Life Goes On: Done to Death

Death has always been used a core mechanic in gaming, typically as punishment and a definitive indication that yes, you sure did miss that jump. This is not always a Game Over scenario; upon death in platformers like Super Meat Boy, you quickly spawn back in and try again. The entire survival horror genre, and the rise of the Dark Souls series, are based on nigh-inevitable death. A small group of Canadian indie devs have taken another approach, and used the deaths of a battalion’s worth of adorable, misled and forsaken knights as the sole tool in the toolbox for players to solve their puzzler, Life Goes On: Done to Death. This irreverent release is light on story and far from morbid, and proposes some interesting puzzling situations. It’s somehow both simple, and not.

Unravel

From a tumbling ball of cotton yarn a hero is birthed. Yarny is the aptly and unimaginatively named embodiment of Unravel’s central themes; bravery, persistence, and a desire to connect. While these aren’t very directly communicated through the game, they do lend some weight and meaning to this puzzler, in case that’s what you’re after. Traverse beautiful landscapes, listen to stunning music and piece together a story of memories and the passing of time. And lots of drowning.

Agatha Christie – The ABC Murders

 

Designing any interactive media that pits the player as an ingenious and brilliant detective while retaining a sense of free will would be, I’d expect, rather difficult. To suggest the player should commandeer this genius agent of deduction and carry out an investigation in any credible way without holding their hand would be to assume they already possess genius skills of deduction. To take that hand and lead them through a string of scenes to marvel at this character’s glorious intellect would be to create a lifeless work ill suited to the medium. Agatha Christie – The ABC Murders (2016) does very well to include the player on a linear tale of murder by designing a loophole of a game mechanic; the flesh of the game is not in possessing Agatha Christie’s famous detective Hercule Poirot, but in directing his subconscious in pursuit of a serial killer.

The Bridge console release this month

An infinite loop. Classic Herbert…

Dazzling 2D logic puzzle game The Bridge is making the jump to console this week, and we’re excited for the chance to revisit the gravity-defying and troubled life of Herbert- I mean of the fictional Isaac Newton, as he traverses the magnificent and ridiculous rooms of his mansion. The beautiful black and white lithograph art style is integrated perfectly into the gameplay itself, and two and a half years after first experiencing it, this title has left a lasting impression as a must-play brain teaser.

The Bridge will be available first for Xbox One on August 14th, then for PS3, PS4, PS Vita and Ouya on August 18th, and for Wii U on August 20th. I’ll be picking it up on PS4 next Tuesday, how will you be crossing The Bridge?

For more information on The Bridge and the legendary independent team responsible for it, check out this site.

For the ever-eloquent review for the PC version we wrote back in 2013, follow this link!

Particulars

Particulars is a unique title and brand new poster child for well-rounded independent games. It demonstrates the capability of independent developers to create a moving story, believable, relatable characters, as well as amusing, functional gameplay with focused direction and honest creativity. I’ll have to justify my use of a lot of the words in that last sentence, but I suppose that’s what all these other words down here are for. While Particulars won’t be earning mainstream Game of the Year awards, SeeThrough Studios have done amazing work on this title, so I’m more than happy to affirm my appreciation. Go you, people!

Project Temporality

Independent games were once renowned for the extra effort invested in original plot, characters and at least an attempt at interesting dialogue, while triple-A titles pushed forward interesting gameplay concepts. With big-name developers now competing to see who can be as derivative as possible, we rely on independents to conceive gaming elements intriguing enough to prevent the gaming world from becoming an industry-servicing industry, pumping out bland, generally acceptable titles that appeal to wider audiences to maximise sales, using the profits from last year’s sequel-fest bland-o-rama.

Project Temporality investigates some potential game-saving concepts but is one of the most derivative independent titles in regards to the extra-curricular gaming elements that we’ve ever seen. Somewhere along the line, tables have turned.

Nihilumbra

Early last year, I heard about an iOS puzzle-platformer with an impossible to pronounce yet attractively mysterious name and my interest was instantly piqued.  As you might assume given the title of this post, that game was Nihilumbra and as often happens, it ended up being one of those games that I was always curious about but never got around to playing. Needless to say, when I found out it was being ported to PC and I’d be reviewing it I got interested all over again, and I will confess to walking around telling everyone I know  that I was reviewing it, just so that I could say the name in a slightly wistful voice. Trust me, it added to my enjoyment of the whole thing.  Not that the game didn’t do a fine job of that by itself.

The Bridge

The Bridge is a neat little puzzler that demands similar levels of mind-bending-ness as Portal and Antichamber, with the average player probably spending a lot of time staring at their screen struggling to work out how to progress at particular points. Hopefully, otherwise I’ve embarrassed myself. There’s at least five hours of gameplay to be worked from a single playthrough of the whole game and I doubt there is any room for replayability since the satisfaction of outsmarting a puzzle can hardly be replicated when you already know the answers. That’s not all The Bridge offers though, with an aesthetic appeal and aura of intrigue guaranteeing that this little title stands out from the crowd of indie-puzzlers.

Gateways

The following article is not a game review, but a public service announcement. Gateways is, hands down, the single most brain-meltingly difficult game that I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing. I thought I’d played some pretty tricky ones in the past, but this latest title from Adventures of Shuggy developer Smudged Cat Games goes above and beyond what most people, myself included, would consider a “hard game”. Should you attempt to play Gateways, your brain will end up leaking from your nostrils into a soggy pile of neural mush, while you tear your hair out and scratch the skin off your face with your stumpy fingertips (you’ve already chewed through your nails). Don’t get me mixed up, Gateways isn’t hard in the same sense as the Mega Man series, in which the difficulty lies in carefully timed jumps and acrobatic D-pad control – rather, it’s a puzzler at heart, with a Metroid-esque overall feel to give you continuity between the puzzles, as well as a justifiable reason to present you with powerups. And it’s got portals.

A Virus Named TOM

A Virus Named TOM. What a strange name for a video game. Maybe I’m just to used to names like Painkiller, Max Payne, Dead Space, you get the drift, but A Virus Named TOM immediately grabbed my attention with its odd title. You’d be forgiven if you weren’t exactly sure what to expect when you read that one in the Steam New Releases list. However, as they say, a rose by any other name is just as sweet.  This game could have just as easily been called DeathKiller 3000, yet it wouldn’t change the game in the package. It wouldn’t make sense though. But it’s not my job to waffle on (actually, it kind of is), so let’s get to the meat of the review.