Quantum Conundrum is the sort of game that immediately draws comparisons to Portal. While the abilities available to you are different, they’re similar in that you use special science/physics related powers to reach the end of several levels played from a first person perspective. Taking the role of a child visiting a seemingly ’mad scientist’ relative, you gain access to a gradually increasing set of ’powers’ to modify the world around you. Since your character is otherwise very mundane, most puzzles rely on you figuring out which combination of physics tweaks to use to finish the stage.

The first person controls are pretty simple, consisting of the usual moving, turning, strafing, and jumping. They’re expanded over time by a special glove that taps into alternate dimensions, ones that cause the entire area around you to have new attributes. The earliest examples consist of simply making objects lighter or heavier, but you gain more nuanced ones later on. The developers did a good job pacing the puzzles, as the ones immediately after you gain a new ability are built to show you how to use it on its own, followed by combinations, then expecting you to figure out the remaining challenges in an area mostly on your own (some hints are given for particularly ambitious puzzles, though).

While your physics powers are the focus of most challenges, they won’t be enough on their own. In a seemingly odd move for this kind of game, Quantum Conundrum does ask for good timing and reflexes on a fairly regular basis. You might be asked to make everything in the area very light in order to pick them up and throw them, then make them heavy in mid-air so they can crash through a window that was previously barring your way. Some platforming will come up too, though most of these segments are not particularly hard once you have a feel for how your character moves.

Don’t let that scare you off, as mistakes aren’t much of a problem. It’s usually fine if you time something incorrectly or end up throwing an important item into a bottomless pit, since there is almost always a switch nearby. Pressing it causes lost equipment to return, and even death isn’t a particularly bad thing; you often restart pretty close to where it happened so you can try again. Quantum Conundrum generally wants you to win; it won’t just hand you an easy victory, but it’s not cruel.