Antichamber (PC) (2013)

Overview: The player is in a place that both contains puzzles and at times becomes a part of the puzzle.

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20140327: 12:30AM to 1:45AM ET:
Today I played Antichamber for the first time. Unfortunately, likely due to having too much caffeine, I started getting quite a headache. Fortunately, reducing the resolution and playing in Windowed mode instead of Fullscreen mode seemed to help.

Overall, the game is a unique experience. At the same time, it can also feel unnecessarily frustrating. To elaborate, the game is nonlinear with little to no indication of where the player needs to go or what the player needs to do next. In contrast, a game like Super Meat Boy (2010) is frustrating purely due to its difficulty.

Antichamber - Part 1 (1:14:01)

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20140327: 3:15PM to 5:11PM ET:
Without any coffee in my system, I played more Antichamber this afternoon free of any headaches. In fact, I played for a full two hours before taking a break.

Antichamber - Part 2 (1:56:25)

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20140327: 11:52PM to 20140328 12:58AM ET:
At the very beginning of this run I learned that hovering over the arrows on the map will show the room to where the arrow leads!

While this was very enlightening, the game soon became frustrating as I walked around and repeatedly tried the same puzzles over and over.

Antichamber - Part 3 (1:06:02)

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20140328: 7:59PM to 9:05PM ET:
After playing some Antichamber this morning, I returned in the evening to play some more. However, after an hour of making absolutely no progress, I decided to set the game aside and have fun elsewhere.

Antichamber - Part 4 (1:05:48)

Actually, I spent about half an hour on one puzzle and during that time I determined the player character is three blocks wide and seven blocks tall.

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20211226 Snapshot:
Steam Game Time: 5.4 hours (last played 20140328)

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20220703 & 20220704 AM hours: Gameplay Log:
Start game over from the beginning... figured it would be easier.
Colored Rooms (Absorb your surrondings): passing through red, don't go forward toward blue, go right to green, then make another right into more green, then go left.
Butterfly effect room. Move the purple box. Then go to the room with all the displays. Move the purple box
Stuck I jumped to the 30 minute mark of my first recording. At the 36 minute mark, my map in the recording has some rooms uncovered not in my current play and vice versa.
Went back into game, see the gun but can't get to it. Go back to the recording. Skip to the 42 minute mark. At the 42:35 mark I ran into the gateway...
So I started skipping through parts of my second recording, and something I did after the 1 hour 12 minute mark blew my mind. See also "A".
Watching back at the first part of the second recording, I didn't watch myself solve "Jumping Through Hoops" but I realized how I should do it. Also I didn't record it, but I also completed "Not Enough Pieces". With that, from the map, it seems as if I cover everything up to the second recording at the 30 minute mark except for a ltitle passage way.
"A": It turns out the cool thing I mentioend at the 1 hour 12 minute mark was something I figured it out at around the 1 hour 3 minute mark.
At 1 hour 38 minute mark of the second video is "Cry Me A River". So I did that
Oh woops. I was bored so I went to watch a speedrun and spoiled one of the solutions (green and blue pieces, right door requires many pieces)... As such I stopped watching the run. [See "B"]
Tip/Possible Spoiler: Reading an article, I learned that big squares on the map mean a room is incompleted!
"B": I come across a teacher puzzle / sign that gives this lesson. It says that you can make resources given enough resources.
So as I experiment with making more (seems to be as simple as making an enclosure), I try to figure out what makes them disappear, it seems when removal results in a line segment...
In the room with a porthole, red, and blue, I mapped out the optical illusion and deduced to go backwards.
Oh, I didn't understand what I meant in an old comment about arrows. On the map, hovering over the arrows will show the destination.
Going through pink atmosphere will destroy what's in the gun and in the air, but yellow can be shot through to the other side... Yellow survives in yellow atmosphere, but cannot be removed into the gun.

Steam Game Time: 12.1 hours (cumulative game time) / 6.7 hours (session game time)

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20220704:
Gameplay Log:
Been making significant progress (knock on wood) based on focusing and cycling around to map targets with big squares. On the topic of maps, I realized that not just hovering over maps will show the destination, but the icon for the destination will zoom from the location on hover of the arrow, and zoom back to the location when removing the hover.
Had trouble figuring out how to block the door switches to "Over the Edge."
I was able to correctly understand expansion of red blocks on the floor or wall, but I'm less understanding of how to expand them when they're behind a switch. [This Stack Exchange thread reaffirmed what I understand about floor vs wall, but not about switches]
I soon realized that I misunderstood the puzzle being posed. It wasn't that I was supposed to be blocking the lasers, but actually not blocking them. And thus, the idea wasn't to spread the red, but to cut the segments up by making parts disappear and moving what remains.
I end today with all squares being small except for one, which is a corridor with seemingly no blocks...

Steam Game Time: 17.2 hours (cumulative game time) / 5.1 hours (session game time)

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20231223:
After finishing Divide by Sheep, I decided to return to Antichamber. Unfortunately the game was having trouble launching. I tried to verify the integrity of the files and that almost seemed to work, but it didn't. I tried again and updated my drivers. After restarting my computer, the game was able to launch.

Gameplay Log:
Today I managed to figure out what I was missing last time I played: there's a spring in the floor
Not a spoiler here at this stage in the game, but a remark slash reminder. I was doing puzzles the hard way by manipulating red blocks to propagate, but the red gun actually allows for infinite block creation which would have made many of the final puzzles way easier than how I did them. To use the red block expansion, hold down the middle mouse button and left click. Then an ability that I had eventually figured out but could have also used a reminder was the ability to move blocks: hold down the middle mouse button while hovering on a block and then drag to choose its new destination

Steam Game Time: 19.0 hours (cumulative game time) / 1.8 hours (session game time)

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Thoughts:
Pros:
+ Fun puzzles
+ Opens the player's minds when it comes to perception and expectation

Neutral:
~ When I play this game I sometimes get dizzy
~ Certain resolutions must be done manually.

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Antichamber (2013)

Relevant Links:
Antichamber Website
Antichamber (Wikipedia.org)
Antichamber (PC) (Metacritic.com)
Antichamber (PC) (IGN.com)