Portal Designer's Quantum Conundrum Detailed In Gameplay Video

Kim Swift, project lead on Portal, has revealed her next game. It's a first-person puzzle platformer called Quantum Conundrum.

In Quantum, you play a kid who's been dropped off at his uncle's house by his mom. His uncle is an eccentric inventor whose home is filled with his strange creations. Shortly after the player arrives, there's an explosion. Now, the lone kid must navigate the labyrinthine home and find his missing uncle.

In order to traverse the house's various obstacles, the player must use an IDS (interdimensional shift device) glove. This glove lets the player switch between different dimensions. These dimensions have different laws of physics that you can exploit to proceed through the lab.

At one point in the walk-through video, the player encounters a ledge that's too tall for him to reach. He sees a chair nearby that he could use as a stepping stone to get to the ledge but it's too heavy. So, he switches to the fluffy dimension, which makes the world pink and fuzzy. More importantly, it makes the chair light as a feather so the player can move it over to the ledge.

The player then sees a glass wall and a metal safe. He could throw the safe through the wall to shatter it but here's the dilemma: the safe is too heavy to pick up in the normal dimension but in the fluffy dimension it's too light to break the glass. So, what does the player do? He picks up the safe in the fuzzy dimension, throws it and then switches to the normal dimension. The safe becomes metal again and crashes through the glass wall, allowing the player to proceed.

The dimensional shifting sounds like it has a lot of potential. It'll be interesting to see how this gameplay mechanic evolves as the game's four to six hour campaign proceeds. Considering how good Portal was, expectations are going to be high. Quantum will be released through Xbox Live, PSN, and Steam in early 2012.