Arranger & Insurmountable

~What I've Been Playing (Blog)~

I've just finished Arranger, the debut from Furniture and Mattress LLC. It's rare that I'll sweep through something from start to finish in a short time (my playtime was 7 hours over about a week), which is testament not only to how much I enjoyed this but also to Arranger's brisk pace, it's sensible scope and it's dedication to one simple idea.

Arranger is self-styled as a 'Role-Puzzling Adventure', a pretty accurate description of the vibe here. The game is presented as a 2D, top-down RPG (most easily compared to 2D Zelda) but here, everything revolves around a single puzzle mechanic. It's kind of like a complete-the-picture slide puzzle, except when you slide off the left side of the map, you wrap-around and appear on the right side. Every tile on the row or column of your movement shifts with you. If you can't imagine what I'm describing, take a quick look at a video and it'll make sense straightaway.

The magic of Arranger is that everything is extrapolated from this movement mechanic. It starts by introducing the push and pull of items - combat in Arranger is pushing a sword into an enemy - and then 'Static' objects which cannot be moved. By the end of the game, you are pushing Static fields onto enemies to fix them in place, so that swords can be shuffled into them. It's logical, escalating complexity with added twists, but there is no 'new power unlocked' at any time.

The story is also drawn out of the same mechanic. Protagonist Jemma is an outsider in her village, especially because she has a habit of causing chaos wherever she goes. This is made evident as soon as you assume control - as Jemma moves about the town, the conveyor-belt of tiles causes a ladder to topple and a paint can to fall over. Our hero's very essence is chaos, but also movement and change. Her apotheosis is Static - things that do not move, and the power of the status quo to fix things in place - which becomes the game's antagonist as more is revealed about the world.

Building everything out of one mechanic is certainly limiting. To convey a little more depth in the world, cartoon panels appear either on the edges of the playing space to illustrate the environment, or overlaid on the screen to communicate certain action sequences. On the one hand these fill out the simplistic world but they also clash with it - I found my opinion of them very changeable; sometimes they were charming, sometimes they were alienating. Similarly, although the story tackles interesting themes, it can feel a little contrived. This isn't particularly helped by the silly, winking tone. Much of the dialogue is funny, and entertaining, but it can feel a bit one-note and make the whole narrative seem a little crass or throwaway.

However, that mechanic as a mechanic is a true accomplishment. An excellent, intuitive idea, iterated on in imaginative ways - each new form never outstaying it's welcome. It's not an especially challenging game, but the mind-bending visual nature of the sliding block puzzle means it's highly likely that everyone will find themselves stumped here and there. By the same token, it's a puzzle format that lends itself to short breaks and reconsideration. This isn't Animal Well, which features a number of different kinds of logic in its puzzles. This is a single puzzle logic (with the occasional outside-the-box solution) which, when viewed a second or third time, often unlocks itself.

As an experiment in game design, it's frankly incredible how well Furniture and Mattress LLC have followed through a single design principle. It may seem slight or crude compared to its 2D RPG inspirations but ultimately, it's doing something very specific.

I also played a little more of Insurmountable this week. This is a mountain-climber in the form of a boardgame with light TTRPG elements. The mountain is arranged in tiles, with different gradients between. You must maintain your energy, temperature, sanity and oxygen levels, all of which are affected by the elements in different ways. Event markers on certain tiles will initiate story moments, within which you can make risk/reward choices. Similar choices will also crop up randomly when passing over dangerous tile types - the ice gives way to a narrow bridge, do you attempt to cross it or search for another way around?

There's a mystery here about a time loop (when you finish a mission, you teleport back to base camp) and there are some repeated events on the mountain which add to the ominous sense of the supernatural. In the short time I've had with the game, the narrative threads on the mountain aren't particularly well established and the wider mystery is a little naff. The main draw is the gameplay, which at its heart is quite a complex management exercise. The only problem is that this management is often tedious and difficult. The stress of meters running low is compelling. But often, my overriding reaction was disappointment, unsure how to navigate limited options or cresting a ridge only to realise that there is no viable path and I must trek all the way back around to reach my goal.

When I eventually finish a mission, it's relatively satisfying to have endured. And endurance is true to the experience of climbing a mountain. It's just not always particularly fun. It's not always gruelling either, and the gradual process can be somewhat soothing. But with limited variety in the events I encountered, and with a near-constant need to wrestle with and curse at the camera, I'm not sure if I'll return to Insurmountable.