Disoriented

I put it to you that, rather than being able to be lumped in with all other puzzle games, maze games ought to be considered their own separate subgenre. There’s a lot of overlap, don’t get me wrong, but there’s also an entirely separate set of skills and ways of envisioning the world required. Puzzle games could require any combination of logic or problem-solving. Maze games generally require a specific spatial visualisation skill that I, naturally, do not possess. It’s helpful to know from the outset that I will be hopeless at the puzzle in front of me.

I also apologise in advance if this review is disjointed. I live in an apartment, and one of my neighbours has been playing music all day. It’s a bit distracting.

Just go through the door.

Disoriented is a maze game. Players are placed on a series of platforms suspended in a void with the singular goal of making it through a yellow door. There is very little colour, beyond the buttons players can interact with to change the maze and its pathways. There is just you, the void, and the goal.

The mazes in Disoriented are not simple labyrinths, however. These are Escherian constructions, where players must invert gravity and twist through a three dimensional space in order to make their way to the door. Many levels required me to walk on what had once been a ceiling, dropping to what had once been a while, then right myself just before climbing the final steps to the door. Again, if you struggle with spatial reasoning like I do, it can be a bit of a trip, especially when you struggle to focus because the neighbours has been playing their music non-stop since 5AM this morning and it’s boring into your skull like some sort of parasite, devouring you from the inside.

Just go through the door.

What’s interesting about Disoriented is both its maze structure and how the game teaches the player to approach it. The first few levels are very straightforward, with the player moving along what is more or less a straight line with a few buttons. The levels become more difficult, but that sense of being a rat in a maze never really leaves - the solution, once seen, becomes almost trivially simple, and you’re left wondering how it took you so long to sus it out in the first place.

For the levels where I struggled a bit more, I found that the struggle was less a struggle per se, and more a long series of experiments, with each attempt being an iteration on the last. Each time I restarted a level, it was with the knowledge of what a particular button did, where I got trapped, or how helpful a switch was. Solving a level was as much a process of remembering and pattern recognition as it was actual logic.

i’ve rung the doorbell of all the doors on my floor, but maybe the music is coming from above me. i’ll check there.

bear with me. i can figure this out.

Just go through the door.

That didn’t change the fact that there were points where, after attempting the same level three or four times, I felt stuck. I knew I was obviously missing something, but what that something was, I couldn’t begin to say. I’d try to brute force a solution, spinning each block until something clicked and made sense, but at the same time, not truly understanding why what I was doing was or was not working -

there is music. it is constant. it has been doing this every day for months. i can’t sleep because it always there. it is somewhere above me, or maybe below me. i can’t tell. i just hear it. unceasing. unrelenting. it worms behind my eyes

- just that I was at least making progress. But I suppose that’s part of the fun of a maze. Regardless of what action you take, there is always at least the sense of progress and that final, glorious click as something makes sense and the path forward is clear.

Just go through the door.

There is something deeply unnerving, however, about standing in a void, knowing that a step in the wrong direction will send you careening into an abyss, and unsure of how to change that inevitable fate. It’s maddening, in a way, to repeat the same patterns over and over, press the same buttons, spin the same blocks, and hope for - if not outright expect - some different outcome this time.

i can hear it most clearly on the landing of the 13th floor, the notes playing over and over, barely audible over the wind and the cold but audible nonetheless. i peer in the darkened windows of the apartments whose doors i’ve all knocked on before. it’s someone doing this. someone knows they’re doing this. someone who doesn’t sleep, doesn’t realise, doesn’t listen. i’ll knock again. i’ll knock on every door again, explaining, pleading, hoping if not outright expecting some different outcome this time.

Just go through the door.

I fully recognise my brain is not a brain that’s adept at dealing with a problem like this one. I was, to take the game’s title literally, regularly disoriented and unable to wrap my head around everything the maze around me was doing. Despite that, though -

i need to sleep i need the music to stop i need to hear my own thoughts again to sit on my couch without earplugs and headphones i need sleep i need to not perch on the edge of the abyss i need to not be a rat in a maze i don’t understand can’t understand can’t possibly begin to comprehend

makeitstopmakeitstopmakeitsto

- I can’t deny the joy I got when a level did fall into place, and my path to freedom became clear.

Only to be faced with yet another void. Yet another door. Yet another maze I couldn’t wrap my head around.

Developer: BrickCream
Genre: Puzzle
Year: 2016
Country: The aether?
Language: English
Game length: 4.5 hours
Playthrough: https://youtu.be/BiWTS1xjF_4