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Despite the fact Quantum Conundrum is the kind of game I usually love — smart mind bending puzzler, with cool art style — for some reason it’s completely slipped my radar, but now it’s here. Right now! On Steam.
Quantum Conundrum is a dimension shifting, mind-boggling, effort designed by Kim Swift, who helped design the initial student project that became Portal, and then worked on that game itself.
So, yeah. This is looking pretty incredible. Anyone here picking it up?
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I know that Quantum Conundrum is supposed to be totally different to Portal despite being an first-person 3D puzzle-shooter, and being made by the person who created Portal, but I can’t help but feel like it’s going to be mostly the same ideas with a fresh coat of paint. I’m probably wrong but I just can’t get excited about this game.
“I can’t help but feel like it’s going to be mostly the same ideas with a fresh coat of paint”
This alone excites me!
Yeah, that should be an endorsement, assuming I’m even right. For some reason though I’m just not interested. Can’t really explain it.
The review I read (on Kotaku, in fact) said that there’s much more of a twitch element to it. In Portal it was usually pretty easy to carry out the solution once you found. Apparently it can be trickier in this game.
This is true. I also found it a bit difficult because the player is a bit shorter than in most first-person games, and I sometimes misjudged how high I could jump.
This is true. I also found it a bit difficult because the player is a bit shorter than in most first-person games, and I sometimes misjudged how high I could jump.
not really anything twitchy about it.
Hell of the 4 dimensions the only one that could require any twitchiness at all is the Anti-Gravity dimension
And is nothing compared to the twitchiness that could be used in the original portal to get some of the puzzles done in weird ways. A feature removed in Portal 2 by only allowing 1 solution
I’ve played through the first act. The general aesthetic is quite similar to Portal, as is the general objective of moving things around to activate switches. However, in a way that is very difficult to explain, the game play feels nothing like Portal. I think its because in Portal, you use portals to move things around the level. In this, you change the rules of the game itself to move yourself around the layout.
Even if youthink that the game is (too) similar to Portal, it is a very polished experience. The game is hilarious: your uncle talks to you about most of the paintings in the game, which also change depending on the Universe your in. The puzzles I’ve encountered thus far are excellent – certainly better than anything in the single player campaign of the Portal 2. They were also really challenging, similar in difficulty to the harder co-op puzzles in Portal 2.
The only criticism I can make is that the game is much better with a pad than a keyboard. On the keyboard, the Universes are mapped to number keys. This is problematic because you often need to switch while moving, which didn’t work that well for me.
At $15 bucks, Quantum Conundrum is really good value. It reportedly takes 8-10 hours, which is consistent with my experience. Seriously people BUY THIS GAME.
The universes are mapped to 1, 3, q & e. Most of the time you only need to control your forward movement with w. Changing universes means briefly moving your fingers off the strafe keys a & d. For any experienced mouse&keyboard FPS gamer this is standard practice and should be no problem at all. Note that the 2 key isn’t used, which while possible to reach without moving off of w, is more awkward to accomplish. In my opinion this was fairly well thought out by the developer.
I would consider myself an experienced mouse&keyboard FPS gamer, and I still didn’t find it that workable in the twitch puzzles – largely because some of the puzzles are easier if you can strafe and change the universe at the same time (particularly the ones where you need to block lasers with objects) I probably shouldn’t have listed it as a criticism. Even though the game is in a FP view, its still a puzzle platformer, most of which work a lot better on a pad.
It seems like this could be solved with a remap, possibly to alternate mouse buttons. Is this an option?
I’m not sure – you’d need a mouse with a four buttons though. I got lazy and just decided to use a pad for it.
I’ve played the first hour of it so far. Its pretty good actually. Nothing in it so far resembles portal except for the room based puzzle platformer style. Not a portal, cake or cube in sight. Some awesome dry humour though. I recommend it for the few dollars its worth.
It’s using Unreal Engine (3 I assume) so I don’t see why it wouldn’t be able to support that resolution!
Well there have been half a dozen or so articles on kotaku about it, so I’m glad that TAY isn’t the only part of kotaku you ignore 😉
Mark Serrels, maybe you should check out your own website [kotaku] because its been on here a few times.
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