4/5 ★ – eatpotatochip's review of Quantum Conundrum.

​This one’s interesting. Quantum Conundrum is a game made by the director of the original Portal, Kim Swift. I’ve read and listened to a few of her interviews, and she paints a very interesting (and unfortunate) picture of the American games industry. She made this game after leaving Valve because she was apparently dissatisfied by the direction of the early Portal 2 plans, according to an interview with Adam Conover on the podcast Humans Who Make Games. The game sets up a sequel hook in its last moments very prominently, which makes it more unfortunate that we’ll never see a true sequel - apparently, according to Kim Swift, issues with the publisher caused the cancellation of Quantum Conundrum 2 while it was in the middle of production. This is especially unfortunate because, while Quantum Conundrum isn’t really the instant classic Portal was, it’s still a great game. The core gameplay revolves around the ability to shift dimensions - one dimension is the “Fluffy” dimension, where everything is lighter and made up of cushions, one is the heavy dimension where everything is made of iron, one is a slow motion dimension, and one is a reverse-gravity dimension. The puzzles are very inventive and enjoyable, and have a lot of fun solutions too. For example, if you want to get to a platform far away and out of your reach, solving the puzzle by abusing the mechanics - by picking up a table in the Fluffy dimension, throwing it and activating slow motion, getting on top of the table while suspended in midair, and applying/undoing reverse gravity to guide the table you’re riding across the room - isn’t just valid, it’s encouraged. This, however, leads to a problem - you have a lot of puzzles where you need to be very precise in how you use the dimensions, and timing is important, which means that once you figure out how to solve a problem, you won’t immediately be able to do so. You’ll have to work with the physics system of the game, have great control over when you’re switching dimensions, as well as which dimensions you’re choosing - a single mistake can lead to you having to redo the whole solution. This sort of stuff can be appealing to others, but it isn’t that appealing to me. That being said, if all of what I mentioned above sounds excellent to you, pick the game up during discounts! It’s usually very cheap, I think I grabbed it for forty rupees or so.