If you don’t know about this game yet you really need to branch out from the mainstream AAA titles. Quantum Conundrum gets many comparisons to Portal thanks to the people involved but that is very apt and it deserves such high praise.
From the start with a narrator guiding you around, to the pacing of new abilities and challenges, this game is basically Portal with an alternate dimension gun instead of a portal gun. And that is a very good thing. The dimensions I got to play around with were fluffy, heavy, and slow motion (reverse gravity is the fourth and final one). Fluffy makes everything soft and also very light. A heavy object becomes light enough to place on a pressure switch in this dimension. Heavy does the opposite but also makes things armored against lasers. The other two are pretty self-explanatory.
Each dimension also has a distinct visual style. Fluffy dimension makes everything look like it’s carpeted. Heavy dimension turns everything to metal. Slow mo is a faded sepia world.
What makes Quantum Conundrum more interesting is how it didn’t let me control the dimensions for a while. They would switch on and off and that caused even simple puzzles to have an exciting sense of urgency. Even better is that every time a dimension change was out of my control it was handled extremely well and I was never annoyed by it— something that could have easily happened. The possibilities with all these different dimensions working together, some out of your control, is a joy to think about. This is in part to how intuitive solving the puzzles was.
The idea to throw an object and then switch it to heavy dimension so that it could break the glass I threw it at came so naturally to me. Quantum Conundrum is filled with moments like that.
Going through the world they have created was preposterously fun and it flowed nicely. The narration was also well done and funny.
Quantum Conundrum was very fun and frequently put a smile on my face. Its puzzle solutions seemed natural and I didn’t have to sit there thinking for too long even when several mechanics got mixed together. The visual style also helped with that. Overall I was very impressed with this game. The way it was presented and unfurled made me feel like a kid exploring; which is pretty high praise.
So it’s a good thing you won’t have to wait very long to play it; Quantum Conundrum dimension shifts its way onto Steam on June 21st and sometime this summer for XBLA and PSN.
