We’re comfortably in an age where cozy gaming has become a lifestyle exceeding the sub-genre, and the Summer Game Fest feature and puzzle adventure, the aptly titled Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure, fits into this niche quite nicely. I recently cracked my knuckles and dived into the 2D singleplayer’s demo with expectations of cute humdrum, but (to my surprise) the experience yielded a few comical and lore-tastic surprises along the way.

Described as a “charming journey of self-discovery”, Arranger tees up misfit Jemma, who’s hellbent on leaving her small, convivial town to break out of her comfort zone and learn the world’s secrets. Both inside and outside the confines of her home, an eerie “Static” force dishes out luminous enemies and contrasts the light-hearted tone.

This endeavor is a debut title from four-person indie developer and publisher, Furniture & Mattress (a team that knows how to coin a memorable logo theme that’s been stuck in my head for days), and there’s a lot to unpack from my time with the demo.

Patience And Strategy Are A Virtue

Arranger’s first hook is the gentle, campfire score composed by Per Aspera and Ethereal sound artist Tomás Batista, setting the laid-back vibes as soon as the title screen rolls and even dips into Breaking Bad notes later. The indie game’s unique traversal creates movement through an “interconnected grid”, and it takes some rewiring of the brain to get used to it. The first steps of the prologue continued my appreciation for sound through the clinking of stone underfoot mixed with ambient water and wind, and the accompanying backstory (which we’ll keep under wraps) sets the emotional stakes of the game before plunging back into the safety of cozy gaming.

One of the puzzler’s more striking elements is its art style, brought to life by Braid artist David Hellman, as it cleverly balances the character designs through adorable, chibi sprites and unnerving expressions – a polarity that later makes sense in the story. Harboring the same creepy side-eyes from Genndy Tartakovsky’s days on Adult Swim, townsfolk Roby, and the mage-like Micah are moseying around town fulfilling duties as Jemma readies to leave.

A towering sculpture of a mysterious man carved into the front gate adds to Arranger’s unsettling undertone, the Aztec-like statues give the game a mystical sense, and the comic book side panels channel House of Slaughter’s color palette with a Saturday morning cartoon style.

The dialogue leaves much to be desired – except townsfolk’s sass: “Duly noted and triply ignored” – filled with small talk, whimsical statements, and eventually, the objective. The demo’s simple tasks include finding a place to store your belongings, talking to the Mayor before leaving, and navigating the chamber room dungeon (harboring a particularly tricky Bell puzzle) to finally escape, I mean, depart from the over-friendly town. The local cat – a somehow more hypnotic version of the Cheshire Cat – proved repeated “meows” from being shuffled along the grid is annoying and unnecessary, but its significance in the greater picture made up for it.

The best way to describe Arranger’s movement and puzzle-solving is to think of the grid as a Rubik’s Cube. Sometimes you need to move 10 steps forward before solving something at the rear. Each row acts like a conveyor belt and problem-solving involves moving stone feet onto door triggers and nudging swords along the grid and into enemies. Even entering someone’s house will inevitably rearrange the contents, labeling Jemma a “walking disaster”.

The game is self-aware, in this sense, and it forces you out of the gameplay norm. Instead of collecting a key and bringing it to the door, the key is locked on a tile and the challenge lies in getting the item to its use. Plant pots and tree stumps create obstacles and raise the difficulty, which often prompted my response of “I’m going to try and break something”, but once you get into the rhythm, bow down to the grid God and learn its mechanics, bigger challenges are welcomed.

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Mystical Lore And Impressive Bosses Are Incentive To Return

It’s not a spoiler to say the darker corners of town are infected with the “Static” curse, causing an oil-slick aura around objects and monsters, and the main boss of the demo lightly dips into Lovecraft with a Color Out of Space-styled one-eyed snake. Speaking of snakes, the battle involves getting the creature to eat its tail, and being sandwiched in a room with the beast and other obstacles felt like the last levels of the Blockade-inspired mobile game, while the foe tripled in size.

There’s no timer nor will you be deducted life points (because there are none aside from an injured animation), which lowers stress levels. Still, the puzzles certainly challenge your spatial awareness and your ability to plan ahead.

The point of demos is to provoke intrigue after the taster concludes, and Arranger’s compelling qualities lie mostly in its story and lore: the origin of the Static, Jemma’s history, and the mystery of the “Hold” that seems to protect otherwise vanilla towns from the curse. If you enjoy the square-based challenges in Chess and Rubik’s Cubes, this adventure will keep you entertained, but free explorers (like myself) may be discouraged by the grid’s restraint. That’s not to say there aren’t several eureka moments when you do get the pieces into place, and the thought of the creative bosses to come is another point of interest to persevere.

Arranger purely comes down to taste. The artistic design and puzzle-based progression won’t be every cozy gamer’s cup of tea, but there’s certainly a general draw for fantasy lovers and I wouldn’t mind getting to the depths of the indie’s narrative. It’s not quite Elden Ring levels of lore, but there’s enough charm in the world-building to bewitch a full-game playthrough, with plenty of environmental problem-solving to, possibly, turn your brain 10 years younger.

For a debut release, the dev team should be proud that Arranger managed to gratify and destroy my ego within one demo.

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