Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure

In a single word: disappointing. The puzzles are simply too easy, and the difficulty curve is almost nonexistent. The game introduces its core mechanic, but rarely pushes it far enough to make solving anything feel particularly satisfying. Most of the time, the answer is obvious long before the puzzle has had a chance to become interesting. Movement doesn't help either. What initially feels like a clever and unusual mechanic quickly becomes repetitive, especially when you need to cover longer distances. I constantly found myself looking for shortcuts simply to avoid having to go through the motions of moving Jemma across yet another large stretch of the map. At that point, traversal stops feeling like part of the adventure and starts feeling like a chore. Instead of enjoying the journey, you're looking for ways to skip as much of it as possible. The biggest problem, however, is that the game falls headfirst into the same trap as so much of modern indies: it desperately wants you to know that it [i]Has Something To Say[/i]™. There's nothing wrong with a game having a message. Some of the best games ever made do. The problem is when the message stops being part of the story and s…

Great art, but the puzzles were basic and unfun, and the story feels like a children's game. The trailers give a false impression that it is loaded with puzzles, but the first hour was mostly traversing empty paths with music that put me to sleep

You can really sense that there is some experience behind this game more than many other indie titles, the people behind it might not be veterans but they definitely worked on other games before. It's an okay title, some jankyness about some of the mechanics and puzzles and more importantly about secrets it's present, and might make the player feel a bit frustrated. Audio department not great imho, I had to shut off the audio both sounds (unbearable when you have to mash through dozens and dozens of dialogues), and the music, which sometimes felt generic. I would recommend this mostly to puzzle lovers who want a less challenging experience, I would not define it "relaxing", but I would not consider it hard either. The story is engaging enough, and the themes are mostly well explored, I feel no complaints in that area, maybe a little bit about the pacing which is very inconsistent to make space for puzzles, while the narrative is mostly delivered through a barrage of dialogues that you COULD skip, but why would you, that's an important part of the game, I don't think you would skip those if you're interested in this type of game in the first place.

Fun little puzzle adventure game, though your thumb/finger might get tired of tapping out of habit, even though you can hold the buttons down to move lol. Quite short to beat and I only missed out on a handful of achivement puzzles that i didn't care to read ahead on the account of potential spoilers in most games. Gameplay-wise your character slides the floor in the direction you move so the tile you are standing on is the one you drag with you through most of the area. Slidding into an empty space will wrap you to the other side, which is also your version of fast travelling once you get used to it. movable objects also wrap, which becomes key to some puzzles. Story-wise, its decent. Just a want of belonging, and is travelling around to find it. Not going to spoil anything so just have a go if you want to see it. Puzzles are decent with a lot of maneuvering to progress in areas, several optional ones (the eye gates), and achivement puzzles that has you doing specific things in each area (some are more obvious then others without reading ahead). Puzzles also extend into boss fights at the end of each area and are kind of neat. All in all wasnt bored, though unsure if …

overall a pretty good game, cute/wholesome story. puzzles were never overly complex (though i only did 1 of the bonus areas i think). a very interseting mechanic and each new area did have a new mechanic which kept things interesting. the only gripe (minor) was it seemed to be a weirdly heavy game in terms of resources? i think on my steam deck it seemed to be struggling to load a few times, but that may have been a bug. ran fine on my 7900xtx (far overkill). but yeah overall for 8-9 hours, very enjoyable game, would recommend.

A game I acquired as part of a large bundle of similar titles, Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure stood out from the crowd thanks to its well-implemented core mechanic and surprisingly good writing. Like all the best puzzlers, Arranger is centered around a simple, flexible core mechanic. When you move, every tile in the continuous row or column you’re standing in moves with you. When you reach the end of that row or column, you warp to the other end. From this basic ruleset an astonishingly wide variety of puzzles are born. Each area you explore adds a new gimmick, which is discarded as soon as you finish the associated levels. This includes, disappointingly, the finale and final boss. No sweeping final exam testing all the skills you’ve accrued up to the point, just another single-use gimmick. Still, this ensures no mechanic overstays its welcome, something that could be quite troublesome for a game like this. Likewise the difficulty ceiling isn’t particularly high, but there’s still plenty enough that requires a good think and some out of the box logic. A buffet of well designed puzzles I expected from a puzzle game. What I wasn’t expecting was the surprisingly quality…