(This review was originally written for Steam)

I had purchased this game years ago and tinkered around with it but never got around to completion; now, on the game's ten year anniversary I stumbled across it again (by sheer coincidence) and decided to play it. I'm quite obsessed with non-euclidean illusory game design, and the sections of the game that use that shine the best, but about a third of the way through you gain a 'matter gun' which becomes the focus of pretty much all the gameplay. The gun is extremely tedious to use and the puzzles that come with it are no better. Unfortunately this is the direction the game heavily leans toward at this point with little attention given to putting in some more impressive 'mind-bending' design. Also, although I like those mind-bending sections, it's clear that that style was incredibly underdeveloped a decade ago and most of the implementation loses the novelty it must have had back then. (Also also, a select few puzzles are just downright cruel in how little clue there is to how you solve them...)

I also hated how the game was both environmentally non-linear AND had no real direction. This leaves you wandering around the map for hours, in an environment which is very tiring to navigate, trying to find what you might be able to solve next, unsure if you just don't have the right gun yet, you aren't smart enough to solve the puzzle, or you literally just haven't touched a wall the right way. The plain visuals don't help make this exploration any less exhausting, nor do the quite underwhelming little morals/'hints'. I know there is an interactive wall map that supposedly shows you where you're missing spots, but it's so vaguely designed that it doesn't help at all. What is the difference between a rectangular hallway end, a circular hallway end, and an arrow? Which one of those should I be looking at? The game refuses to explain. There's also little arrows that appear on the walls and floor sometimes but as far as I can tell those are moreso hints for navigating certain 'mind-bending' architecture, not pointing out areas you haven't explored yet.

Antichamber has aged Very poorly and I wouldn't recommend playing it unless you ADORE the visual style and consider your patience with these puzzles to be limitless. Even so, I still feel this game is genuinely important to gaming history, and that is something to be proud of.