After solving the first puzzles of , I realized something: it’s like trying to crack a Rubik’s cube. Every gorgeous scenario is made of rows and columns of squa❀res, and each time you move, you’re advancing one square and moving either the complete column or row. At the same time, every object that doesn’t have a special property and is in the same line will be moved, even if you’re not directly touching it.
Arranger’s core gameplay loop is about learning this easy-to-learn but hard-to-master concept, defeating enemies, and reaching the end of each area. If you’re familiar w🉐ith Rubik’s cubes, you probably know that this means solving algorithms and using Group Theory to find the best solutions. If you aren’t nerd enough to remember what these math concepts mean or you simply hate the colorful cube, don’t go away just yet: you can still have a fine time in Arranger.
Developer Furniture & Mattress LLC follows a simple game design rule with great effort: start slow, explain the area’s mechanic in the easiest way possible, and then gradually increase the difficulty. Levels will introduce you to objects that can’t be moved, laꩵsers that go through whole lines and need to be avoided, water squares that aren’t connected to any row or column, and characters who follow you everywhere, among many other things. The rate at which new variations are thrown at you is impressive, always encour🌳aging you to face new twists and apply what you have learned.
Arranger doesn’t waste time explaining what yo🥃u have to do with tutorials. You enter a scenario, see the things around you, and you’re on your own. I love games that throw you into the thick of things with litt♕le to no hand-holding. After a few hours, I wasn’t moving forward by advancing one square at a time: I started using the loops on the edges to reach my destinations in just a few moves. This framework doesn’t come without its caveats, though.
For example, you can turn 💙on assist tools so markers tell you where to go or even completely skip certain puzzles. This is better than having no help at all, and I’d argue that almost all the time it’s clear enough what you have to do… but not how. Receiving a tip saying that “you should move X object next to Y object” would have been better than having a skip button that completely undermines the experience
Another interesting decision is to avoid having a “reset” option that turns an area to how it was before you entered. You can accidentally leave key items far away from where you need them in the more open areas — now instead of solving the puzzle you first need to find out how to fix your mistake. It’s a brave decision that I liked, especially when I didn’t find the chance to block any progression path, but it’s certainly something t🌸hat will frustrate many players.
What’s more remarkable is how Arranger’s gameplay goes hand in hand with its narrative.ꦦ Protagonist Jemma has never left her hometown. Nobody around her has: everyone is a bit too comfortable with their monotonous lives, and they don’t want to know what else exists ♚in the world. They’re afraid of being attacked by The Static, an unknown force infecting the land and filling it with deadly monsters.
Its lovely, hand-drawn-style never gets old, while what starts as a common t🌞ale of leaving your home behind quickly turns into a representation of meritocracy, religion, and how capitalist societies work, with the rich anꩲd powerful being at the top and everyone else just dancing to the beat of the drums.
Due to Jemma’s innocence and her growing understanding of how things work, some scenarios will make you laugh with her naivety and silly lines here and there, but others feel a little too on the nose. You get messages like ‘rich people = bad’ a🐷lmost in a literal manner, which I’m not going to argue with, but I feel it would have been more interesting to explore topics like this in a more nuanced way. It’s a tone that ♓feels coherent with the cartoonish presentation the game has, but it can quickly become patronizing.
This doesn’t mean that Arranger isn’t without its clever ideas. Some silly but effective puns like “the Static Quo” made me chuckle, and one whole area is the most charming critique of Twitt🧸er I’ve seen in a while, with messenger birds swarming a small town and keeping everyone at home. An invention that was created in good faith at first, but quickly turned out of control. Arranger even goes a step further to claim that sometimes entertainment maybe isn’t the he♊althy escapism we think of it, but a means to be mind-numbed and never take action about the systematic inequities we and the people around us suffer. It feels like a strong meta-textual message to interpret when… well, playing a video game.
The main idea that we need to learn how to be active, think about our moves, and try to break through our places of comfort feels a bit cliché but also heartwarming. Jemma ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚmoves an💛d a lot of things move with her, bringing people together and building community. She fights against the anxiety issues of the ones around her and even her own. It also doesn’t romanticize acting for the sake of acting, with things getting wrong and people suffering in the way.
It’s unfortunate that the last act of Arranger drops in quality when it comes to the overall designs and puzzles. At one point I was rus♏hing through and the difficulty curve just disappeared. The final boss was a massive letdown when you consider the previous cool encounters you overcame. However, from a narrative perspective, it’s kind of brilliant: they are just three rich dudes who can’t do anything by themselves.
Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure is both a pleasing and frustrating puzzling journey that leaves you thinking both about the steps you make in-game and the ones that you might or might not make in your real life. This could have just been a small game about a cool and strong mechanic, but it ended up being much more thanks to its hꦡeartwarming story and characters
Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure
Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure follows the story of Jemma, a small-town misfit on a journey of self-discovery. Venturing out beyond her stiflingly cozy confines, she finds an inspiring world - but also one ruled by fear, and a strange, immovable ‘static’ force. Can she disrupt a culture of stagnation, and find a place to fit into it?
Gameplay takes place on a unique, interconnected ‘grid’ that spans the entire world, snappily uniting movement, exploration, and combat. Anything on the same row or column as Jemma moves when she moves, and can ‘loop’ around the edge of the grid - creating both a playful sense of chaos, and a regular stream of small, thoughtful puzzles that twist and play with the central mechanic.
Unique, interconnected gameplay “grid” that snappily unites movement, combat, and exploration. A story-driven adventure about a small-town misfit on a journey of self-discovery. A breezy RPG without XP or inventory to manage, where everything is handled in-world. A nicely-sized campaign with some optional challenges, and various assist options so that you only get as stuck as you want to be.
- Gorgeous art and designs.
- Fantastic gameplay loop.
- A strong narrative foundation with clever and funny portraits of different topics.
- Its core mechanic can become frustrating at times due to some design decisions.
- Sometimes the narrative feels patronizing.
- The last act drops a bit in quality.
A review code was provided by the publisher.
