The primary theme to puzzles in Antichamber is that things aren't how they appear. If you walk down a hallway and turn around, you might be in a totally different area. This leads to some incredibly interesting and difficult puzzles, forcing you to think about the world around you in a totally new way.
Using stark white halls with glowing colors there is a minimal beauty to Antichamber. One room houses great abstract art which changes depending on which way you are looking at it.
Near the middle of the game, you get a thing that a lot of the puzzles start to focus on, and the mind-bending puzzles and tricks to the player take more of a backseat as this mechanic changes the game to more of a traditional style of puzzle game. There are still elements of it, but much less of it.
There is not much of a story to be found in the game and what there is is pretty convoluted and has the player asking what even happened by the end of the game.
The time to beat the game is well around 7 hours for an average player, and there's not much extra content left after that. In that time the game doesn't exactly go deep in its innovations on the "mind-bending" idea (no gravity flips, just teleportations).
The unsettling aspects of this game are less about scary monsters stalking the player and more about deeper questions of self and our desires for longevity and continuity.
Players looking for similar or more intense versions of the thrills found in their previous game, Amnesia, may be disappointed. This game does have some of those moments, but the emphasis is more philosophical, and the story has a far richer spectrum of emotions than Amnesia that can spoil the pure horror aspect some players might be looking for.
One of the main themes of the game is the illusion of choice that's presented in games. While a player can make a vast number of decisions in the game, the narrator reminds the player he can only make decisions that the game allows him to and how the game manipulates the player into making them. The narrator points out that not just common choices such as what path to take to get from point A to point B, how to approach a certain situation or what ethical choices are available are limited to the game's designers having thought of and implemented those aspects of the game, but decisions such as purposeful suicide, not taking action, disobeying instructions and even turning off the game are only there if the game allows them to be there.
Excellently crafted, hilarious writing delivered by a well spoken, charismatic British narrator. Kevan Brighting has become somewhat of a cult success since the game due to its cult like status which just shows how deserving he is due to how well done the narration of the game is done.
The game encourages players to explore decisions that would change the meaning of the presented story. What if you took a left turn where the game asked you to take a right? What if you decided not to push a big red button needed to continue playing because you didn't agree with pushing the big red button? What if you died in a boss battle? How would that affect the narrative of the game?
The game rewards you for not following the "intended" narrative structure of the situation in order to point out how the structure is unavoidable in games as a whole. The process of attempting to break the structure can be highly satisfying in The Stanley Parable and can help you better notice limitations of narrative in other games.
The game tackles topics such as ludonarrative dissonance, choice in games, narrative limitations, etc while mostly focusing on the relationship between the game and the player in terms of storytelling in a very meaningful, educated and entertaining way.
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