Tucked away in the Square Enix media lounge was a demo for Quantum Conundrum, a new title from Kim Swift, one of the eight people on the original Portal team. The game is a light-hearted, physics-based puzzler that is set up to bend your mind, time and space this summer.
In the trial version, I was introduced to three of the four different dimensions in the game: Fluffy, which turns everything into pillows;, Heavy, which turns everything to lead; and Slow-Motion, which… ya know what… you’re smart enough to figure it out. The one I didn’t get to play with was Reverse Gravity. Thankfully, you are immune due to a device on your person.
This screen gets my puzzle brain moving.
These are triggered in a couple of ways. One mechanism is drinking birds that will push buttons that shift dimensions in a given room. The other is by putting power batteries in a dimension shifter. This will give you the ability to change at will.
You’ll accomplish the standard regiment of tasks: lifting fluffified boxes onto switches before making them heavy enough to depress the buttons, for instance. The real charm of the game is in its presentation. With John de Lancie (Q from Star Trek) providing the narrative and instructive voiceovers, you’ll have something great to listen to. I immediately recognized that my character was short (I mean, Odd Job short), before being informed that I was in control of a 10-year-old boy. Kudos to the team for pulling that off well.
Action-puzzle fiends should look forward to Quantum Conundrum’s release this summer on PC, Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network.
