Back in February, Airtight Games creative director Kim Swift told us that she wanted Quantum Conundrum to play like a Saturday-morning cartoon - lighthearted with a slapstick edge, similar to Looney Tunes or Cartoon Network programming. This may be why I found it so unnerving that Quantum Conundrum reminded me more of Fight Club than any kid-friendly cartoons.

The standard-edition DVD of 2002's Fight Club has a looping menu that plays a round of light, elevator-style percussion music while the screen flickers invitingly on the Play button; this lasts just long enough to lull the passive listener into a false sense of tranquility, before it smashes into a measure of jarring electrical guitar and pulsating images for a few terrible seconds. Then the screen clears, and the torture repeats.

One night in my wayward youth, I fell asleep watching this Fight Club DVD. For hours after the movie had finished and returned to the menu, I would be jolted awake just enough to know nothing about what was going on, only to immediately fall back asleep once the soothing interlude picked up again. For hours. It was disorienting, sinister and, looking back on it, kind of hilarious.

Quantum Conundrum's soundtrack may be similar to Fight Club's menu screen's, but the game itself rides those same waves of frustration, persistence and disjointed comedy - the game is lovely, but the story is jarring. Some of its story elements are almost funny, some of the narrative almost make sense, all of it almost reaches a realm of lucid clarity. And yes, it does this for hours.