March’s latest Xbox360 Games With Gold title is Quantum Conundrum, a first person puzzle game where the player can manipulate weight, time and gravity by switching dimensions.

The reason for you doing the puzzles is explained as your uncle has transported himself to another dimension and you have to find your way around his puzzle filled house to activate machines to get him back.

The player character doesn’t say anything but the uncle proved to be quite likable, offering advice, telling you about the dimension he was in, telling you about his house and making jokes.

Controlling your character is simple with the movement controls being easy to guess and the dimension controls for weight, time, and gravity controls always being displayed on screen so you can remember how to play.

Having no guns or weapons in the game doesn’t mean there’s no death. There’re lasers and pools of science juice that can kill you. Dying isn’t a bad thing as there are messages that tell you what you’ll never do which can sometimes make you smile.

To help you solve the puzzles you are provided with bits of furniture, safes and cardboard boxes. Sometimes a little green creature called Ike hands you some of the things you need to complete the puzzles. The game also has plenty of books to find, each of them with a silly name that references something else such as “Jurassic Quark”  which adds an extra bit of silliness to the game for players to enjoy.

Issues that I had with the game were the occasional framerate drops, checkpoint saves not being actual saves and a crash at one point which could have been because of the game or it might have been my Xbox.

Overall I found the game to be one of the most enjoyable puzzle games I’ve played in a long while, the puzzles were done just right to a point where they were enough of a challenge to make you think but not enough to be annoying. I had to take time out twice because I was getting annoyed at myself for falling off of things but even then I was smiling because my trial and error approach was getting me through. The puzzles were well designed but the corridors of the house weren’t, often repeating exactly but the uncle made a joke about it which made the issue go away. It was a very enjoyable game to play and I highly recommend it to any puzzle game fans.

 

The art that I’m using as the featured image was found on the achievements section of the Xbox website. It shows the uncle using the glove that controls dimensions with the green gravity changing dimension active. A safe can be seen as well as a yellow pipe of science juice and the young main character who’s being lifted up, just like he’s swept away by the events in the game. A good piece of artwork in my opinion.