When I was thinking about how to approach this text, I contemplated aiming it at the reader that had already completed the game, like I did for Little Inferno. I discarded that possibility, among other reasons, because I didn’t want to put your patience to the test (and because I’d like to be read by someone this time); but it’s actually very difficult to write about Antichamber without explaining at least some of its puzzles, inasmuch it will be difficult to transmit that urge to play it that would do you so much good. Still, it would be utterly unfair to spoil you the discovery of even the most basic of its riddles.
“Every journey is a series of choices.
The first is to begin the journey.”
This game was compared to Portal. But the whole Portal game is based on an easily explained mechanics. There’s no such thing here. If you asked me what is in my opinion the biggest mistake of Portal, I’d answer that no doubt it’s how obvious its items are; as soon as you enter a room, you know where the exit is, where you can open portals, where you can’t, if you will need a box or move a laser. It’s a puzzle game where the difficulty lies in how to place the items, but they are completely obvious all the time.
That’s why if you ask me what game is similar to Antichamber, my answer will be undoubtedly a sandbox. It’s a common mistake to associate that concept to big and open settings, in spite of their possibilities being quite limited in many cases. The term sandbox refers precisely to a box of sand; while playing Antichamber, I have been transported to those childhood moments when I discovered the possibilities that my surroundings and my toys had to offer. That’s what Antichamber is about. You are trapped in a labyrinth and you are supposed to find the exit; moving forward implies going through corridors that are not corridors, opening doors that are not closed and building stairways to heaven with the very stairs you just climbed up. Your ideas to keep moving forward are nothing but feeble sand castles about to collapse, built up by the impatient mind of a five-year-old child.
Antichamber is magic not only because every challenge and trial is different to the previous ones and also different to those of any other videogame you played before. It’s magic because it demands you to think in ways you never did before. That’s how it manages to surprise you when you come up with the way to solve a puzzle. Going through Antichamber is going through a brand new path; you were never here before, you never tried to think that way, you never had those ideas- be them the few that worked or the many that didn’t.
It is so obvious that the difficulty lies more in the way of thinking the setting, i.e. finding the items, that in being able to assemble those items, that once you solve a problem it will seem extremely simple, as smart as absurd. There is a constant feeling that the game is mocking both you and the conventions on which your actions are based, in spite of the ever present serious tone. Every time you feel that you are more intelligent than the game, that feeling will be reduced in seconds by having you run around in circles again; maybe for hours. You will cheat and sometimes it will work, and you will be left wondering whether that was what Antichamber expected from you.
In fact, maybe it did, as it cheats as well. The main mistake I find in the game (some others may not see it as a flaw) is that you will be constantly facing situations you can’t solve. Until you don’t get some of the upgrades for the tool that goes with you since few moments after the beginning, you won’t be able to go through certain places. But you don’t know that. You just knocked down some walls with your stare and walked in the vacuum, so it’s only natural that you think there’s a catch and spend literally hours searching for a solution that doesn’t exist; until you give up and go find some other thing to do. I guess this is part of the game charms; more than problem solving, it’s about the cognitive process you develop to achieve solving (which occurs even if you don’t actually solve the situation) That’s why playing Antichamber for more than two hours has given me more headaches than the last time I stepped into a Bershka shop.
There is no plot or guiding principle in Antichamber; but there is always an interesting background to the game, shown through sketches and messages on the walls that give a meaning to the puzzle you just solved. They are usually life messages, of the “The world is seen different from the other side” or “Not succeeding doesn’t mean not moving forward” type; a refined sense of humour is present even here: it was an unforgettable moment when, after running around in circles like an idiot for a good while, the game put before my nose the image of a dog chasing its tail.
There is also an ever present strange feeling; the feeling that ironically something doesn’t quite fit in a world that is so intrinsically coherent as this. Probably nothing is happening, but it seems like it is and it’s fascinating even though you don’t understand it or maybe thanks to you not understanding, like the first time you watch 2001: A Space Odyssey. This happens when you find cubes full of strange images, when you go from perfectly white settings to the most absolute darkness, or when you think about that unsettling countdown to God knows what. When you manage to escape the floor disappearing below your feet or when you find out that you had to let that floor disappear. When you hear the clock pendulum swinging behind your back, when you splash about a tiled floor or when the game evokes a lush forest without the least sign of vegetation. Whenever any of those happens, you must accept you have been playing Antichamber for too long and your twisted mind is now probably as delirious as that of Alexander Bruce, the guy who spent four years of his life thinking this game and whose genius is beyond question.
This is not the first time a game makes use of non-Euclidean spaces to plan its settings and its challenges, but well, if we compare the rest to Antichamber… yes, it’s the first time. Yet it’s the way of messing with the player mind that truly makes the difference. It may be faulty or not excellent in some accessory aspects, those that make an experience complete (but don’t create it), but it’s unrivalled as a puzzle game. It defies your reasoning because it’s based on the imperfect and inaccurate perception of your senses, or because you’ve wrongly chosen not to trust them. It seems that Bruce could have created a perfect game, and instead of it he decided to go a step further and create a human game; human in the sense that it’s not based on mechanics, as the rest of games are. It’s not even inspired by the player mind. Antichamber is a human game because it understands, challenges, overcomes and surprises the player mind when he’s not playing, that is, the player mind when he’s not a player; but it does so while he’s actually playing, while he’s being a player as it requires, it demands you to think in ways you’d never do within a game. Maybe that’s why it could be easier for those not used to being a player. Anyway and in brief, play it ASAP, but always at your own risk.
