Quantum Conundrum - E3 Preview

Making a good puzzle game can be difficult. First you have to figure out a good mechanic for solving the puzzles. Then you have to design puzzles that can be solved with the mechanic, offers a challenge, but does not frustrate players. Quantum Conundrum, developed by Airtight Games and published by Square Enix, has done a good job in puzzling this together. In Quantum Conundrum you have been dropped off to visit uncle, only to find him missing. He is somewhere in his house as he helps you through the game, with varying degrees of usefulness, but does not know where in his house that he actually is (it is pretty big). Well, time to save the crazy scientist.

IT'S SO FLUFFY!In Quantum Conundrum you use an Interdimensional Shift Device (IDS) glove in concert with dimensional batteries to change between one of four dimensions. First there is the Fluffy Dimension, which makes everything white, soft, and really light. Then you have the Heavy Dimension, which makes things incredibly heavy and dense. You have the Slow Dimension which, well that one is pretty self explanatory. And lastly you have the Reverse Gravity Dimension, please don't make me explain that one to you. These dimensions do not affect you, but does affect all the items in your environment. This means that if you have to press and hold a switch behind a glass wall to open the exit door, and all you have is steel safe you can change to Fluffy Dimension to pick up the safe, throw it at the window, change back to the normal dimension while the safe is in the air, and the safe will fly through the glass wall and land on the button. This is an extreme simplification of the game, but gives you the jest of it. Controls in the demo were very precise and allowed for precision timing to solve the progressively more difficult and seemingly impossible puzzles.

Interdimensional Kinetic Entity (IKE)The last thing that I was to bring forward about this game is the sense of humor that the creators had when making it. An example of this can be seen if you check the books your uncle reads. There are titles such as "To Kilohertz a Mockingbird" and "Man in the Fe26 Mask". There is also a reference to Bob Ross about happy little trees when looking at a painting during one puzzle. This same painting will change content depending on what dimension you are in, possibly making the trees much less happy. This inventive game is set to launch on June 21, 2012 via Steam and will be on XBLA and PSN later this summer. This game also gets a nod for the most inventive game I saw at E3 2012.