While we typically don’t compare games often on this site, I have to say that this game can be simply described as the modern-day Portal experience. Stubby Games and Playstack have released The Entropy Centre to the world and I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes the puzzle community by storm! Including elements that we have become familiar with due to our time playing through the Portal series and throwing in a few unique aspects, especially the main ploy of the game with the time-manipulating device, was both risky and ingenious. The good news is, they definitely pulled it off and delivered a memorable title!

Story

After waking up with no memory, you find yourself in a living quarters area that seems to have been abandoned to the point that vegetation has grown. It isn’t long before you realize the entire facility you are in seems to be in the same state of disrepair! Once you make it a bit further into the facility, you come across an Entropy Time-Manipulation Device that quickly reveals itself to be a sentient AI named Astra.

After meeting your sentient, gun-shaped device, you will come across your first puzzle area and learn the basics. Getting no proper answers from Astra as you solve the first few areas and hearing an automated system send out warnings of a cataclysmic event about to take place on Earth, you will finally reach the main Entropy control room. Here you helplessly watch as the Earth’s cataclysmic event destroys it and your work begins to power up the Entropy device that this whole station is built around using to rewind Earth in time for them to stop the event from happening.

Unfortunately, the Entropy device doesn’t have enough power to take Earth back in time before the cataclysmic event! No worries, as Astra informs you that you can charge the device by solving more puzzles. This begins the journey through the facility where you will learn the truth behind what happened to the facility, where everybody went, and even some details you didn’t know you needed to know about.

Honestly, the story itself is pretty awesome, and when you learn some of the smaller details, which are learned through intels you find and… other means… you will know everything from why you have no memory to in-lore reasoning for replays of the game to make complete valid sense. There are also some notes that lead to some theoretical conclusions regarding what happened to everybody else that was on the Entropy Centre originally and such, but I’ll leave that part of the game for you to decide when you learn of it.

Gameplay

This game does a great job introducing the different elements in a gradual, do-it-yourself-first manner where everything you encounter is something you have faced before just slightly different or requiring you to think about it a bit differently. Starting with picking up a cube to place it on a button, followed by the first time manipulation strategically used, and on to the lore and puzzle elements throughout the game.

Essentially, your controls will consist of standard movement, jumping that isn’t high enough to get on top of the boxes, picking up boxes that are next to you and not blocked by anything, and reversing the time flow of various things. They make it abundantly clear that you can’t rewind a person with this tool, so you will have to focus on the environment and puzzle elements. At least when you are rewinding the boxes specifically, you will see the time pathway start appearing making it obvious the route that the box remembers. This helps you in some ways, but you don’t have to be looking at what you are rewinding once you start the rewind nor do you have to worry about the pathway between your tool and the object being blocked by anything.

When solving puzzles, you will have a bunch of things to work with. Some of what you would be familiar with are standard boxes, bridge boxes, jump pad boxes, and laser boxes. However, they also include unique elements such as tall boxes, fan winds, and literally broken debris. Your entropy tool can hold up to 38 seconds of memory per puzzle element, so keep that in mind when solving puzzles. The worst thing that happens is when you solve the whole thing but your box runs short on memory before it reaches the final button to open the door.

The puzzle-solving process for this game is kind of the same throughout. You figure out what you need to do to open the door, figure out how you will get yourself there, figure out which puzzle elements are needed to get you there and the door open, and then set it all up in reverse order. Basically, the final button to open the door should be where the box starts and the place you need it to be to start making your way to the door should be where the box ends. This lets you use the box, rewind it to the next checkpoint you need and use it again as needed, and then finally rewind it to the button or switch that opens the door while you are standing in front of it. Mind you, they have some puzzles that use the time limit against you and others that the process of which element the box needs to be can throw you off.

Right when you get comfortable with this process, the game adds an element that really changes the flow a bit; transformers. These are basically doorways that will change the element of a cube when it passes through. Luckily, all the elements are color-coded and so the transformers have the color associated with the cube element, but it changes the thought process and pathway creating a bit.

An important thing to keep in mind is that you can ONLY rewind the boxes. You can now move the boxes forward in their time path as once the memory seconds are used to rewind it, the pathway memory is lost. There are walls and windows that will make it impossible to hit a box with the tool through, so if you are working on a pathway for your box and you let go of the rewind while it is behind these, you will have to reset.

The last thing you need to know about are the little robots in the facility. While you have Astra, your entropy tool, and you meet E, a friendly facility bot, there seems to be a malfunction and the rest of the facility bots believe you to be a threat! There will be times when these bots will be chasing, attacking, and stopping you from progressing. You can fight back against the ones that hurl an electric ball at you as you can rewind the time on the ball and make it hit the robot. Other than that, your only options are to run, avoid, or use the robots themselves to destroy them as you can grab them from behind and throw them at other robots. There is one more way to fight them, but they are for specific moments and it would be more fun if you get introduced to that option in-game.

Audio and Visual

This has to be one of the most vibrant and colorful games I have played in a while. I’m not talking about neon and one of the punk variants that are out there for their own aesthetic style either. Having a base on the Moon would usually yield a creative to have a bunch of space themes around it, but instead, there is vegetation everywhere, some sections have beach-style scenery, the cubes are color-coded by purpose, and even the off-reality type sequences have their own amount of color. Sure, the water could have been a bit more impressive graphically speaking, but this game provides an aesthetic that just about anybody could enjoy. I especially like how cute all the little machines are, even when aggressive, and wouldn’t be surprised if we see little plushie versions of them in the near future!

Then the soundtrack to this game is so fitting as well. Some segments have softer, more background-style soundtracks while other segments have more active soundtracks. The music typically matches what is going on lore-wise and so you will get a fitting music track whether you are solving puzzles or escaping from danger. The voice work is very well done too with witty and caring dialogue between the two characters.

Replayability

A lot of these puzzles do seem to have the opportunity to be solved in more than one way. Sure, you could replay the game and just solve everything the same way, but there is room for more variations. I also tried to collect all the intels on my playthrough and fell short, so there have to be some hidden areas in the game to find as well. Lastly, as I said in the beginning, this game gives an in-lore reason to be replayed as well.

What It Could Have Done Better

It does bug me when things happen in the game that doesn’t make sense with the lore itself. They make a point that you don’t have leg protection so be sure to bend your knees, but I don’t care how well you bend your knees or are able to tuck and roll, some of the movements and falls would definitely have at least broken a normal person’s legs. That and the fact that the water graphical detail could be improved are all there is though.

Verdict

The Entropy Centre is the perfect puzzle game! It really gave me the same sensations and experience that I had the first time I played through the Portal series and I still regard that to be one of my favorite games out there. This game offers a large variety of puzzles with a wide variety of puzzle elements that prove that you can take the aspects of a game that people love and improve it with some modern, new ideas added on top. I sincerely hope to see a sequel to this game because even after completing this game, I want more! This is a must-have game that I strongly recommend to any puzzle fan out there to play.

The Entropy Centre is out now on PC via Steam, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.