Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure’s masterful, clever design is clear right from the start
polygon.comLike most games, Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure starts with a title screen — but developer Furniture & Mattress gave its introductory screen a bit of a twist. The title screen pops up when you click “Start Game,” but it’s not yet the name of the game at all. At first glance, it’s not a word at all: GER ARRAN. When you start to touch buttons — flicking your analog stick to the left, for instance — it all becomes clear. This is the title screen, but it’s also a tutorial on how to play the game. Move your joystick four times to the left and you’ll see it: Arranger. A new pathway opens up, and the game has begun.
Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure is, as the name suggests, both a role-playing game and a puzzle game; it’s out Thursday on Nintendo Switch, mobile via Netflix, PlayStation 5, and Windows PC. In it, you’ll take on the role of Jemma, a magical misfit who’s taking a journey outside the small town where she’s grown up. But the whole world is one big shuffle puzzle, where Jemma travels by moving tiles around the labyrinthian grid. At the edge of the board, Jemma can loop around to the other side of any given row or column, given there’s nothing in the way. It may sound complicated, but the core premise is pretty easy to understand, given the chance to test it out. That’s why Arranger’s title screen is so clever: It tells you everything you need to know before heading out into its world.
From that moment at the start, Jemma is subjected to a simple tutorial of sorts where you’re able to test out the possibilities of the world. When something’s blocking your way, for instance, you’re able to loop around to the other side of the grid. Try to picture this: Three tiles are in a horizontal line. Jemma is on the rightmost tile and an immovable tree stump is in the middle. To get to the left side of the stump, you move the analog stick once to the right, which loops Jemma to the left of the stump. This mechanic works both horizontally and vertically.
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