4 months ago
24
Furniture & Mattress’ debut title, Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure, finally arrives this week for iOS and Android through Netflix, PS5, Nintendo Switch, and PC worldwide. I didn’t bother playing the demo, but having played the full game on multiple platforms, I can safely say that Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure is a superlative puzzle game that I recommend everyone check out. If you have an active Netflix subscription, Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure is immediately one of the best games available on that service, but the iOS release I’ve played is lacking in one area compared to the PC and Switch versions. I’m going to cover why I love Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure and also how it feels across Switch and Steam Deck in this review focusing on the Netflix version.
Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure has you playing as Jemma who moves on a grid, and also moves most objects and people in the same row or column as her. There are some exceptions like monsters of other objects with a purple glow around them, but you basically explore, solve puzzles, and even engage in combat (not directly) through your grid movement across the world. Jemma can also loop around the edges of rows and columns, and all this plays a huge part in solving puzzles, moving ahead, and discovering more of not only the world, but also yourself in Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure.
If you go for the critical path and avoid exploring beyond, I imagine you won’t take more than four hours or so to complete Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure. I got stuck a few times and didn’t want to use the assists until I was replaying the game on another platform to see how later areas looked and wanted to just speed through things. Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure has basically no padding and felt perfectly paced even when I got stuck a few times. You can definitely tell the pedigree of the developers involved here with how it oozes polish in so many ways.
Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure is very forgiving. The puzzles don’t penalize you for a mistake, and you basically can keep trying to find the solution for your current predicament as Jemma. This could be trying to get a sword block moved to a monster to clear a path or getting any object onto a switch to unlock a door or move forward. Despite the lovely logical grid-based puzzles that will have light bulbs going off in your head often, there is an assist mode that lets you skip some of the puzzles if you find yourself banging your head at something with no success. Seeing how this is implemented made me realize how Furniture & Mattress basically had all their bases covered with Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure. This is a complete, accessible, and stunning puzzle game made for everyone.
Visually, Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure is stunning. David Hellman’s art is incredible, and Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure manages to impress all the way. I figured a game with so much hand-drawn art would be locked to 16:9 or something, but the developers have made sure it looks and feels great on every device. It has 16:10 support on Steam Deck, ultrawide support on iPhone 15 Pro, and is fullscreen on my iPad. I have no complaints with the visuals outside of the fact that I can’t buy an artbook for Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure yet.
Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure on iPhone and iPad supports progress syncing through Netflix accounts as usual, but I was surprised at the lack of proper high frame rate options. You might think that doesn’t matter in a game like this, but having played it on Switch where it targets 60fps and feels smooth across the board and also Steam Deck where it runs even higher, the iPhone and iPad versions of Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure felt sluggish. It has a performance mode option, but that still doesn’t let you play at 60fps on iPhone 15 Pro or my iPad Pro (2020). I hope this can be added in the future as the game feels noticeably smoother on even Switch. Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure does play well with both touch controls and a controller on iOS and Switch.
On the console and PC side, the team did a fantastic job with Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure on Switch. It has good HD Rumble and full touchscreen support in addition to traditional controls. As I said above, I found myself playing it with touch controls in handheld often, but used my 8BitDo Ultimate controller when playing docked. Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure feels perfect on Switch, and it was great to see it Steam Deck Verified pre-release with it playing like a dream on Valve’s handheld.
While the visuals are impressive, the audio design in Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure is another aspect of the game I love. The sound effects are perfect and the music perfectly fits the various locations you explore as Jemma. The score might seem very good early on, but it shows its true greatness after you finish the opening area and leave town. Tomás Batista absolutely nailed the score in Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure.
Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure is a gorgeous and essential puzzle game. It is stunning, has excellent puzzles, sounds amazing, and is a joy to play across the board. Having now experienced it on iPhone, iPad, Switch, and Steam Deck, it joins Lorelei and the Laser Eyes as my favorite puzzle games of 2024. This is absolutely one of the best additions to Netflix Games yet as well. I can’t wait to replay it on PS5 in the future.
English (US)