ARRANGER: A ROLE-PUZZLING ADVENTURE
Nudge theory in action
Have you ever had days when you can’t seem to help getting in everyone’s way? When your very presence feels like a disruption to others? When you leave an apparently unavoidable trail of chaos in your wake without really trying? For the protagonist of Furniture & Mattress’s debut release, that’s every day. Little wonder it takes a full four taps of the left arrow key to shove the hapless Jemma out of bed.
To get to this point you’ll have already played through a dream sequence that tutorialises her curious superpower. In this grid-based world, everything that isn’t bolted down on the row or column you’re currently occupying moves as she does, allowing Jemma to push or drag things along with her – whether she wants to or not. As an early incident proves, it’s become more curse than blessing in the compact village she calls home: as she strolls up to a fellow resident to talk to them, her steps cause the ladder they’re standing on to wobble and then fall, toppling them to the floor. You can understand why, as she prepares to venture out into the wilderness beyond, no one’s in any great rush to prevent her from leaving.
Still, her unique item-shifting ability has its advantages, too. When a local bully bars Jemma’s path, she’s able to bypass them, taking the literal high road by pushing against the top of the grid. Instead of falling off, she reemerges at the bottom, just as elsewhere she can loop around to the right of an obstacle by walking off the left-hand edge of the grid. It’s one of those ideas that is somehow both instinctual and quietly revelatory, the kind of magic trick that only really works in videogames.
It’s no surprise to learn that this particular mechanic was the first step in Arranger’s own journey. Argentinian designer Nicolás Recabarren (Ethereal) created a prototype he likens to a 2D Rubik’s Cube – “when you get to one side, you start on the opposite” – though at first it was more a means to a different end. “The mechanic for me was more like an excuse to make the kind of game I wanted to make,” Recabarren explains. “A big puzzle world, like something that was connected without having to go to a selection screen or something like that. I just wanted to find a mechanic that allowed me to do that.” He showed a prototype to writer (and studio co-founder) Nick Suttner, and the rest of the game grew from there.
Beyond being a tactile and engaging mechanic in its own right, it directly informed the core of Arranger’s narrative, reflected in the chaotic persona of its lead. “It’s partly about feeling like an outsider – not feeling
like you fit in, and looking for your people, and maybe looking for somewhere you do fit in better,” Suttner says. It quickly becomes clear that Jemma is not just a misfit here, but feels actively stifled by her surroundings – and hopes she might yet find a sense of belonging in the wider world. “Part of the narrative is about seeing how this might actually be important,” Suttner adds. “How it’s disruptive to the way things have settled in this world and the way people have walled themselves off.”
As artist David Hellman adds, there’s a clear link between destruction and creation. “We’ve all experienced working on a sliding puzzle, or certain kinds of puzzles where you need to let go – where you’ve got things in almost a good place, but you’ve got to mess it up a bit before you get it into a better place. There’s an expanding-contracting nature to it, and so that idea of making a mess to ultimately put things in a better order [naturally] became a story theme.”
This in turn inspired Hellman’s approach to the game’s art. The clarity of the gridbased environments you explore contrasts with a fragmented, collage-like presentation beyond their boundaries, suggesting a world built on foundations that aren’t entirely rigid. As Jemma explores, comic-book-style panels (or “shards”, as the studio is calling them, reflecting their decidedly non-geometric form) appear in the background. It’s a way, Hellman says, to represent its protagonist’s “unconventional” view of the world and what she’s feeling at any given time. “Most games have these very rigid visual and optical laws, but we can take multiple viewpoints,” he explains. “The grid has to be super-clear and iconic, and behave as expected according to those strict rules, so then the other stuff can actually be more of an impression, to give you the memorable bits [of Jemma’s journey] and then elide a lot of information that would be repetitive on screen.”
It’s an unorthodox approach in a game that often deliberately riffs on conventions. Old ideas are given a fresh twist: Jemma never actually holds a sword but she can shunt one into an enemy that blocks her path. Faced with pressure plates, she can bring across a giant stone foot to weigh them down, without the sometimes tedious exertion of having to slowly heave it into position. When a door requires three chiming bells to open, you first need to work out how to find a replacement and then how to ring them simultaneously. Then comes an encounter for which you’re unarmed – though you’ll quickly recognise that one end of a cycloptic boss could well represent a danger to the other.
There are good reasons why Arranger deliberately subverts familiar tropes, as Suttner explains. “The whole time we had it in mind that we’re trying to Trojan horse a puzzle game through the aesthetic and vocabulary of an adventure game,” he grins. For those who might hesitate at the word ‘puzzle’, then, these visual touchstones are all about putting on a friendlier, more welcoming face. Meanwhile, players who do enjoy brainteasers get to enjoy them with a little more narrative context. “It’s a hard thing to do,” Suttner admits, “but that’s the goal.”
That’s partly why, though Arranger’s central mechanic seems to lend itself naturally to a wealth of ideas, Furniture & Mattress doesn’t seem particularly bothered about squeezing every last drop out of them. “We’re not trying to make super-complex puzzles,” Recabarren nods. “Like reaching the most obscure outcome only if you use specific movements and stuff.” Sticking points, in other words, are rare – which isn’t to say you won’t find your brow furrowing or your chin scratched every now and again. But the first word we jot down in our notepad is ‘breezy’, and it says much that Suttner himself uses it twice during our conversation.
The result, a few hours in, is a warm, gently funny and hugely likeable ‘rolepuzzling’ adventure with real forward momentum – even when that means going backwards. And, as we get to grips with the thrilling scope of Jemma’s disruptive ability, it offers persuasive proof that a little chaos can be a very good thing.
“Making a mess to ultimately put things in better order became a story theme”