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Let your preconceptions float away like a balloon filled with bad metaphors. There is
no room for logic, perception, or time and space as you know them. A new universe rests
inside Antichamber and you must adhere and adapt to that universe.
Antichamber is an exercise of cognitive abilities – the attention, memory, learning, and decision
making parts of the brain – not just because it’s about problem and puzzle solving, but
because Antichamber takes what you think you know about interacting with reality and turns
it on its side. One of the biggest ways we, as humans, interact with the phenomenon referred
to as reality is through visual and auditory stimuli. And Antichamber uses that to its
advantage; at first to ease you into its strange properties, but later to challenge your mind
even further through sounds and optical concepts. Visually, Antichamber is minimalistic, clean
and precise; exact. I felt as though I walked into a Mondrian painting; white planes, intensely
colored squares and black lines construct the design. And the balanced composition of
architecture speaks volumes about the manipulation of sight.
The sounds compliment the visuals; there are no orchestral overtures or imploding singularity
sound effects; only simple harmonics and the occasional brush of nature in a place that
is far from natural. The maze of Antichamber contains no sensory
overload of sights and sounds; it’s simplistic. The unobtrusive nature encourages an approach
of assess and assimilate, but, in contrast to the minimalistic aesthetics, Antichamber’s
puzzles are not so simple. Antichamber shows exactly what it wants to
show, when it wants to show it, and, in doing so, creates somewhat of a problem. When a
game defies logic in place of creating its own; I couldn’t help but occasionally find
myself stranded for lengthy periods without progressing forward. There are hints placed
throughout the corridors to aid with the trickier obstacles, but even after finishing a route
or puzzle I couldn’t help but question whether or not I had actually made progress. But,
that’s not what Antichamber is about. Sure, there is a start and a finish and a traditional
sense of progression is made by uncovering new routes and discovering additional ways
to manipulate the surroundings with the different tools that are found, but Antichamber isn’t
about the traditional sense of stage progression; it’s about being a conduit to thought brought
to life by mystery and abstract reasoning. That’s what matters most in Antichamber:
the unparalleled manner in which it embodies abstract concepts through both aesthetic stimuli
and cognitive problem solving, the likes of which have never really been seen before.
How can you think outside of the box or have new experiences if you keep visiting the same
places? Antichamber takes us somewhere unique that allows and encourages the mind to think
differently; and in the process, Antichamber becomes something special.