A gorgeous sliding tile puzzler with a hint of Patrick’s Parabox
This week’s Nintendo Direct wasstuffed full of gamesthat will also be making their way to PC over the next few months, but the one I haven’t been able to stop thinking about is the newly-announcedArranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure. It’s the debut game from a team of indie devs that includeBraidartist David Hellman,Cartowriter Nick Suttner andEtherealdesigner Nicolás Recabarren, and they’ve also partnered with composer Tomás Batista, who did the music for both Ethereal and Martian colony builderPer Aspera. It’s a pretty stacked line-up as these things go, but it’s Arranger’s world of constantly shifting sliding tiles that’s really piqued my curiosity. Come and watch the lovely announcement trailer below and see what I mean.
You play as Jemma, who the devs describe as a “small-town misfit” who’s on a journey to The Land Beyond to find out where she fits in the world - both literally and figuratively. Literally, in the sense that her world is composed entirely of a sliding tile grid that constantly loops back around on itself as tiles get shunted around in all four cardinal directions - a bit likeHow To Say Goodbye, but without the isometric viewpoint. And figuratively, well, that’s for us to find out by playing it, I guess.
As the name implies, this is apuzzle gamefirst and foremost, and we get to see a lot of neat puzzley touches in the trailer. At one point, Jemma walks a sword toward a gooey-looking monster, causing it to explode and disintegrate, creating a new path forward in the process. She can also shunt big stone feet around to activate pressure switches in a temple, defeat big boss monsters by manipulating their movement patterns, and even do a spot of fishing on the side.
Heck, at one point, she even goes fullPatrick’s Paraboxand loops round to an entirely locked off room by walking into the ‘wall’ on the opposite side of the room. It’s a great-looking concept and I want more of it immediately please.
Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure is coming toSteamand theEpic Games Storesometime this summer, and it will be available for both Windows and Mac, too.
