Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure by developer Furniture & Mattress is the kind of delightful, genre-blending game that words can feel inadequate to describe when it’s much more easily understood in motion. Yes, telling you that it’s an adventure game which you navigate via a grid that moves the environment with you is technically accurate, but that doesn’t encapsulate how or why this effortless, intuitive way of moving through its world and embracing its inherent restrictions scratches an itch in my brain.
There were times when I was playing through Arranger where it didn’t feel hyperbolic to call it a “perfect” video game because Furniture & Mattress so concisely delivers upon an idea without letting it overstay its welcome, repeat itself, or ever approach tedium. The team blends its clever puzzle design into the game’s themes, as well as having some genuinely charming writing along the way. At the center of all of it is the heartfelt story of Jemma, a small-town outcast who was born with the unwanted ability to shift the environment around her as she walks through it. If she moves to the left, the entire x-axis across from her moves with her. That means any person or thing that happens to be on that line will be dragged along with her steps, looping between the edges until she steps off that line and into another to start the process again.
Jemma, feeling like she doesn’t quite fit in in this little town, decides to leave, and uncovers hidden truths about this world and her powers that her lifelong neighbors could never fathom. Arranger delivers all of this with writing just as clever as its puzzle design, but even as I was invested in Jemma’s self-discovery and desire to leave the claustrophobic confines of her small town, navigating Arranger’s puzzle-driven world was enough hook me on its own.
Arranger’s core conceit of Jemma moving parts of the world as she walks through it is introduced as the silliest of inconveniences. She walks through the town square and knocks down a ladder on the other side of the walkway because she can’t control her abilities. But it also proves to be her greatest asset as she navigates new, unknown places and you master her abilities. Arranger has combat, but it’s done by manipulating the environment to push swords into foes. Often, however, they’ll be positioned just awkwardly enough that you can’t just drive a blade through a beastie’s heart. That’s where the puzzle part of Arranger comes in. Pushing entire pathways along with your movement while only being able to move on the x and y axes is the perfect, instinctual limitation that Arranger is constantly building on.
Each new area Jemma arrives in has a distinct mechanic added on top of the core loop. Some are as simple as avoiding laser beams that trigger barriers in her path, while others are as complex as controlling two characters at once that aren’t on parallel paths. Arranger never tutorializes any of these new ideas, instead making you figure it out on your own as each new obstacle appears in your way. Still, the game is so concise in its visual communication that figuring these new obstacles out out feels almost innate, like something built into your muscle memory. And while there are ways in which you’re restricted by the game’s movement, there are ways in which you’re liberated by it, too. Figuring out I could quickly get through long pathways by looping from one side to the other was an incredibly satisfying moment in which I realized I was navigating Arranger’s world with the same kind of in-the-zone precision and awareness I associate with games like Tetris, and there are moments like that up to the very end.
Arranger is a brisk adventure, but it’s filled with so many clever, perfectly executed ideas that by the time it was over, I was just left wanting more. Jemma’s story might be over by the end, but I’d love to see Furniture & Mattress add new puzzles in future updates because the team has such an immaculate, clever eye for what makes puzzle games so satisfying. Now I’m just waiting for my memory of the game to fade so I can go back and try to solve those puzzles with fresh eyes once more.
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