Fashion
Solving Wanderlust With the Puzzles Beneath Your Feet
Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure is full of solutions that slide and stump. Play follow the leader in Flock, and take on bulbous hordes in Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess.
The typically slow summer release schedule for video games has been enlivened by Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure, Flock and Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, which offer intriguing mechanics while showcasing the need for a healthy community.
Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure
Arranger is helmed by a veteran team, including the artist David Hellman, who worked on the important time-manipulation offering Braid. They’ve formed the studio Furniture & Mattress, seemingly to fricassee the brain.
With smatterings of humor, the writer Nick Suttner has created a powerful narrative around young Jemma, a brown-haired protagonist with an oversize green coat that covers her hands. She feels like an outcast in her hometown and wants to move beyond its imposing gates.
Each level is represented by a grid, and setting Jemma on her adventurous path requires sliding panels in every direction — left, right, up, down and around. Dealing with the puzzles alone would confound players, so the strong writing provides needed rest from the difficult solutions.
The dialogue is tight and even the insults are clean. One character’s way of using foul language is to call Jemma “a rotten turnip.” There’s a tendency to use groan-worthy puns, but the characters she meets range from the playful to the acerbic. Similar to the recent Hauntii, nearly all of them tell Jemma not to leave, because they feel safe exactly where they are — but she’s born to run. Is simply feeling safe really living?
