Antichamber Gameplay

[Shari Alvine]

Throughoutthe game there are multiple pink cubes, these cubes go along a set path when observed by the player. Fifteen pink cubes have been discovered so far. These fifteen do not appear to be linked to one another as they can be done in any order except for one of them which has to be obtained the very first time you enter the puzzle's room. These cubes do not appear to have any effect on any other area. Of the 15, only 13 are obtainable through regular gameplay, one of the 2 "non-regular gameplay" pinks is in a noclip area, where you need to be able to walk through walls, and the other "non-regular gameplay" pink requires a clipping glitch.

The path to the cube is blocked off after Leap Of Faith, Logic 101 or A Jump Too Far has been solved. These puzzles trigger a transformation of the There's No Way In room and it becomes impossible to access the pink cube secret room. It must be accessed at the very beginning of the game.

At one end of There's No Way In in its initial version, there is a set of green-colored stairs with a yellow and black border. Walking down these stairs and then back up them will bring you to a room with two pyramids, one cyan and one magenta.

The pink cube is behind the cyan pyramid. Looking at the cyan pyramid triggers the pink cube and it will be audibly moving toward The Character. The pink cube will will reveal itself and will follow a path down the cyan pyramid, audibly under the floor, up the magenta pyramid, and audibly down the other side. The character must be looking at where the pink cube is audibly for the cube to complete the journey.

The second pink cube is bugged and is normally unobtainable. There is, however, a clipping glitch that can be used to obtain it. This pink cube can be found by walking to the very back of the gallery and towards the open window into Finding The Seams. You can clip to the cube by covering the opening with cubes, apart from a man-sized hole to the side. Then enter using the hole you created; you should notice that the cubes you placed earlier are missing. Exit back into the gallery but using the side without the hole you created. The teleport will not activate and you will find a pink cube path almost identical to the normal Three Paths In Sight but inside a glitched gallery which is not meant to be seen.

One can be found at the Window Of Opportunity. Transport to blue then walk around the transporter window so the red can be seen but don't trigger the transporter, now the other side is green. Transport to green and repeat the walk around, now the green side is pink. The pink cube follows the path in the shape of the number two.

The pink cube is Down The Rabbit Hole at the bottom. Chained jumps is the only way to reach the bottom since there is a Disintegrator Field in the shaft. Timing jumps precisely when The Character hits the Jump-pad pushes the jump-pad down. The initial fall to the jump-pad gives momentum to quickly traverse down.

After getting up the wall, crossing the appearing platform, and getting to the bottom of the Jump-pad, there is a wall at the back of the jump-pad shaft that is made of green cubes. The pink cube is behind the wall.

Antichamberhas been racking up awards at indie game conferences since 2009, and stumblingmy way through the game made it easy to see why. This indie puzzler establishescreator Alexander Bruce as the M.C. Escher of game development, providingplayers with a sprawling and satisfying network of challenges that requirenovel thinking to overcome.

LikePortal, Antichamber's puzzles exist in an environment where the laws of naturedon't apply, allowing players to think in ways that reality doesn't require.Whereas Portal "only" bent the rules of space, Antichamber throws everythingyou know out the window, stripping you of your preconceptions before building youback up with a new set of skills and rules to play by.

Anearly puzzle teaches me the importance of not taking anything for granted. Afterwalking down an L-shaped corridor, my path diverges into two choices: a bluestaircase that leads upwards and a red staircase that leads downwards. I choosethe blue stairs, which lead me up to another L-shaped hallway. When I turn thecorner, I'm confronted by the same two staircases. I spend the next few minutesalternating between the two paths, but no matter which one I choose, it leadsme back to the same stairways. Confused, I begin walking towards them again,then pause in a moment of clarity. I turn and walk back the way I came, peeringaround the corner. Lo and behold, it now leads to a new area.

Eachtime you solve a puzzle in Antichamber, you come across a plaque with a sayingthat sums up the lesson you've just learned, many of which have real-worldvalue as well. These lessons are the core of Antichamber, and it teaches youeverything you need to know with virtually no on-screen instructions. Instead,you learn from your failures, and every time you expose a trick the world hasplayed on you, your knowledge base grows a little.

Thegameplay evolves when you discover a gun that allows you to collect and placecubes in the world, providing you with the literal building blocks you need toovercome challenges. You upgrade the gun several times, building on yourabilities and the complexity of the puzzles you're confronted with. Theupgrades also make redoing many of the earlier puzzles a breeze, easing thepain of backtracking through environments while searching for missed secretsand abandoned puzzles.

Itwasn't until the very end that tedium began to set in, as I tried to hunt down thelast few paths I had missed. That boredom was erased as soon as I entered the multi-roomedgauntlet of puzzles standing between me and Antichamber's enigmatic ending, afinal test of the lessons I had learned. Regardless of the lack of story, overcomingthose challenges filled me with a greater sense of achievement than thecountless "save the world" missions I'm used to taking on in video games.Gamers would be hard pressed to find a more unique, engaging puzzle game.

There are things we take for granted in the real world that don't necessarily need to show up in a video game. Not the obvious gameplay concessions, like being able to take a couple bullets and heal fully in under a minute, or being able to shoot with pinpoint accuracy a target hundreds of feet away, but rather more basic details. Like walking down a corridor and knowing you can walk back and end up where you started, or walking forward leading you to the same spot as walking backwards would. Antichamber doesn't care much for ideas like logical internal consistency based on an assumption of how things should be, and delights in subverting expectations whenever possible. Sometimes it's integral to puzzle design and others just for the fun of it, but there's always a clever set-piece to uncover if only you can turn your brain sideways.

Antichamber is a game presented in a stark, mostly white maze littered with puzzle rooms. There's possibly a story in there somewhere, although I wasn't able to find it, but the lure of the next puzzle, the newest bit of physics-defying design, and sometimes even earning a new ability are more than enough to keep pulling you along.

Puzzles are roughly divided into two types. The first kind is environmental, and these are the ones where the laws of the physical world are played with. Pathways can appear or disappear, although with strict rules governing what causes this. Other times the corridor will connect back to its beginning in a way that would give a cartographer a nervous breakdown, but it does this in a way that's internally consistent. It may feel like trial and error at times, but once you've discovered the solution to a puzzle, or the correct path, there's always a way to look back and understand how Antichamber was trying to tell you what to do. Observation and experimentation will lead to success every single time.

The second type of puzzle involves playing with the block gun, and these are more traditionally logical. You might have to place a block to break a light beam to open a door, or place a block in the door to hold it open. The block gun can retrieve and replace the colored cubes found in many rooms, and as Antichamber progresses it gets upgraded with new abilities. What this means from a puzzle perspective is that there's a bit of Metroidvania going on, and sometimes it will take a large amount of experimentation to learn that, yes, you needed the yellow gun upgrade and not the green one to get past a section. Each upgrade enhances and replaces the old one, thankfully, so there's no need to be switching tools back and forth. On the other hand, they don't come with instructions, so figuring out the full range of possibilities in each upgrade involves learning through experience.

The important thing to keep in mind, though, is that Antichamber wants to teach you how to solve its puzzles. One technique leads to another, and if you pay attention to what the world is trying to tell you then it's going to be a lot easier to get through. Rarely easy, of course, but the experience of learning is going to lead directly to the experience of feeling really smart and clever. Until the next new wrinkle is introduced, of course, at which point it's time to start banging your head against the wall again until a solution rattles free.

Usually something will turn up to point the way, but not always, at which point it's best to walk away and let a puzzle simmer in the back of your head for an hour or eight. Antichamber is the kind of game where, even when you're not playing, your brain is nibbling away at a sticking point while you go about your business. Even if you're stuck, though, there's usually something else to try. The central room of the game has a map on one wall, and retreating to the room is as simple as hitting the ESC key. The last room you were in is highlighted on the map with an icon, but you can mouse over any room you've been to and instantly teleport there with a single click. What this means in practical terms is that there's no Game Over. There's only a lack of success, and that can be fixed by failing less.

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