When comparing Antichamber vs Strata, the Slant community recommends Antichamber for most people. In the question“What are the best Puzzle games on Steam?” Antichamber is ranked 5th while Strata is ranked 12th. The most important reason people chose Antichamber is:
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.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Brilliant Puzzles
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.
Pro Unique minimalist visuals
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.
Pro Wise quotes
Pro Lateral thinking
Pro Good for speed running
A great game to put your speed skills to the test! Great for those who love any percent speedruns!
Pro Supports flexible window resolutions
The game scales to any resolution so you can have it in a window on the side.
Pro Addictive gameplay that steadily increases in difficulty
While the gameplay starts out as being quite straightforward (therefore easing the player into the game), the difficulty does build as one continues to play.
Pro Original design and gameplay
The minimalistic look of the game as well as the way the gameplay works is quite original while still staying intuitive.
Pro 2D minimalistic "weaving" that requires thinking in 3d
While represented in 2D the puzzle solving aspect of the game requires thinking in terms of "levels" as one would while weaving.
Cons
Con Lack of story leaves the player wanting
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.
Con Short for its price
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).
Con Focuses less on its main selling point near middlegame
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.
Con Playing it literally hurts my eyes
Good lord the art director ought to have done a better job.
Con Too easy if you figure out the pattern
The pattern behind the puzzles isn't the simplest, but if you can figure it out, you can solve any of the puzzles quickly.
Con Includes in app purchases
Strata is an upfront paid game at $2.99 which is why it is disappointing to see that in app purchases later apply.
Con No level generator
Even though the levels could easily be automatically generated, there is no level generator.
Con Short
The game can be beaten in about six and a half hours, which is really not all that long for a PC game. Of course originally this was a mobile phone game, which shows its roots in the length.