Quantum Conundrum


Manipulate time, gravity, and other forces to save your crazy uncle.

PC Release: June 21, 2012

By Ian Coppock

Puzzle-platformers seem to have vanished from the gaming scene in recent years. Even the indie scene in this genre is coming up short on producing titles that aren’t blatant Portal clones. Exceptions to that rule exist, but the prestige that puzzle-platformers enjoyed with the advent of Portal and Portal 2 seemed to die down alarmingly quickly. Faced with the lack of newer such games, it’s time to take a trip back to just a few years ago, when titles like Quantum Conundrum were all the rage.


Directed by Kim Swift (one of the minds behind Portal), Quantum Conundrum is a first-person puzzle game developed by the now-defunct Airtight Games. Quantum Conundrum challenges players to solve simple physics puzzles by altering the properties of in-game items, like making them lighter or heavier. All of this is made possible thanks to a handy-dandy Infinity Gauntlet—ahem—power glove that the player gets shortly after Quantum Conundrum starts.

Players assume the role of a nameless boy who arrives to the mansion of Professor Quadwrangle, an eccentric inventor who cares much more about his crazy inventions than being this child’s uncle. Quadwrangle’s in the middle of an experiment when his nephew gets to his manor and becomes trapped in an alternate dimension when it goes horribly wrong. He charges the boy with acquiring the aforementioned reality-bending glove and using it to rescue him from the alternate dimension… and maybe also restoring power to the mansion while he’s at it.


Oh great, an alien raccoon.

Players can use the power glove to put Quadwrangle Manor in other dimensions, which changes the properties of various in-game objects. That safe over there is way too heavy to carry in this dimension, but switching over to the dimension where everything’s made of fluff should make it light as a cotton ball. Pick it up, set it on the button, switch back to normal dimension, puzzle solved. As players progress through Quantum Conundrum, they get more functions added to the glove, like the ability to make objects much heavier or even slow down time.

How appropriate that Quantum Conundrum‘s puzzles become more elaborate as players gain more glove functions, requiring them to switch between multiple dimensions in one puzzle and sometimes rather quickly. Quantum Conundrum does a good job at gradually leveling its difficulty, but not soon enough to preclude the game feeling relatively easy. Anyone looking for a challenge on the level of, say, Portal Stories: Mel should click out of this review ASAP. Thanks for reading though.



On second thought, just because Quantum Conundrum isn’t all that difficult doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its moments of fun. Despite most puzzles being straightforward, Quantum Conundrum does manage to elicit that feeling of triumph when players fly through a puzzle’s gates. The game also demonstrates decent creativity in its design, particularly in levels where players have to calculate how an object’s properties clash against environmental hazards. Sending a block through a laser or in front of a fan in the fluffy dimension is a no-go, but it should be invincible in heavy dimension.

Of course, knowing the limits of each dimension is one of the ways that players can have an easy time with Quantum Conundrum. Despite the game’s best efforts, most puzzles make it pretty evident which dimensions need to be activated in what order to succeed. Alternatively, some puzzles are less puzzles than they are first-person platforming challenges. First-person platforming in general is a mixed bag, and in Quantum Conundrum it can feel like a cheap distraction from the more logic-driven challenges.


Now THIS is what I call couch surfing!

Quantum Conundrum also stumbles in the level design department. While the actual puzzles are designed well enough, the game’s environments are the same brightly colored mansion halls over and over again. Players can expect to explore endless sitting rooms and corridors with little variety to break this monotony up. Yeah, Portal‘s test chambers were all stark white cubes, but players could still slip into other, less pristine corners of the facility later on. Quantum Conundrum provides no such variety; though its environments are cute and brightly colored, that’s all they ever are.

Visually, the game could’ve done with some texture sharpening and better anti-aliasing before being released. Close-up inspections of in-game objects are not recommended, as their surfaces tend to be fairly smudgy. With Quantum Conundrum‘s relative lack of AA, its objects’ edges tend to be smudgy as well. The game’s options menu may promise that its AA and object detail are turned all the way up, but they’re not (not that the options menu is all that amazing either).


How many safes does this dude have?

Quantum Conundrum‘s design choices start to feel less like the work of an amateur and more like appeals to children when examining the game’s sound design. The game’s soundtrack is a bubbly little medley of cute electronic sounds and contemplative snare drums, none of which would sound out of place in a Pixar short. Quantum Conundrum‘s sound effects are similarly cutesy in their design; bright noises like buttons being pressed are loud, while harsh sounds like glass breaking are muted.

Quantum Conundrum‘s sole voice acting performance comes from John mother-flipping de Lancie, who took to voicing Professor Quadwrangle with the same glib snark and obsession with control over time and space that he did playing Q in Deep Space Nine. Though the character of Quadwrangle provokes some laughs with his Sheldon Cooper-esque lack of empathy, most of the jokes in this game are puns and random little one-liners. Quantum Conundrum‘s best writing by far is on its death screens, where the game points out things that the boy will never get to experience in adulthood (like putting the empty milk jug back in the fridge).


Oh look, a portrait of Quadwrangle with 80’s hair, that’s funny…

Between Quadwrangle’s non-sequitur puns and the bulk of Quantum Conundrum‘s humor being off-screen, it’s not hard to see that the game’s narrative takes a hard backseat to pure puzzle-platforming. That wouldn’t necessarily be a mark against the game if that puzzle-platforming wasn’t so simplistic. The story of Quantum Conundrum can be summed up as a boy physics-puzzling his way through three sectors of a house while his uncle muses about space raccoons and time travel. Not exactly a compelling package… though that premise would make an amazing script for a stoner comedy.

The final problem with Quantum Conundrum is that the game is not well optimized for PC. Players need a top-of-the-line monster rig for this game to run close to 60 FPS without stuttering. That’s a statement that bears repeating: players need a top-of-the-line monster rig to run a five-year-old puzzle-platformer. What causes this game to chug so hard on PC is anyone’s guess, especially since its graphics are basic and its system demands low (at least on paper).


I’m not rewiring all of that.

Quantum Conundrum doesn’t do anything blatantly offensive; it’s just kind of there. It has okay puzzle design, okay writing, okay visual design, and okay gameplay. It’s an alright little puzzler that can provide a few hours of mild entertainment but falls far short of being a game-changer for that genre. Couple these mid-tier accomplishments with bad PC optimization, and the result is a true conundrum indeed… one that players are probably best off avoiding. If the age of Portal produced any other puzzle-platformers worth getting excited over, Quantum Conundrum is not one of them.


You can buy Quantum Conundrum here.



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