Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure Steam Charts & Stats

it's good

Enjoyable little puzzle game.

I do wish I had the option to put in a more neutral option than the binary yes/no recommendation, because I do think this game has an audience of people who will love it. That said, I'm going to go with a Not Recommended here because, as a lover of all things grid-based-puzzle, I ultimately left feeling pretty disappointed. Let's start with the positives. I love the art-style and the character design, and the general core game concept is rock solid. The movement style is pretty unique and was fun to figure out. While I see some of the other negative reviews criticized the big empty intermission segments, I actually liked these quite a bit. This is the general speedrunner in me talking, but they gave me a chance to get a handle of the game's movement and figure out how to fully utilize the wrapping mechanic to cut down on travel time. Zipping down long corridors, turning lengthy several-hundred-tile-long segments into a series of quick warps that clear the room in a matter of seconds was pretty satisfying. However, at the end of the day, this is a puzzle game - Arranger needs to be able to stand on the strength of its puzzle design. Credit where it's due: as far as the design concept goes, Arranger has a lot of clever ideas! Every new area introduces something new, like rafts you have to maneuver to favorable positions, mine carts that are bound to tracks; the list goes on. The problem is that nearly every time you get shown how to play with a new toy, it immediately gets thrown into the trash. All you get is a series of very short puzzles that almost feel tailor-made to railroad you into the correct answer to help you discover all of its mechanical nuances one-at-a-time, only for the expected payoff of a puzzle that layers these nuances to never manifest most of the time. And if you're expecting puzzles that put several of these items and mechanics together at once? Forget about it, it's never happening. The best you get is a dream sequence at the very end that briefly puts several of them in succession, taking great care to make sure they never overlap with each other. At some point, I realized there were optional puzzles leading to temples for bonus story content. I got excited, thinking that *this* was where the more complex, layered puzzles were. I enter the temple and find that the sole puzzle in these temples is [spoiler]a basic 3x3 sliding picture puzzle, the likes of which you've probably seen in dozens of non-puzzle games[/spoiler]. When it was all said and done, I could count the number of puzzles I had to stop and think about for a moment on one hand. Story beats and dialogue can make for a great respite from tough puzzle solving, but with every puzzle segment ending just when it feels like it's getting started, I instead found myself increasingly irritated with the frequent story breaks after every brief puzzle segment, realizing that I was spending just as much if not more time reading text as I was solving puzzles. I started off fairly engaged with the story, but found myself mashing through and skimming the rest of the game's text after about a third of the way through it. I don't dislike the idea of the game's story and what it's trying to tell, but especially with the game's charming art style, I think a lot of it could have been conveyed better with sparser dialogue through a more show-don't-tell approach. The final area's writing in particular was rather blunt and on-the-nose, and I can't help but wonder if there might have been a better approach. There are also a few minor gripes on quality-of-life features. The lack of an undo button is pretty glaring for a game of this style for one. The game is filled with little easter eggs and minor side-puzzles that grant hidden achievements, but a ton of them are very easy to permanently miss. Once you beat the game, that save file is permanently locked into the game's final puzzle, giving you access to absolutely nothing else. If you want to get some of the secrets you missed, the only option is to restart the game all the way from the start. Arranger really could have used a chapter-select or the option to freely roam a fully-restored and unlocked world after clearing it. I'm not sure why the game [i]needed[/i] to have a point-of-no-return. Anyway, while I ultimately am giving the game the dreaded Not Recommended thumbs down, as I don't think I can earnestly recommend it to my friends who are more enthusiastic about puzzle games, I do think I can recommend it to people who find some of the more well-known challenging puzzle games frustrating as a way to dip their toes into grid-based puzzle solving. It's got a charming art style and a lot of clever ideas. It's just a shame that a lot of them feel like they were never really brought to their full potential.

Very cute but I found the pacing to be very slow. Takes a long time to get to actually interesting puzzles

The dev took a sliding puzzle and made it into an RPG. I've seen a lot of puzzle inspired RPGs, but sliding is sure one challenging concept there, especially when they even make it more fun than the originals, great job to the devs!

A fun Modertly Short puzzle adventure! Kinda wish the story went a bit farther but overall was a nice simple story! Puzzles were quite breezy but also sometime clever so the pace of the game never felt bogged down!

[b]Recommended for:[/b] If you are looking for a relaxing puzzle game then Arranger is a nice game to try out. The gameplay is very interesting and the puzzles are of moderate difficulty. There are no time-based puzzles or other mechanics which require quick reflexes. You can just focus on solving the puzzles, which makes playing the game a relaxing experience. Unfortunately, the story is not that great and at certain times it can even feel a little moralizing. To give an example, at one point in the game you have to help some people in a small town who are "addicted" to using blue mechanical birds to send messages, and this causes them to not go outside anymore. It's pretty obvious what's being implied here, and this is harped on throughout the whole quest. The weakest points are the characters combined with the dialogue. Almost everyone speaks in the same way, which makes it feel like these characters all have the same personality. This also includes the main character who also feels a bit generic. If you are looking for a puzzle game with a deep story and interesting characters then this is probably not the game for you. On a final note, I do think Arranger is perfectly suitable for young children. The story might be a bit underwhelming, but it is easy to follow. And there is practically no swearing or violence in the game. [b]My experience:[/b] I had a nice time overall playing Arranger. I was somewhat disappointed by the story and characters as I had higher expectations. But I really enjoyed the gameplay as the puzzles reminded me a bit of [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokoban]Sokoban[/url], but with their own unique twist on the mechanics. Many people hate these kinds of sliding puzzles when they pop up in adventure games, but I really like solving them. I also think the game looks very nice with its colorful graphics and art style. [b]Technical:[/b] I had no technical issues while playing. [i](Win10,7800X3D,RX7800XT)[/i] [b]Personal Rating:[/b] 3/5