REVIEW: ‘Antichamber’

Antichamber is an independent first-person action-puzzle game. The words ‘first-person action-puzzle game’ alone cause me to make an involuntary high-pitched noise of excitement. Ever since the divine perfection that was Portal, I’ve had an itch for puzzle games that don’t just involve the puzzling of the environment but the puzzling of the players own perspective. 

And Antichamber is certainly puzzling. The way the games environment often changes behind your back and teleports you around is certainly an achievement in level-design. It feels as though the game developers played that one part of The Stanley Parable where the path loops in on itself and breaks the laws of space, and decided to make a full game of that…except this game was released a few months before The Stanley Parable so now I feel stupid. 

I think you have to do this particular puzzle about five times.

The aesthetic is also something to be commended. Whilst not 2.5D, the design is reminiscent of it in its sparse, minimalistic feel. It is extremely effective, and its use of white over primary colours reminds me pleasantly of both Mirrors Edge and retro-puzzle games. I imagine that over the years this design will age very well…although, sadly this isn’t the sort of game that will be remembered over the years.

Where Antichamber fails is its obnoxious qualities. There is no plot aside from pictures with pseudo-philosophical sentences that are just one step away from those horrid motivational posters that make working in an office even more awful than it already is. Occasionally these posters give you hints (though 9 times out of 10 it's after I’ve solved the puzzle I get the hint) but for the most part you have to try and exploit the holes in Antichamber’s fleeting glances at logic. It’s impossible to progress beyond the first thirty minutes of the game unless you stare at a certain wall for fifteen seconds. The game makes no hint or mention that it’s possible to do this, and wall-gazing certainly isn’t a common or recurring mechanic in the game. This is the sort of thing NES games did to sell more copies of ‘Nintendo Power.’

Behold: the largest room in the game.

Antichamber is also obnoxious in the structure it runs in. There is no menu, which at first seems experimental and interesting…but you’ll soon remember precisely why we have a menu. You can’t alter the graphical settings of the game, which is a pity because the game is full of aliasing. You can’t alter the sound, so you can’t turn down the music. Worst of all, because there is no gap between booting the game up and loading the last save, whenever you start the game you’ll have to wait for at least a whole minute staring at a blank screen before suddenly you’re in the game. 

The puzzles involving guns and blocks are the best aspect of the game, but even this falls short. I got sick of playing that glorified slot-puzzle the game seems so pleased with. It's frankly infuriating having to stand in front of the same bit of wall shifting tiny blocks around a mini-maze throughout the latter part of the game when previously we'd seen that the develpoers are capable of so much more. Antichamber sells itself on toying with our perspective, yet this is only really present in the first half of the game. Instead of the enviroment opening up as we become more advanced, everything seems to get smaller and more fiddly. I was overjoyed when the game introduced a rip-off of the arial faith-plates from Portal 2 and imagined sailing through abstract enviroments that wind and confuse. I hardly saw these plates again. I saw a lot more slot-puzzles. 

This is the sort of game that’s perfect for a sequel. It’s funny that I mentioned Mirrors Edge previously, because that too was a game with an excellent gameplay mechanic…but everything else wasn’t very good. The biggest problem with Antichamber is that it’s confusing and perspective-bending for the sake of confusion and perspective-bending. Because there is no narrative, there is no reward. The non-linear layout means that every other path you walk through contains a puzzle you cannot solve yet. There is definitely a sense of achievement once you find the relevant gun that can solve the puzzle, but all this leads to is another puzzle you can’t solve yet. Once you’ve finally solved all the puzzles, the game ends with no sort of catharsis because there was no reason to be here. 

I thought this room was story, but no - it's just meta.

I can’t really recommend this game because it feels like a beta-test. We have a really interesting game-mechanic that concerns the alteration of the players perspective and playing around with blocks….now we need a plot. Now we need a sense of context and thereby a sense of catharsis. The non-linear structure only serves to prove how hollow the experience feels without knowing what’s the point behind all this randomness. Antichamber is certainly experimental, but it’s only for the sake of being experimental – nothing more. Unless a sequel is made, this review will probably be the last you’ll hear of this game. 

Screenshots taken by me.