The Value of Problem Attic's Inconsistency

While both are puzzle platformers, Braid and problem attic use puzzles in starkly different ways. Focusing on the function of puzzles and the way mechanical knowledge is (or isn’t) developed to solve them, I want to explore out how problem attic renders palpable “very complicated, seemingly inexpressible feelings through the tools of a 2D platformer” (Ryerson).

First, a look at Braid to set up a contrast: Sharp lauds how Blow “uses a mode of knowledge...constructed through the design and production of the game and received and understood through play” (Sharp 69). As most of us have experienced, this knowledge is achieved through epiphanies in which the solution to a puzzle suddenly becomes clear. Blow’s puzzles, Sharp then suggests, are a way to measure the extent to which the player has accumulated such knowledge as they progress through the game (Sharp 71). In this way, Blow can ensure that the player fully understands the mechanics involved, rather than blundering through the game via luck.

In contrast to the tightly designed progression of Blow’s puzzles, Ryerson complicates the mechanical framework of the traditional platformer by unceremoniously throwing basic features like consistency out the window. Unlike Braid, there are no moments of clarity in problem attic. Although there is always a way out of every room, always a single solution, I never feel as if I am “solving” anything: rather, I have the disconcerting feeling of stumbling upon a way out, often without entirely understanding why, as there are no consistent physical laws to refer to, as in Braid. That’s not to say there aren’t mechanics and patterns that I become habituated to recognize (e.g. the basic jumping and restarting capabilities the player has, the strangely menacing but unintuitively harmless behavior of black pluses, the restarting ability of the grey squares, the way that exiting a room on one side of the screen can cause you to come out somewhere else), but they are continuously distorted, altered, glitched as the game continues. For example, there are some levels where you jump higher than others, some where the black plus is helpful in reaching the exit (e.g. the “my garden is overgrown” room) and others where it is demonically oppressive and antagonistic (e.g. the black and red “nightmare” room, which invoked in me a genuine sense of betrayed confusion and terrified helplessness), some where it is entirely unpredictable where you come back out after exiting the screen, some where you aren’t even playing as your usual character anymore, but rather the black pluses or, ultimately, the grey square (this can likely be linked to the confusion and development of identity, specifically gender identity, but I won't get into that too much here). Each room or level seems to have its own logic that gets you to the exit, but the logic is loose, local, and often opaque, in stark contrast to the rigorous physical laws in Braid. Because of this, I don’t feel as if I am getting better at the game as I move through it: rather, I become more experimental, more open to the inconsistency of the laws and mechanics without trying to fully understand what is going on, as that seems a lost cause. I might recognize a pattern and pursue it in some way, but all the while I remain open to the possibility that things might not turn out how I’m expecting them to. I accept, if uneasily, the unrelenting and overwhelming uncertainty at the core of the game.

In extreme cases, even after “solving” a room, I still am absolutely baffled by how it occurred. For example, there is a room early on, one of the first in which the enigmatic grey squares appear, in which I frantically fell and jumped through the endlessly repeating room, moving towards the blinking tiles scattered throughout, when the level suddenly ended upon touching a particular tile, although I am fairly sure I already tried this tile before without this outcome. Later, there is a room with a similar confounding effect (the one after the strange bit of text “tomorrow you’ll wake up inside a prison or find yourself wandering the streets, not knowing where you’re going”) that involves a complex relationship between checkered teleportation tiles and off-screen and intrawall movements that I haphazardly navigated through trial-and-error. These might be puzzles in the strict sense, but the way the solution serves to perpetuate confusion rather than resolve it makes them feel like something else entirely (maybe "problems"?).

Perhaps I’m doing something wrong, but I don’t feel as if I "understand" this game. I don’t feel as if I have mastered anything or gained any progressive sense of mechanical understanding, as I did while working through Braid’s puzzles— but I don’t think I’m supposed to. This is, after all, a game “from the perspective of a protagonist with no power, with very little ability to escape or make sense of their situation” (Ryerson). Unlike Blow, I don’t think Ryerson is overly concerned about whether we fully comprehend how to solve every puzzle. Rather, I think she wants us to feel the game, which is exactly what I did. It’s not about rational learning or mastery or winning—rather, it’s about the feeling of surviving, working through things provisionally and without full clarity, continuously escaping (or attempting to escape) something you will never entirely make sense of, something that is dark, strange, inconsistent, irresolvable, and without clear boundaries (or binaries, for that matter). In this way, Ryerson expresses the messiness of a deeply pained and complex psychological landscape through her disorienting and subversive game mechanics.

Did anyone else have a similar emotional/psychological experience while playing problem attic? There is probably much more to say on how Ryerson expresses various feelings throughout the game, so I would look forward to reading others' thoughts.