ok so at one point. likely not too long after the game came out. i watched a video of some gameplay and then forgot about it entirely. and then for YEARS. AND YEARS after that i kept trying to fucking remember the name of this game or ANYTHING that could help me find it AND ? i just happened to stumble upon it on sale for barely a dollar on some website i dont remember ever visiting but had apparently had money on.
really fun but god you do not need that much bloom. the areas between levels are unfortunately very repetitive but otherwise its ok ^_^

Positives:
+ The puzzle mechanics (the 4 Dimensions shifts) are really interesting and fun to mess around with.
+ Has a very nice art styles and environments.
+ Decent soundtrack.
+ Ike

Negatives:
- Inconsistent puzzle quality. Sometimes they can be creative and satisfying to solve, but sometimes they can feel bland and repetitive to play.
- Annoying platforming sections, considering the object physics are not that consistent and first person platforming is always an awkward thing to do.
- The Professor is not a good character. He tries too hard to be quirky and funny, but it ends up making him irritating to listen to. I especially hate when he gives you hints or straight up backseats you in the middle of solving a puzzle.
- A boring and forgettable story.

Overall, it's not a good puzzle-platformer game. You're not missing out on anything if you haven't played it yet.

beating this game was like 14 years in the making, i got it pretty close to launch and my dumb 12 year old brain could absolutely not comprehend it. playing it now, it's not too bad. there was one puzzle that stumped me pretty hard but otherwise it's pretty simple, and something i wasn't expecting it's a whole lot more platforming based! that's not necessairly a bad thing, i kinda liked it and it differentiated itself from similar portal inspired puzzle games! i feel like it's not the expectation and can be a bit jarring though. it also ocassionally makes room solutions feel pretty jank and unintended though. it did feel pretty satisfying to get through most rooms though i'll give it that.

the narration isn't nearly as charming/funny as something like portal or stanley parable either. visually it's about as generic cartoony 2010s puzzle game as possible, and if you told me there was no music at all aside from the pretty bad credits song i'd believe you.

considering you can get this for like 2 dollars on sale almost constantly, i'd say it's a worthwhile playthrough if you like these style of first person puzzle games but you're missing out on almost nothing by skipping it. not particularly memorable, but not bad by any means.

A very fun game with many interesting elements to altering reality for platforming and puzzle solving such as making safes light and fluffy so you can pick them up, reversing time and many more fun and interesting little things to do!

I'd highly recommend it to anyone who is a fan of puzzle-platform games :)

Edit: The ability to alter the quantum mechanics of this game makes for a lot of interesting and fun mechanics that remind me very much of Portal and Portal 2. Altering the universe to fluffy to make things light or make things heavy and you have so many options and the later puzzles are real head-scratchers.

At first glance, it’s hard not to look at Quantum Conundrum and see the similarities to Portal: both involve a silent hero completing a set of test chambers whilst a sociopath barks out sardonic dialogue. Yet, as a critic and gamer, I’ve never had an issue with such homages provided the work is of sufficient quality, and not only is QC well-above that threshold, it really isn’t anything like Portal. You’re not creating makeshift warp zones between ingresses but rather manipulating objects via a Power Glove, and so the question that remains is does QC stand as a worthwhile platformer? Well, I kind of spoiled things already, but the answer is absolutely- it’s clever, consistent, and most importantly fun…aka, all the traits you’d want in a puzzle game.

The premise is you’re a little boy sent to live with your mad scientist Uncle Fitz who, in the midst of one of his crazy experiments, has trapped himself in a pocket dimension and turned the manor topsy-turvy, leaving it up to you to save the day. As you can imagine, this isn’t a story-driven title, with most of the narrative deriving from the diatribes Fitz hurls at you as you make your way from room-to-room, and under the direction of former Portal designer Kim Swift, it’s clear Airtight Games was trying to replicate the Chell/GLaDOS dynamic here. Yet, more often than not, I found myself cringing instead of laughing at Fitz’s rants, and I think a large part of that has to do with the relationship structure. In Portal, GLaDOS was an amoral AI who had no connection to Chell; Fitz, on the other hand, is a human being with explicit familial ties to the protagonist, and while I get he views the latter as a nuisance, it wasn’t enough for him to outright not give a sh!t about the boy endangering himself, let alone the constant castigations your ears are subjected to.

I know I’ll be hit with the whole “it’s a comedy, why so serious?” defense, to which I respond some comedic topics require stronger execution than others, chief among those child abuse, and I genuinely feel an easy solution would’ve been to just give a voice to the kid- having him verbally spar with his Uncle or retort with sarcastic quips could have gone a long way towards alleviating Fitz’s acerbic venom. As it stands, YMMV as far as how funny you find the jokes since it’s essentially indifferent from a stand-up comic routine.

But of course it’s the gameplay which’ll be the deciding factor for most players, and on that front there’s honestly not much I can say other than that the levels are incredibly designed. You never run into anything long or overly-complicated the way Portal 2 was structured, but that’s perfectly fine and leads to arguably more unique scenarios based around the four powers at your disposal. I’m not going to go into details about them as I think part of the fun comes from discovering them on your own; just know that they’re mixed-and-matched appropriately and used to their fullest potential. Not once did I exit the game thinking a lot of concepts were left on the cutting room floor, and that speaks to the degree of craftsmanship that existed at Airtight’s studio.

The only criticism I can drum up is the lack of a character model for Fitz’s nibling as it made some of the platforming slightly imprecise. Like you’re not even given an arm, which is a shame as the device for triggering the dimensional shifts literally looks like the Infinity Gauntlet, and it would’ve been cool to see the corresponding nodes glow like the gems did in Avengers whenever Thanos activated them. But this is slim pickings as the graphics, in general, are superb. If you had told me QC was built in Unreal, I would not have believed you as this is the first time I’ve seen a developer not go the photorealism route with Epic’s baby. Yet the results more than speak for themselves, with every object and environ rendered in a cel-shaded style baked with mundane tints, hitting that thematic mishmash I’d expect from a standard laboratory undergoing a radical change. In particular, I was impressed by the artistic malleability as applied to object geometry, with round and flat models alike constructed smoothly without any of those incongruent angles you often see in TellTale releases.

There are a couple of graphical downsides, namely QC’s overindulgence in aimless corridors between levels (no doubt a cover for the game’s loading screens, but to repeat the same hallway design and 90% of the paintings is where I draw the line), as well as the occasional clip-in (especially from broken glass). However, I think the visuals more than speak for themselves when I have to be petty with my critiques.

Sound unfortunately cannot get the same praise, beginning with the obnoxiously synth-heavy score by Chris Ballew. Ballew was evidently trying to musically recreate the gizmo-and-gadgetry noises you’d presumably hear in a scientific area, but the problem is he maintains that backgroundy nature to a fault, leaving most of the tunes largely forgettable (not a good thing for a level-based platformer). And even the ones that do stand out do so for negative reasons, strewn with 8-bit melodies that wouldn’t be out of place in the original Mario Bros (and yes, that’s a bad thing, sorry retro gamers).

SFX is more consistent, with Airtight doing a decent job diversifying the sonority of kinetic items depending on their velocity and collision surface (though couch cushions are abnormally loud). Where the company stumbles, however, is in its ambient noise: maybe they were relying on the OST, but I found a lot of the stages to be unusually quiet. Sure you hear the drolling of machinery and buzzing of lasers, yet other facets like the sputtering of static devices or churning of liquid in pipes is strangely absent for a game largely taking place in an enclosed space.

Voice acting comes down purely to John de Lancie, who is sadly handicapped by the aforementioned defects in the script. I like my charismatic narcissist as much as the next guy, but some substance has to be there to account for the toxic emotions, and Lancie simply didn’t have enough to work with.

In the end, though, Quantum Conundrum is more than entertaining enough to outweigh these flaws. It’s a shame Airtight went under as their sophomore outing easily exhibits the promise of a thoroughly-talented developer.

It took me about 7 hours to beat the game, which is more than worth the $8.99 asking price.


NOTES
-For all my complaining about the absence of gauntlet changes, the dimensional fluid does alter hues contingent on the active ability.

-De Lancie famously voiced William Miles in the Assassin’s Creed series pre-Origins. I say this because Fitz frequently speaks on a drinking bird toy called Desmond, making me wonder if this was a small Easter Egg.

-The game ends on a cliffhanger that was obviously intended to lead into a sequel…one that will never come to light.

-Two short DLC were produced for Quantum Conundrum, “The Desmond Debacle” and “IKE-aramba!”. Given the largely negative reviews on Steam, I have opted to abstain from getting them (at least for the time-being).

-Speaking of Ike, I can’t be the only person who thinks he was intended to be a meme/mascot that never caught on.

Gameplay - 7
Trilha Sonora - 6
Gráficos - 7
História/Campanha - 6

Nota - 6.5