Picking Up Steam: Quantum Conundrum (PC)

Quantum Conundrum’s dimension swapping puzzle platforming sounds like something with enough broad potential to define a game experience, but the real star of this video game is John de Lancie. Known for his performances as Q in Star Trek: The Next Generation and as Discord in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, here he plays the only slightly mad scientist Professor Fitz Quadwrangle whose voice will accompany you during your puzzle solving adventure. Eccentric and perhaps too devoted to satisfying his own curiosity, Quadwrangle’s commentary makes consistent attempts at humor that, while not always that funny, do build him up into an interesting personality where your reward for forward progress is hearing a bit more of his dialogue. While the writing isn’t always the most imaginative for him, his strange family history and small degree of self-awareness give him a fair bit to talk about between his efforts to actually help you.

Quantum Conundrum sees you playing as Professor Quadwrangle’s young nephew arriving right as one of the professor’s experiments go awry. The Quadwrangle estate is rapidly shifting between dimensions that change some fundamental rules of how the universe functions, the player only immune thanks to quickly grabbing the Inter-Dimensional Shift Device, a glove that will allow them to manually shift the dimensions. However, specific regions of the mansion will still shift automatically or you may need to first set up the device to properly tap into the alternate dimensions. To set things right you’ll need to reboot Quadwrangle Manor’s generators to enable a large IDS device to help stabilize the dimensions, your uncle currently trapped in an amusing literal pocket dimension and only able to help by watching your actions and giving advice. His lightly entertaining interactions are a fun piece of this first-person puzzler’s DNA as is some of the ways the world reacts to your glove, because while the mansion itself has a fairly repetitive design in terms of furniture, the portraits of the Quadwrangle family on the wall all also shift to match the strange effects of the four dimensions you’ll be swapping between.

To make your way through Quadwrangle Manor, you’ll need to overcome the fact the professor has turned most every room into some sort of testing chamber. Various pieces of equipment are still running autonomously, meaning you’ll need to either avoid or exploit machinery like patrolling robots, laser grids, or the DOLLI robotic faces that regurgitate useful objects. The first two dimensions you’ll be using to your advantage to alter the world are introduced in tandem, Fluffy dimension turning everything around you soft and light while the Heavy dimension turns everything into weighty metal. Rather quickly though you’ll notice the main problem solving function of swapping between these dimensions is to make something like a safe light enough to carry and then heavy again when you want it to press down on a switch or shatter some glass after you throw it. Safes, as well as cardboard boxes that instead start light and need to be made heavy, are such common problem solving tools during the adventure that it does feel like the puzzle designs were limited a bit by their frequent reliance on them, but the later two dimensions can introduce some more advanced ways to utilizing them. In the Slow Motion dimension you can toss a safe and then ride it forward for example, while in the Reverse Gravity Dimension you can ride one up or even pull off a nifty trick where you make it rise and fall repeatedly to navigate your way through dangerous areas.

Quantum Conundrum does have some puzzle flexibility, often because decorative elements like furniture can also be used to finagle your own solution with some dimensional trickery, but mostly there are clear intended solutions and a good deal of them are interesting enough to figure out despite relying on carrying safes to pressure pads. Part of this comes from the fact that execution is often a fairly important piece of puzzle solving, it not just a matter of realizing what is being asked of you. Timing of your actions is crucial at many points, especially when Slow Motion is involved since it can allow you to hop across objects in midair or reposition things that otherwise may be moving too swiftly. You can only have one dimension active at a time though which does sometimes make setting up slow motion rides or time sensitive actions a bit testy, the DOLLI generators there to provide replacement objects if needed but it can also lead to a fair few puzzles where you are trying the same solution again and again until you have the timing tight enough to actually move on to something new. Failure by way of death is possible in some rooms but it barely sets you back, and when you can execute a time sensitive solution with expert smoothness there is a satisfying sense of everything clicking together properly. The rooms that mix the dimensions together well end up some of the game’s best, having to consider the various ways objects can be altered to clear a series of actions a bit more involved and engaging than the frequent weight shenanigans. While some rooms are purely jumping puzzles, there will still also be enough areas with some more interesting interaction to figure out to ensure this isn’t just a platformer with puzzles but truly a puzzle-platformer.

Quantum Conundrum does contain some extras to pursue that also open up some problem solving avenues, certain areas having hidden collectibles such as blueprints or, strangely, little robots that make annoying noises. The noises do serve a purpose at least, hearing them alerts you that one is nearby and gives you reason to look about to try and find where they’re hidden, a bit of ingenuity often required to reach them. However, the game’s soundtrack, strangely enough, has a good degree of ambient sound effects, some of which can be annoying enough to make you think there’s a little noise robot nearby when it’s just a strange music choice. Also somewhat strangely, the game’s ending feels like it deliberately avoids wrapping things up only for the two DLC level packs to completely avoid any story-telling elements meaning the simple story of saving Professor Quadwrangle ends on an odd unsatisfying note. There is a lot of deliberate strangeness in Quantum Conundrum though such as Ike, a cat-like creature who can teleport between dimensions and will help you out sometimes by drawing your attention to an area or even providing the necessary equipment for adding a dimension to an area’s options. He looks deliberately uncanny much like the exaggerated paintings of many of the members of the Quadwrangle family, Quantum Conundrum’s quirkiness often helping keep the game easy-going even when you might be going through a stretch of simple jumping tests that aren’t asking much out of you save potentially switching off and on a dimension that lightly helps with the hopping.

THE VERDICT: John de Lancie’s performance as the professor and the oddness of elements like Ike help Quantum Conundrum sustain the player’s interest through the periods of plain puzzle design and the occasional overemphasis of performance over problem solving. There are still enough interesting ways to manipulate the dimensions to provide nifty solutions in terms of what a puzzle demands or what you figured out on your own, but some dimensions like Fluffy and Heavy are used in the same manner so often it can get fairly repetitive. Quantum Conundrum’s extra collectibles and moments where you can use multiple dimensions still give it interesting interactions, but sometimes the puzzle designs feel unfortunately one-dimensional.

And so, I give Quantum Conundrum for PC…

An OKAY rating. The basics of Quantum Conundrum’s dimension swapping are explored well enough, but they don’t have quite the degree of depth needed to make this a particularly robust puzzle platformer. The starting dimensions for example, beyond just making things lighter and heavier, are only really pushed a bit further with Fluffy dimension objects being moved by wind and Heavy being resistant to lasers, and when you move to the later dimensions they become a bit too focused on movement to have deeper complexity. There are still rooms that piece together the various variables well, especially when you have multiple dimensions to toy with, and sometimes making your own solution or working out how to reach a collectible provide some of the moments with the most ingenuity behind them. Quantum Conundrum isn’t too long though so it at least doesn’t feel like its well of ideas runs dry necessarily, it just settles into some and relies on the same ones a bit often so that individual rooms start blurring together a bit. Most every dimension will have a few standout areas and ones where they gel well with a few of the other variables in play, but the scope of what interactions are available likely lead to the increased emphasis on movement as an element of problem solving over figuring out smart use of objects and the IDS Device.

Ike and Quadwrangle do help to give the game an appealing character that probably could have done with being even more pronounced and varied, but Quantum Conundrum is a bit like the professor itself. It’s toying with different concepts but hasn’t quite figured them out fully yet, and that mechanical shallowness is likely why I stopped playing the game so many years ago. Quantum Conundrum didn’t quite figure out how to make the most of its components, but they still have enough promise and potential to make the adventure interesting if not as engaging as it could have been.