After working with her former Narbacular Drop colleagues to create Valve’s seminal first-person puzzler Portal, Kim Swift moved away from a sure thing (Portal 2) to Airtight Games, a team that failed to execute the experimental idea within jetpack-fueled shooter Dark Void. Quantum Conundrum, the first collaboration between Swift and the big-thinking Airtight team, displays hallmarks from both parties: this first-person puzzle game looks pleasantly familiar, yet still seems to be aiming for doing things its own way.

Though you still use boxes and switches to progress through a series of rooms, Quantum Conundrum’s characters and setting are as far removed from Chell’s adventures at Aperture Science as possible. Instead, you’re put in the shoes of a young boy visiting his crackpot scientist uncle (appropriately named Professor Fitz Quadwrangle) for the weekend. As crackpot scientist uncles are wont to do, Fitz has gone missing (likely due to a malfunctioning experiment). Fortunately, he’s left behind a handy little invention called Inter-Dimensional Shift Device that will help this table-tall tyke reach new heights and break through the strongest barriers.



However, just like in Portal, you’ll be scanning each room to discover the best way to utilize your unique device. Instead of altering a specific part of your surroundings, though, the IDSD changes the environment itself. Each of the rooms of Quantum Conundrum exists in at least two states, and up to five* total. In its standard stage, there’s usually little the hero can do, given his diminutive stature. However, flipping the switch to move the mansion into the Fluffy Dimension reduces the weight of every object ten-fold, making steel-reinforced safes as light as a stuffed animal. Is a block falling off a switch before you have the time to reach a door? Shift to the Slow-Motion Dimension, where a grainy film reel-look and sound indicate a world where everything (except the humble hero) moves as slow as molasses. The final world we encountered was the Reverse-Gravity Dimension, which we thought added the most versatility to the Quantum Conundrum gameplay — it allows access to many out-of-the-way switches.

Conundrum is at its Portal-iest when the game forces you to switch between more than two dimensions in rapid succession. One puzzle that’s sure to come up often in the final game is when the hero must cross a giant pit with a safe by his side. In order to cross it, you’ll have to pick up the bulky item in the Fluffy Dimension, toss it and change into the Slow-Motion Dimension, hop on it as it appears low (and close) enough to reach, and then alternate between the Reverse-Gravity Dimension and normal to float across as the safe dips and rises in the air like a sine wave.

So many elements from our favorite games seem to exist within Quantum Conundrum that it’s easy for us to root for it. It uses Portal’s basis of first-person puzzle gameplay, allows us to see the same world in multiple dimensions like we could in The Legend of Zelda, and has a quirky, cartoony charm we’ve mostly seen from just Double Fine (Costume Quest, Psychonauts). We’re hoping this crazy concept can earn success in the two most different dimensions known to man — among critics and with fans.

• PUBLISHER: Square Enix  • DEVELOPER: Airtight Games  • MULTIPLAYER: No  • RELEASE DATE: 2012  • FOR FANS OF: Kim Swift, first-person puzzle platforming, alternate dimensions