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Arranger : A Role-Puzzling Adventure

The Summer of Demos : Day 1

Arranger : A Role-Puzzling Adventure
(Key art by David Hellman, copyright Furniture & Mattress LLC)

Jemma’s made up her mind : it’s time to leave her sleepy, stifling hometown and head out into the great wide world. The demo covers the opening hour, where Jemma looks for a place to offload her worldly possessions before she leaves. Her neighbours all feel like they’ve been plucked out of a tiny English village, but life isn’t perfect - the magically-bolstered barrier they call the Hold is all that keeps them safe from the dangerous purple-blue-tinged force known as the Static. And the Hold is showing a few cracks…

Try arranging a sword into those Static beasts’ faces to clear a path. (copyright Furniture & Mattress LLC)

A “role-puzzling” game, Arranger is centered around the ability to rearrange the world’s tiles based on which row or column of the grids making up the world Jemma moves along. Unless a Static item blocks the way, she can loop around the paths and bring objects with her to solve puzzles and injure enemies. With the game’s focus on a grid in the centre of the screen, lead artist David Hellman (Braid) adorns the blank space with comic panels that flesh out the setting : open windows in houses, bird’s nests in forests, that kind of thing.

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Panels around the grid breathe life into Arranger’s world. (copyright Furniture & Mattress LLC)

The only problem I had with the demo was that I couldn’t rewind or reset rooms. Although the game seems incredibly polished, I anticipate softlocks popping up and would have appreciated the ability to revert the puzzles I got stuck on. The demo could not save so I’m not sure if “save and quit” will return you to the exact same spot in a puzzle or back to the start of each room. Arranger caught my eye with its tile arranging puzzles in the February Nintendo Direct and I look forward to it taxing me when it comes out.
In a word : griddy.

Arranger : A Role-Puzzling Adventure is an upcoming puzzle game developed and published by Furniture & Mattress LLC for PS5, PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store, Nintendo Switch and mobile devices via Netflix on the 25th of July.

This article is part of the Summer of Demos series, where I’ll be releasing a Demo Diving preview article each day in July. If you liked this article, be sure to share it with a friend or enemy. If you back me on Patreon, you get access to articles one day before they release anywhere else. If we reach £25/month before the end of July, I’ll extend the Summer of Demos into August.

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