History VideoGame / Antichamber

->''Every direction has crazy in it.''
-->-- [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKCM3-y2UhY Keith Ballard]]

* WrongGenreSavvy: "The most tenacious, infuriating obstacle you’ll face throughout the game is yourself." The game is all about the player being WrongGenreSavvy. The exit that you see from the first moment you start playing? You reach it quite soon. [[spoiler:It's a wall with a poster. [[MindScrew Except when it's not]].]]

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: If you find and activate all of the pink cubes before finishing the game... good for you.

* ShoutOut: Several puzzles contain pop culture references in their names, such as [[Literature/AlicesAdventuresInWonderland "Down The Rabbit Hole"]], [[Film/TheGirlCantHelpIt "Cry Me A River"]], [[Music/Reel2Real "I Like To Move It"]], [[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaALinkToThePast "A Link To The Past"]] or [[Music/LedZeppelin "Stairway To Heaven"]].

** When a connected block structure loses a block from a middle of it, the smaller half of it will disappear. If the amount of blocks on either side of the structure is the same, all such sides will disappear. Sounds simple? Well, the game never actually tells you this, it just puts in two rooms where you're pretty much locked until you've somehow realised the pattern and used it to get enough blocks to solve the puzzle--which is a problem if you don't have any clue of why the blocks are disappearing but still somehow manage to complete the puzzle: you'll now be struggling among lots of puzzles that assume you've fully understood the pattern.

** Also, the two first rooms, "Leap of Faith" and "A Jump Too Far", are connected to lots of different rooms, more than any other room in the game. Together, the different branches allow fast access (if you know well the layout, that is) to pretty much every area of the game. This includes the top of TheTower (which contains the Red Matter Gun), shortcuts to the rooms with the Green and Yellow Matter Guns and the access to TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjmIW7Oe9hY This]] SpeedRun video shows it's possible to complete the game without getting too far from those two rooms, thanks to their connections.

* ClassicVideoGameScrewYous: Some of the most difficult, hair-pulling puzzles in the game in the end don't advance you towards the exit, but reward you with an EasterEgg room or plop you somewhere you've been before. This is fine when you've already beaten the game, but annoying when you're still trying to figure out where to concentrate your work to finish the game for the first time (especially when [[spoiler:you still think]] there's a time limit, and therefore every second is gold: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC6g6pZ3Pek&t=8m40s this poor guy]] found one of those rooms with only 8 minutes left on the timer).

* HopeSpot: [[spoiler: The first time you realize you are on the other side of the glass by the exit door--maybe you've won! Nope.]]

** [[InvokedTrope Invoked]]. Those pink cubes that roll around when you look at them and bleep when you get them into a nook? Yeah, they don't do anything.

* NonstandardGameOver: Killing yourself in-game (namely by crushing yourself with blocks) will ''crash the game engine''. [[note]]You're not supposed to die at any point in ''Antichamber''. Thus, the game has no programed state for handling the player's death, and crashes with an error as a result.[[/note]]

* TakeAThirdOption: Many of the puzzles will have this as a solution. [[spoiler: Early on there is a hall leading to two stairways, one going up and one going down. It doesn't matter which one you take, they both lead back to right in front of both stairways, the solution is to turn around and go back down the hallway you came.]]

* WhiteVoidRoom: [[spoiler: The final room is blank, white, nothingness.]]
* WrapAround:

* YankTheDogsChain: The game starts you off in a room with a door marked "exit" behind glass. [[spoiler: You will actually get to the door several times during the game, but the first few times you are simply chided about being halfway there and things.]]

** Rooms on the map with enlarged squares indicate there's still paths from that room you haven't found yet, even if (like with [[spoiler:The Butterfly Effect]]) there aren't any other path indicators leading from it.
*** Additionally, unfound path indicators only appear if you have the required ability to solve the puzzle behind them the "intended" way. An enlarged square room icon means there are still unfound paths to/from that room, but they are either one-way to it or you don't have the required ability to access them yet (though sometimes you can do so anyway; see Sequence Breaking).

* LeapOfFaith: [[DoubleSubversion Double subverted]] in the first room, appropiately called "Leap of Faith". You find a shaft, an explorab le area on the other side, and some letters that read "Jump". If you actually do it, expecting some variant of this, you'll fall down to the pit. However, when you come back later, the letters have changed to read "Walk". Try walking and, this time, [[SceneryAsYouGo some platforms will appear to let you cross the shaft]]--they're safe while walking, it's just that they disappear whenever you jump.

* TutorialFailure: For the green and yellow guns.

* BaitAndSwitch: You'll eventually find yourself on the other side of the glass panel you've seen at the start of the game, with the "Exit" door in sight. [[spoiler:It opens to a clickable picture, and the way forward is the other door that leads you back into the main puzzle areas. This happens three more times, and on the final iteration, when you've grown tired of the Exit door and make a beeline for the other door, ''this'' time that other door has an image urging you to finally embark on the end leg of the journey as the Exit door opens to somewhere meaningful.]]

%%* PortalDoor: Some entrances to rooms involve going through what looks like a solid volume from a specific side. %%Does not indicate the trope. Could be a hidden door instead.

* DiscOneFinalDungeon: The Tower, a seven-floor area that brings you to different rooms scattered across the whole map.

* DummiedOut: [[spoiler:Two of the pink cubes]] are located in side areas that are impossible to reach in normal gameplay. One of them can be reached by exploiting a GoodBadBug involving the area it's located in, but the other requires activating the console and then toggling noclipping to reach it.

* NothingIsScarier: ''Antichamber'' takes this trope to its [[{{Minimalism}} absolute limit.]] There are absolutely ''zero'' hazards in the game - the engine isn't even programmed to handle player death - and the entire environment is stripped back to the bare limits of what a video game even is. Consequently, the [[WhiteVoidRoom sheer emptiness]], [[AlienGeometries constant violation of expected spatial geometry]], and generally [[MindScrew bizarre nature]] of the game can start to become extremely unsettling after awhile, because all of your video game instincts are screaming at you to be prepared for ''some'' kind of curveball that [[PlayingThePlayer ultimately never arrives.]] The vaguely ominous soundtrack of ambient noises doesn't make things any less creepy.

* PlayingThePlayer: "The most tenacious, infuriating obstacle you’ll face throughout the game is yourself." The game is all about the player being WrongGenreSavvy. The exit that you see from the first moment you start playing? You reach it quite soon. [[spoiler:It's a wall with a poster. [[MindScrew Except when it's not]].]]

* PortalDoor: Some entrances to rooms involve going through what looks like a solid volume from a specific side.

* BadAesop: The moral you get for [[spoiler: letting the countdown reach zero]] is "Live by your own watch, not somebody else's." Yeah, sure, don't bother taking other people's needs into account when you determine your schedule, ''that'' sure won't make you look like a dick or make people avoid involving you in their plans.

* MissingSecret: [[InvokedTrope Invoked]]. Those pink cubes that roll around when you look at them and bleep when you get them into a nook? Yeah, they don't do anything.

* {{Speedrun}}: Using various SequenceBreaking techniques, Website/YouTube videos eventually surfaced showing people beating the game in less than [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fkx9LjNR4TA 5 minutes]]. A previous world-record speedrun involved beating the game with only the green gun, entering less than 5% of the rooms, and spending only 2 minutes and 9.67 seconds between resetting and firing the final block. This required tricking the game's teleport, shooting cubes and catching them after visiting the menu room, and making the game think he'd gone to rooms he hadn't yet. This was [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vj3gmLM-nA outdone]] in 2019 utilizing a variant of the same trick, ending less than a tenth of a second off the theoretically fastest possible time at 43.12 seconds.

* FamilyUnfriendlyAesop: The moral you get for [[spoiler: letting the countdown reach zero]] is "Live by your own watch, not somebody else's." Yeah, sure, don't bother taking other people's needs into account when you determine your schedule, ''that'' sure won't make you look like a dick or make people avoid involving you in their plans.

* FamilyUnfriendlyAesop: The moral you get for [[spoiler: letting the countdown reach zero]] is "Live by your own watch, not somebody else's. Yeah, sure, don't bother taking other people's needs into account when you determine your schedule, ''that'' sure won't make you look like a dick or make people avoid involving you in their plans.