The chamber of (scientific) secrets

Whilst Antichamber is not the studio where The Biggest Loser was recorded, it is a Portal-branded puzzle game that has been on my pile of shame for some time. As is customary in the genre, we have to wrap our heads around the puzzle and come up with absurd solutions so that, at the end, we can proudly proclaim that we were clever enough to solve the puzzle, while skillfully ignoring the fact that we are still much dumber than the actual programmers who not only came up with the whole thing, but also cast it in playable form.

The soundtrack to Antichamber also falls into the genre-typical category of minimalist background chatter that accompanies the brainteasers as characterlessly as possible in order to avoid being too distracting. The instrumentalization follows the path of the first Portals , so to speak, which is why uninspired synth chords waft towards the listener over long periods. They lack the kind of exciting element found in No Man’s Sky , for example, which is musically in the same vein, or 7 Billion Humans, which exudes its own charm.

Instead, the result is a score lasting just over three hours, whose tracks have an average duration of 14 minutes and the entertainment value of cosmic noise. In fact, only in The Garden we hear a panpipe - the fact that I mention this fact here should be indication enough of how little variety Antichambers 's soundtrack has. Of course, as always, this says nothing about the quality of the actual game. But I can freely say about the music: Don't bother!