Professor Quadwrangle has quite the mansion. Active disintegrating lasers lying about the place like most people have drink coasters, it’s not an uncommon sight to watch a giant iron face affixed to the wall spit out a safe, a couch, a coffee table, or even an ottoman. He claims that all this is quite necessary for his lifelong pursuit of science, but during my stay at Quadwrangle mansion, I failed to notice a single bathroom, kitchen, or bedroom. Science may be well and good and all that, but what does he do when he needs to sleep? Is there a dimension for that?

What is a Quantum Conundrum? Is that a dilemma that exists in both a solved and unsolved state? Perhaps it’s a problem where the two (both bad) potential outcomes somehow manage to happen at the same time. Maybe it’s when somebody across the world wonders how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, and then I suddenly can’t stop thinking about the number three. Maybe a Quantum Conundrum is simply this: the problem of not knowing what a Quantum Conundrum is. If I knew, might it cease to be?

Quantum Conundrum (actually) is Kim Swift’s (project lead on Portal) first game for Airtight Games, development studio responsible for Dark Void. It follows a pretty similar pattern based in first person navigation puzzles that revolve around a science fiction gizmodangledoo (stop me if I’m getting too technical for you) called The Interdimensional Shift Device (ISD). Rather than creating portals this time round, the ISD allows players to manipulate physics by tapping into dimensions where things are lighter, heavier/denser, time moves slower, or gravity repels rather than attracts. These abilities unlock over the course of the game, gradually giving the player time to get accustomed to them. Well, for the most part that’s the case anyway.

You do not, sadly, get to unlock mustaches. More mustache unlocks!

The ISD never really opens up for the player. It seems because of its sheer power in reality manipulation, the only way the developers could adequately create puzzles around it was to keep its capabilities on a tight leash. As such, the ISD’s reality warping is powered by generators found around the mansion. That means that when you walk into a puzzle, oftentimes you’ll find only a couple of powers available to you. This might have been a necessary evil considering the design, but it does mean that it isn’t a wild and crazy total physics destroying playground; you’ll be breaking a few basic rules of the universe, but only ever on the game’s terms.

The player takes control of a young nephew to Professor Quadwrangle, dropped off to visit by his mother, who is of the opinion that her science obsessed brother is “lonely” and could use the company. Unfortunately, almost immediately after arriving, science is as science does in fiction and something goes horribly wrong. The power to the mansion suddenly cuts, the professor finds himself somewhere strange and indiscernible, and your luggage vaporizes before your very eyes. Only one thing to do: science the shit out of the place, get the mansion out of lock down, and figure out where the hell your uncle has got to, and why there are so many cellular phones and key rings there.