When players first boot up Quantum Conundrum, they will be met by a unique feeling environment and an crazy scientist's voice to match it, the mood in this downloadable puzzle game often reminded me of the movie 'A Series of Unfortunate Events'. Sure, it isn't quite as bleak as Lemony Snicket's tale, which is a good thing but it hit the same sort of odd but lovingly crafted tones.



Quantum Conundrum was developed by a team led by original Portal designer Kim Swift, and I certainly felt a lot of that in the way the mind boggling puzzles were put together. The game will have players take the role of a young boy who has to rescue his crazy but well voiced scientist uncle, who is stuck in another dimension.



Dimensions are the main meat of Quantum Conundrum. Players will eventually gain four different powers, which will enable the modification of the usual earth-like rules of physics. With the push of a button things in environments are made 10 times lighter than they truly are or reverse the effect, making something light, super heavy. The other two dimensions the player gets to utilize throughout the game via using the Interdimensional Shift Device are reverse gravity and slow motion.

You can see where I am going with this.

While at first the puzzles start fairly simple to ease players into the mechanics, the later challenges will require the combination of the dimension powers to a much greater degree, in order to solve some very complex situations. There were several times when I was somewhat stumped and but always managed to solve the puzzle with some 'out of the box thinking'.



The environments and audio design in Quantum Conundrum are some of the best we have seen in the downloadable space and are top notch throughout the experience. The journey through the mansion always felt well crafted and had me enjoying every puzzle as well as the bits in between. The actual story around the uncle stuck in the Netherworld was also very entertaining and I was never really bored by his witty narration and the hints providing some good help throughout. However, I wish that there was a bit more attention paid to the end of the tale as it doesn't quite hold up to the rest of Quantum Conundrums awesome

Score: 9 / 10

Quantum Conundrum was developed by Airtight Games and published by Square Enix for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC on July 11th (PC on June 21st). A copy of the Xbox 360 version was provided to us by Square Enix for reviewing purposes.