Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure

Arranger belongs to the batch of games we discovered during the June 2024 Steam Next Fest, and it was one of our games to watch out for. After playing it to the end, I feel justified in that inclusion, as Arranger is a special game full of innovation, interesting characters, a fascinating world, and top-notch puzzle designs. 

Arranger is the debut title from Furniture & Mattress Studios. Consisting of three experienced developers, Nick Suttner (Celeste, Carto, Guacamelee 2), David Hellman (Braid), and Nicolás Recabarren, plus composer Tomás Batista. Attacking their work in a healthy way, Suttner was quoted in a Game Developer interview as saying, “We’ve all been making games in some capacity for a long time, so it was important to us to do it in a healthy way—biting off something of the right scope, paying ourselves properly, and sharing in the creative vision of the game,” and the studio was also quoted in the same interview on Arranger itself as saying that it would be a project that combines the team’s “shared love of adventure and exploration, clever puzzles, and weird humour.” Everything the studio aimed to include in their debut title made its way into the final version of Arranger, and the whole combination works really well. One piece of information that they didn’t include back then or hadn’t come to be was the main transversal feature, which is one of the game’s biggest innovations. 

Jemma has always felt like she didn’t fit in, partly due to being abandoned at birth outside her hometown town’s gate but also because she’s the only person who moves the way she does. Every step she takes moves the land by a tile either horizontally or vertically (think of the sliding puzzles you used to get as a child, but on a massive scale, and you’ll be on the right lines). The trouble is, anything on the same row as Jemma will also move, which causes Jemma to get into  trouble on a daily basis. A man gets knocked off his ladder in the opening moments of the game, while a trail of items from the house you were just in is following you. It’s this movement that feeds into all the puzzles you’ll experience, and the team has gone above and beyond in their designs, as it was a lot of fun to work out the solutions for the majority of them. Some need patience to properly work out, especially as you get deeper into the game, as they can become quite challenging, but they never get frustrating. I am not the greatest at puzzle games; it was my one concern playing the game, as some solutions just do not come to me, and I usually have to look up a walkthrough. But it wasn’t needed here, and the puzzles are so rewarding to complete. The developers also kept the gameplay fresh by constantly introducing new and exciting ways to complete puzzles and to transverse the areas. It never got boring; it only became more adventurous with its ideas and its story. This also includes the boss fights you’ll encounter, feeding into that sliding mechanic; each is also a puzzle that needs thought and experimentation to defeat. It was a fresh way to tackle them, and my only criticism is that there needed to have been more of them.

You start the game just as Jemma is planning to leave her village for a journey of self-discovery and exploration. As a misfit, she has developed some insecurities about herself and some anxiety around the trouble she causes and where she came from. It’s her hope that once she leaves, she’ll no longer be a burden to others, while hopefully finding more people ‘like her’. Jemma is beautifully written, warming to her pretty instantly. She has this innocence to her that makes her likeable, and many will resonate with her and the circumstances she finds herself in. All the other characters you’ll meet in the game are well written, too, but I never warmed to them as much as I did with Jemma. The game also hits on subjects including greed, the super rich, and the convenience that the modern world gives us. All powerful subjects I wasn’t expected to be engaging with, but they were all tackled in the right way, and they sent out the correct messages. 

On her journey, Jemma will come across three temples. These house special puzzles, that when solved, give riddles to Jemma’s ancestry, and to gain entry to these temples, you have to complete three puzzles for each one. These could range from moving an animal to its mate or completing a course of smaller puzzles to get to a gem. Once all three tasks have been completed, you gain entry to the temple, where you are confronted with an old-school sliding puzzle. Completing these is optional, as the only reward was said riddle and an achievement popping. This did leave me wanting more from these; maybe a new power-up  or just some cool art would have been nice, but I took the satisfaction of completing the puzzles as my reward. You’ll find many other optional puzzles throughout Jemma’s journey, and you’ll want to do them. Such is the power of the puzzle designs, because, as I said earlier, they are just fun to complete. 

A special shout-out goes to the visual presentation of Arranger, as I loved everything about it. The style chosen created this world full of intrigue and beauty, with a splash of originality that I haven’t seen before. The character designs are interesting and lovingly a bit ‘out there’ fitting into the weird part of Furniture & Mattresses aims. Everything moves in a satisfying way too, with a gentle rocking motion to most things, which gives everything a certain charm.

I’d also like to give the accessibility options a mention, as there are some good options available. The two I used the most were the quest marker and the puzzle skip. The first is self-explanatory; it points you in the direction you need to go in for the next part of the story. The puzzle skip is an ingenious inclusion, as when it is turned on, two white squares will appear when you are near a puzzle, one at the start and one at the end. If you are stumped and want to move on, you stand on the white square closest to you, and it will transport you to the end of the puzzle. Such a simple system, and it works so well in eliminating any frustration when you are stuck, leaving you to fully enjoy the plot line. 

I can see the puzzle skip opening Arranger up for many players who wouldn’t necessarily choose to play a puzzle game, as I can see not everyone resonating with the types of puzzles that you’ll encounter. It’s such a small inclusion, but it’s a massive one for, well, accessibility. The only time this does not work is on those optional puzzles, leaving you with just your brain power to get you to the end of those. Other accessibility options include some fun selections, like a steps counter and an option to display your in-game play time. There is also a buddy mode, which lets a second player jump in and help you, and a hard mode.  

The weakest part of Arranger for me was the soundtrack. Nothing really jumped out at me, and for most of the time, I didn’t even notice it. Don’t get me wrong, Tomás did an admirable job with the music; it was well put together, but it was just missing that special ingredient to make it completely memorable. When I think of games like Chicory, Celeste, and Citizen Sleeper, there’s a love and a special place in my heart just for the soundtrack, which unfortunately I didn’t feel with Arranger’s score.