Quantum Conundrum stole my heart within 10 minutes. There’s no doubt that it borrows a lot of its structure from Portal, but it brings more than enough new ideas to the table to formulate its own identity that sets it apart from other first-person puzzlers.
You play as a 10-year-old silent protagonist who has been shipped off to his mad-scientist uncle—Professor Fitz Quadrangle’s–mansion to visit. Through a series of events, Quadrangle gets himself trapped in a pocket dimension with no way out and no memory of how he got there. Now you must traverse his insane mansion; solving puzzles, shifting dimensions, and being passive-aggressively berated/praised by your uncle along the way to get him out.
A lot of the environments you will be seeing
Quantum Conundrum is centered around the mechanic of literally switching dimensions on the fly, using a glove called the IDS (Interdimensional Shift) device. The ability to shift dimensions on command provides ground for some really cool and interesting level and puzzle design. Throughout QC you will encounter a total of 4 dimensions. Early in the game, you only have access to the “Fluffy” dimension. In the Fluffy dimension, every object in the world becomes 10x lighter, and can subsequently allow you to lift previously heavy objects like safes and sofas. You will quickly gain control of more than one dimension at a time, and must experiment with the puzzle you’re given until you get that “Ah Ha” moment.
The “Heavy” dimension is the antithesis of the Fluffy dimension, making everything in the world 10x heavier. The “slow-motion” dimension is pretty self explanatory, slowing everything in the world to a crawl. And finally the “reverse-gravity” dimension, which also speaks for itself in functionality. Puzzles can be fairly simple when limited to one or two dimensions, but when the game ramps it up and gives you access to all four at the same time, things get complicated and potentially frustrating quickly.
Transitioning from the normal dimension to the Fluffy dimension
“It takes the best from the Portal
formula and builds its own identity around it.”
It feels like Quantum Conundrum takes the fundamental idea of Portal and builds its own world and rules for that world around that fundamental template. You move from room to room—solving puzzles and slowly gaining exposition for the story and characters. QC populates its world with a lot of vibrant colors wrapped in a satisfying art style. It doesn’t take itself seriously in the least. It takes the best from the Portal formula and builds its own identity around it.
Quantum Conundrum takes a starkly different approach from Portal when it comes to progression. Where Portal keeps the very simple concept of “shooting portals” as your only core mechanic and then changes the environment around you to add variation, QC is constantly keeping you on your feet by changing the way you go about solving a puzzle every time you gain a new dimension. You might see a ton of safes and boxes, but the way in which you use those safes and boxes changes drastically multiple times throughout the game.
“…QC is constantly keeping you on your feet by changing the way you go about solving a puzzle every time you gain a new dimension”
That’s not to say that Quantum Conundrum couldn’t use more environments—because frankly—I don’t want to see another safe or box for a long time. The entire game takes place in the same mansion, and seeing the same knight armor and paintings-ridden hallway for the 11 time gets old rather fast. It’s the same way that I got sick of seeing the same elevator in-between each Portal 2 puzzle.
Your furry companion Ike and your faithful emitter DOLLI are invaluable in QC
I definitely felt like the controls and the way movement feels really got in the way of solving a puzzle at times. There were multiple times in which I knew what I had to do to solve the puzzle and get across the room, but the poor platforming really screwed me over when trying to jump from object to object. This can cause many retries—and with that many instances of dialogue repetition from Quadrangle hinting at what you have to do to solve this puzzle.
“Quadrangle literally has something
to say during and in-between each and every puzzle.”
While the story is very simple by design, the writing is very well done. John de Lancie (Q from Star Trek: The Next Generation) voices Professor Quadrangle.. He really makes the character his own. There is a huge amount of dialogue from de Lancie, just in pure volume. Quadrangle literally has something to say during and in-between each and every puzzle. Not to mention the amount of little snips of dialogue hinting at what you have to do to solve the puzzle. I sometimes purposefully held off on completing a puzzle, just to squeeze out everything he had to say in that room. The humor in the game isn’t exactly gut-busting—and it’s also not the sarcastic sort of comedy that you’ll find in Portal. It has a moment worth a chuckle every once in a while, but it fumbles often with cheap jokes. Nevertheless I always appreciated what Quadrangle had to say—and was welcome to hear it—unless it was for the 8 time. If the gameplay isn’t what keeps you going through QC, the story won’t exactly keep you captivated. You have a very linear goal, and things don’t pick up until the near the very end.
Everything changes when you are able to slow down time.
Quantum Conundrum has a very noticeable amount of technical issues on PS3. The frame rate consistently drops every time you transition rooms. Textures on transition doors will also instantly drop to an extremely blurry state every single time one is activated. None of these issues are detrimental or game-breaking, but they are consistent throughout the entire game and made them hard to look past. These are all problems I experienced on the PS3, and I am unaware whether these issues are present on the Xbox 360 version. A simple patch should fix the texture issues, so expect a fix in the near future.