Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure is the debut game from former Braid, Carto and Ethereal devs
A gorgeous sliding tile puzzler with a hint of Patrick's Parabox
This week's Nintendo Direct was stuffed full of games that 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-announced Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure. It's the debut game from a team of indie devs that include Braid artist David Hellman, Carto writer Nick Suttner and Ethereal designer Nicolás Recabarren, and they've also partnered with composer Tomás Batista, who did the music for both Ethereal and Martian colony builder Per 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 like How 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 a puzzle game first 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 full Patrick's Parabox and 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.
“We started talking about this project on March 10th, 2020, so obviously a lot has changed in the world since then,” Suttner said in a statement. "But we’ve done the best we can to stay positive in a challenging environment in which to make games, and to create something beautiful, breezy, and memorable that stays true to each of our sensibilities. While we’ve all been in games for a while, this was a milestone project for all of us - my first time working on a game from start to finish, Nico’s first time shipping a full-scope game across multiple platforms, and David’s first full game project since Braid. Thanks to anyone who gives it a shot, it means a lot to us!"
Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure is coming to Steam and the Epic Games Store sometime this summer, and it will be available for both Windows and Mac, too.