to find his way in this huge maze. Once abandoned any notion of meaning, it is little more than the few colors around the key objects to identify the signs and offered as a reward once or challenged. In their design is still hiding some sort of maxim commenting the previous puzzle. Behind the sheep of Panurge met initially could for example read "Failing to succeed Does not mean failing to progress" after a simple click. Throughout the game, 120 of these platitudes ahead and overlap to form an allegory of our time on earth. The complete collection and its pseudo-philosophical post may seem a little silly, but each image we somehow managed to get a smile when we discover for the first time in its context. They always act as a wake-up call: we play the game as it is played on us.

Finally, once fully drawn map, there is a huge disappointment: take the final door, discover the latest sketches with his little dig. Antichamber is one of those games we would prefer not to end up believing that there is still much to do, and whose last second is accompanied by a twinge of heart. This is also how we understand that what we just finished is not so much a puzzle game than a game of exploration. Although some problems are rather full-bodied, others are mere variants of those previously made. But never boredom settles as our curiosity is constantly piqued. Unfortunately, once the trip is complete, restart no longer quite the same flavor, though some bonuses are prolonging the life of the title. Everywhere are hidden exhibition tracing the genesis of the game rooms, and more attention will probably notice some purple cubes stashed in the background. Just have to find them all.