Arranger’s clever puzzles will have you rearranging your schedule to play

I first encountered Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure at the Netflix booth during Summer Game Fest. Within moments of settling in with the demo, I was struck by the game’s clarity of conceit and purpose. You’re a little girl named Jemma, who, as she moves across a tiled world of columns and rows, moves objects with her. Puzzle shenanigans involving — if you’ll pardon the pun — arranging objects will undoubtedly ensue.

Arranger is an “Oh… oh!” kind of puzzle game. It is deceptively simple, with clear objectives no more complicated than “use the pressure switch to unlock the door.” But the game’s simplicity of presentation obscures cleverly designed puzzles that tested my spatial awareness to its absolute limit, and I loved every second of it. 

Early in the game, I was in an empty room with a pressure plate and a blocked door. Standing on the plate naturally unblocked the door, but when I moved off the plate, it slammed shut in my face. I tried every which way of arranging (sorry, this is gonna happen a lot) myself, thinking I could quickly hop off the plate and into the open door before it shut —but to no avail. Frustrated, I went back out the way I came thinking I’d missed some key item from an NPC, and by the doorway… there were two potted plants.

Before I entered that room, those potted plants were a throwaway decoration. Coming out, I immediately gleaned their purpose. Playing Arranger feels like the first time a baby discovers that the square block goes into the square hole. That’s not to say the game is too easy; rather, it’s like you can feel yourself learning a new thing in real time. That spark of recognition, that eureka moment, is a priceless jolt of excitement that happens early and often.

When I’m playing, the click of the tiles as Jemma moves gets slower as I mutter “I think I got this” the closer I get to the objective. I know what has to happen. To beat this centipede boss, I must shove its spiky tail into its eye, but for every tile the tail gets closer, the eye moves a tile away like in a game of Snake. But there are stones in the boss arena, and I can wedge the centipede around the stones and…

As rewarding as those moments are, though, they also work in reverse. The game’s antagonist is an affliction called “the static.” Objects affected by it essentially act as barriers. Jemma can’t move them the way she can other things, so if they’re in her way, she has to figure out a way to go around them. The static also spawns path-blocking monsters that can only be defeated if you push a sword into its space. A lot of Arranger’s puzzles involve moving a sword, Jemma, or mission-critical items around “static’d” objects.

In one puzzle, I had to reassemble the pieces of a broken record, rotating the record around and filling each hole. Seemed easy enough. But when Jemma moves, every movable object on the same axis moves with her. So when I pushed in the last piece, another piece on the opposite side popped right out.

A lot of the game’s puzzles start off just like that, easy right up until the end, when the curveball comes out of nowhere. But believe it or not, those moments felt good, too. With the record puzzle, once I saw that piece pop out, I started giggling. It was a feeling akin to putting your Crocs in “sport mode.” This puzzle was harder than I expected, time to lock in. (And don’t worry, there are settings that let you skip puzzles if they’re too hard, settings to make puzzles harder, and a multiplayer mode that lets a friend move stuff, too.)

Though Arranger is a puzzle game, it effectively uses its mechanics to build an interesting world and tell a sweet story. Jemma’s movement ability makes her unique, and she goes on an adventure to find others like her, using her powers for good along the way. When Jemma reaches the end of a row or column, she warps around to the other end. She uses that feature to bust out a teenager trapped in their locked room by strict parents by simply pushing them into the opposite wall. In another area, she saves a town whose inhabitants have become moribund in their homes because they relied too much on communicating via blue mechanical birds.

Arranger is the video game equivalent of a book you’d take with you on a beach vacation — perfect for your Switch, Steam Deck, or tablet. It’s pleasantly short — I’m in the final area, and I’ve played around four to five hours total. If you’re adventurous, you can extend that playtime by completing the optional puzzles scattered throughout. I love this little game unlike anything I’ve played recently.

To really drive home how charmingly seductive Arranger is, let me leave you with a short story. It was 11PM on a weekday night. I decided to play some Arranger before heading to bed — nothing more than 30–45 minutes tops. When I put down my Switch to check the time, it was 1:51AM. Two hours had passed and I didn’t even feel it. Moreover, I didn’t care. A game hasn’t done that to me, even ones I’ve adored, in recent or distant memory. I felt like a kid again. Give Arranger the chance to do that to you.

Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure is out now on Switch, PlayStation, PC, and mobile via Netflix.