Antichamber

Antichamber (PC)


there is no story in the game except for the ending so i'll review the general setting of the game instead.

Setting: (8.5/10)
you wake up inside this ... anti-chamber... and just go out and explore it. trying to understand its mysteries.
remember that sub-title from cube 2? "There is no rules".
it fits to this game very well.
saying "even the laws of physics doesn't apply here" would be an major understatement.
you go around between those chambers trying to .. progress ..
each chamber may have multiple entrances and exists making the "anti-chamber" quite big and complex structure.

pressing ESC will teleport you back to the starting room where you can teleport yourself to any visited place (or somewhere close to it).
more of that in the gameplay section.

Gameplay: 8/10
each room has puzzle of some kind that (literally) the sole purpose of its existence is to mess with your head.
invisible platforms, walls you can walk through, looping corridors, straight paths that lead you to where you started, space shrinks or extends.. and even more devious stuff i can't really describe to someone who never played this game.
I'll give you an example of one room i remember particularly well.
after some quite complicated room by itself, you end up in completely empty chamber with a small opening in the ceiling and nothing else. when you to it and look up you'll see:
"Don't look down!"
what would do you do? obviously.. look down. only to find that the floor is gone and you standing in mid air like some cartoon.. and then you fall down like one particular coyote straight to the next room.
on the other hand, if you listen to the advice, keep looking up and start walking, you can just go out straight to the door that magically appeared behind you and will lead to completely different chamber.
how that for a mind****?
those puzzles might sound like they can become easily frustrating.. well they aren't. the guy who made this is a genius. (have i mentioned that almost everything in the game was made by a single guy?)
latter you get your "portal gun". no, it doesn't shoot portals, there are more then enough of those in the environment even without it.
instead it manipulates cubes. i won't go into more details because part of the fun is to discover those things on your own.

Graphics and Sound: 3/5
minimalistic and planned to be that way.

Replayability - kinda hard to put a number on.
gee..
there is an ending you can get by managing to reach a certain chamber, yet you can continue to explore after finishing the game.
it took me a ~10 days of pretty intensive play to reach it but there wasn't much else to do in the world once i finished.
on the other hand i saw an completely crazy speed run on youtube that reached the ending in friggin 5 minutes. (don't worry, it won't happen to you by mistake)
i swear to god that when i saw in the title "Speedrun 4:58.98" i thought that it was 4 hours 58 minutes. 0_0
anyway, back to the topic, this guy have quite a bit more exploring he can do in that playthrough. :P
after you clear everything.. you probably won't start another play right away.. because you already have all the answers.

Final score: 8.6/10
if you liked portal or puzzle games in general, this is a must-play.
if you like it when someone messes with your brain.. pick this one.
but no big explosions or boobs here.. sorry.

watch the official trailer here:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/219890dswanother