Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure is a puzzle masterpiece

Like most games, Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure starts with a title screen — but developer Furniture & Mattress gave its introductory screen a bit of a twist. The title screen pops up when you click “Start Game,” but it’s not yet the name of the game at all. At first glance, it’s not a word at all: GER ARRAN. When you start to touch buttons — flicking your analog stick to the left, for instance — it all becomes clear. This is the title screen, but it’s also a tutorial on how to play the game. Move your joystick four times to the left and you’ll see it: Arranger. A new pathway opens up, and the game has begun.

Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure is, as the name suggests, both a role-playing game and a puzzle game; it’s out Thursday on Nintendo Switch, mobile via Netflix, PlayStation 5, and Windows PC. In it, you’ll take on the role of Jemma, a magical misfit who’s taking a journey outside the small town where she’s grown up. But the whole world is one big shuffle puzzle, where Jemma travels by moving tiles around the labyrinthian grid. At the edge of the board, Jemma can loop around to the other side of any given row or column, given there’s nothing in the way. It may sound complicated, but the core premise is pretty easy to understand, given the chance to test it out. That’s why Arranger’s title screen is so clever: It tells you everything you need to know before heading out into its world.

From that moment at the start, Jemma is subjected to a simple tutorial of sorts where you’re able to test out the possibilities of the world. When something’s blocking your way, for instance, you’re able to loop around to the other side of the grid. Try to picture this: Three tiles are in a horizontal line. Jemma is on the rightmost tile and an immovable tree stump is in the middle. To get to the left side of the stump, you move the analog stick once to the right, which loops Jemma to the left of the stump. This mechanic works both horizontally and vertically.

The rules of movement never change in Arranger, but Furniture & Mattress iterates on the idea throughout the game. Early on, it adds a sword to the mix — the puzzle is figuring out how to get the sword to the static monster you’re fighting. The first boss battle pushes the idea again: The big ol’ sword is “attached” to the monster, so they move together. How can you move the tiles on the board to wrap the creature around on itself? It leaves the game feeling challenging but not frustrating, because the logic is so consistent. There’s a humor to it, too: Sometimes, you have to take characters or other items with you, but sometimes, it’s just a product of chaotic movement.

The tile-shifting is not just something you do in the game — you can see its impact on the NPCs around you. A neighbor is fixing something using a ladder; in my attempt to reach something else, I pushed the ladder too far, and my neighbors wobbles to the ground with a crash. In another instance, I knocked over a paint bucket and tracked paint for a while. Oops! Elsewhere, I keep pulling potted plants around the world with me, and accidentally reorganizing the street signs that are supposed to guide me around town. It makes for these really satisfying aha moments that come from experimenting with how tiles move, even when it makes things messy. It’s a sudden jolt of relief, joy, and pride when something clicks within the chaos.

Unlike a traditional role-playing game, Jemma has nothing to upgrade, no armor to collect, and no swords to sheath. Everything she (and, by proxy, you) need is on the map, ready to be shifted into place. What you’re really collecting is knowledge of how movement works, and the way you can exploit it to get around obstacles or reach a new place. Each new area introduces some other iteration on the core idea of the game, pushing you to think around the movement problems. It lines up with Jemma’s story, too — one of self-discovery — in a way that makes the puzzles feel even more natural.

Put together and paired up with a well-written, sincere story, Arranger is a puzzle game that’s not to be missed — something that’s clear right from the moment you click start.

Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure will be released July 25 on Nintendo Switch, mobile via Netflix, PlayStation 5, and Windows PC. The game was reviewed on a Steam Deck using a download code provided by Furniture & Mattress. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.