As the debut game for developer Stubby Games,The Entropy Centrewas a unique physics-based, time-bending puzzle-adventure game that created a fascinating story tying its mechanics directly into the plot. Despite being anindie gamefrom a one-man team,The Entropy Centreoffers solid visuals and a wealth of gameplay variety that keeps its puzzles fresh and challenging. Combined with the trope of an amnesiac protagonist and a mystery to uncover in medias res, its story is equally engaging.
WhileThe Entropy Centrehas plenty of qualities that help it stand out, even before release it had drawn comparisons to similar games likePortalor theinfluential indie hitBraid. It’s likelyThe Entropy Centrewas influenced by these titles to help jumpstart development given the developer’s size, but the game’s story and take on time-bending mechanics elevate it beyond other puzzle games. By unifying story and gameplay,The Entropy Centreis an excellent example of harmonized design.
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The Entropy Centre’s Premise and Comparisons
The Entropy Centre’spremise is fairly straightforward, throwing the player directly into action. Waking up dazed and confused in a rundown facility, players take the role of Aria Adams alongside their quirky AI “Astra,” who is contained within a handheld entropy device - this game’s parallel toa portal gun from thePortalseriesthat instead rewinds time. Though the device and its ability to harvest entropy energy comes close to being a MacGuffin, it’s reflective of the center’s core objective to rewind time.
Specifically, The Entropy Centre is designed to be a safeguard for Earth, monitoring it from the moon to track impending disasters, rewind the planet’s timeline, and then transmit data back to humanity so that they can avert impending demise. When the player is introduced to this, the planet is in the middle of a cataclysm and the facility seems abandoned, leaving nobody to save Earth. From here,The Entropy Centrefocuses players on solving puzzlesto collect entropy energy and repair the facility to turn back the clock on Earth’s destruction.
Early into the game, any player could point out the parallels betweenThe Entropy Centreand similar titles.Portalcomparisons are abundant, including rundown abandoned scientific facilities, strange test chambers to solve, or physics-defying gun-like devices. Even Astra could be considered a chirpier AI counterpart to Wheatley or GLaDOS. Time reversal and exploiting this ability to solve puzzles is reminiscent ofBraid’stime mechanics, thoughThe Entropy Centreexpands this beyond rewinding everything on-screen.
What Makes The Entropy Centre Different
The Entropy Centreserves is a better example of how story and gameplay can inform one another than some of its contemporaries. For instance,Portaland its defining features like GLaDOSor Aperture Labs don’t directly tie into the portal mechanics beyond serving as the subject of one research project at the facility, whileBraid’stime manipulation is hardly connected to a story about obsession and abuse. Meanwhile,The Entropy Centre’s time-reversal mechanic is directly connected to its plot, which allows its plot to capitalize on the game’s relationship with time.
Though Aria and Astra are able to successfully rewind the Earth, it’s revealed that this isn’t their first time doing so. As an explanation for center’s derelict condition, Aria’s memory loss, and Earth’s destruction, players can piece together that Earth’s destruction is inevitable, meaning the overuse of rewinding time can’t save it anymore. With the central focus of the game being about reversing time, Aria rewinds Earth regardless, knowing it will force herinto a time loop.
The Entropy Centreis available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
