Sliding block puzzles have always been a mystery to me. Why do some people find them interesting and entertaining? To me they’ve always been somewhat of a novelty. Even as a child I couldn’t fathom why someone would find them worthwhile, unless they were a particularly sheltered Victorian child. However, what if the entire world were to become like one huge sliding block puzzle? That’s a question Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure from Furniture & Mattress (who certainly get points for an interesting studio name) aims to answer.
Arranger is the story of Jemma, a special young woman who has the ability to slide across and around the world, leaving chaos in her wake. We follow Jemma as she decides to leave her home town and venture out into the world in search of adventure. She’s always felt out of place given she is the only person who has the ability to slide, often getting in trouble for wrecking the town, plus she was found abandoned at the local flophouse when she was a baby. Unfortunately, the forces of “Static” have begun to infect the world, causing items and even people to lock in place, dooming them to immobility.
The story is unveiled in the manner of the 2D original Legend of Zelda games, via small text boxes. Indeed, visually and thematically this game is very much a love letter to Zelda and adventure games like it, both the dungeon-delving and the general exploration. The writing can be a bit chatty and overly casual, but it suits the vibe the game is going for. The game doesn’t ever set out its lore in a clear fashion leaving you to fill in some of the gaps yourself, which I actually rather enjoyed for keeping the background a bit mysterious.
Arranger’s key feature is its sliding block concept. Essentially, the entire world is one vast sliding block puzzle; Jemma slides left, right, up or down, and the entire row or column slides with her, including all the objects on the neighbouring blocks. Any objects that would slide off the edge instead wrap around to the other end of the row, except for certain immovable items infected with Static, which are highlighted with a magical shimmer. This idea forms the centre of almost every puzzle, having to slide Jemma around the environment to move both her but objects and characters to reach objectives.
For example, many of the monsters in the game you don’t kill in the traditional sense. Instead, you need to align Jemma against a sword, and then push the sword into the monster. Sometimes a magically immovable wall may block your path, meaning you need to slide Jemma over to the opposite wall in order to wrap around and emerge on the other side of the barrier. It takes a little while to get a hang of both navigating the world and understanding its own rules, but once you do the puzzles feel both intuitive and nicely satisfying.
You’re never left feeling like you don’t have enough tools to complete your task, because ultimately these are varieties of logical sliding block puzzles, the kind that has been played since at least the Victorian era, and for video games have existed since at least the 1980s. The puzzles do get more complicated and introduce a variety of new elements over time such as water, lasers and other traps. Thankfully each puzzle feels nicely bite-sized and it’s rare for there to be a head scratcher which will utterly bamboozle you. Instead, this is an adventure to be enjoyed and admired, not a challenge to be conquered.
It has to be said that Arranger is downright gorgeous, perhaps not surprising as lead artist David Hellman also worked on beautiful games like Braid. Around the playable area are regularly some wonderful bits of atmospheric art, visually representing the current location, or Jemma’s adventure. The cute but also inventive art style draws you into its world, which considering everywhere is aligned to a grid is a real achievement. The variety of locations you visit is also impressive, which helps as the puzzle complexity gradually increases.
Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure is a charming and easy-going yarn, happy to gently crack jokes and allow you to sit back and revel in its beautiful environments. The puzzles are consistently the right balance between interesting but not insurmountable, while the story bumbles along like a nicely meandering river. Aside from its core block-sliding concept it doesn’t do anything particularly unique, but it didn’t need to. Arranger is a palate-cleansing puzzle game which hits all its notes with fine precision.
