The Quixotic Engineer

A discerning few of you may have noticed the distinct lack of major game releases post-Christmas. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest; I’m still savouring the haul from the Fall. However, if you’re looking for something new and different to play, I have a few suggestions from the world of indie gaming that are definitely worth your time.

Tag: The Power of Paint [PC]

Tag is a game designed by a group of students at DigiPen, and was a winner at the 2009 IGF Student Showcase. It’s a first person puzzle game wrapped in a shooter, along the lines of Portal. You are equipped with a paint gun, which you use not only to colour the bleak greyscale cityscape but also to explore the game space. Painting a surface green makes it bouncy, red increases your speed and blue allows you to stick to walls.

The video embedded above is a developer walkthrough of the entire game. I urge you to watch only as far as you need to be convinced that this game is brilliant, then go download and play it for yourself. It may lack the polish, setting and dark humour of Portal, but, used in concert, the three paint abilities are just as mind-bending as the portal gun.

Gravity Bone [PC]

I highly recommend playing the game before reading further, it’s very difficult to say anything meaningful about Gravity Bone without spoiling the fun.

That being said, better writers have already gotten to the heart of what makes the game so delightful. I particularly like Duncan’s take on the matter:

The game asserts the existence of a deeper fiction and plot threads that will never be resolved. It establishes a pace of simple, episodic missions, and ends before anyone would predict. Gravity Bone is a 300-page novel that ends on page 60. Because the art style is so charming and pronounced, players might think that that’s the big attraction and therefore the extent of the game’s creativity. Gravity Bone’s purpose is to manipulate expectations by cutting them short, which is why it’s effective at all. Everyone who plays Gravity Bone gets played by Gravity Bone. If you remember the debate over Portal’s shortness from a year and a half ago, the consensus was that Portal’s brevity was beneficial. Here, it’s essential.

Like No More Heroes and You Have To Burn The Rope, Gravity Bone subverts assumptions that are so fundamental to the fabric of gaming that veteran gamers cease to notice them altogether. In this case, the assumption is that the main character’s narrative arc and the player’s learning arc define the length of the game. However, as Kieron Gillen put it: “The hero could always be shot before his adventure starts, and the illusion of games arc is always that – just an illusion.”

Spelunky [PC]

Spelunky caught my eye when John Harris wrote about it in his fascinating @Play column at GameSetWatch. In the words of creator Derek Yu: “My goal was to create a fast-paced platform game that had the kind of tension, re-playability, and variety of a roguelike.” You must guide your little Indiana Jones downwards through procedurally generated dungeons, struggling both to survive and to escape with as much treasure as you can grab.

I was born too late to participate in the golden age of Nethack, and my interest in the roguelike genre is still largely theoretical. They fascinate me as intricate game systems, even if I have little experience actually playing them. However, by wrapping a roguelike in the familiarity of a 2D platformer, I think Spelunky reduces the barrier of entry for newcomers like me. Most importantly, it does so without compromising the elements that define the genre. Deaths come quickly and mercilessly, resource management is key, and loitering is discouraged by means of a ghostly time limit.

If you’re one of the many bloggers who fell in love with Shiren the Wanderer, I strongly urge you to give Spelunky a shot.

Treelings [Flash]

Finally, friend and fellow Canadian blogger Nels Anderson put together a short game at the Vancouver chapter of Global Game Jam. It’s incredibly polished for a game that was made entirely within 48 hours, check out how the main character moves around while idle and how the vine blossoms as you ascend. Kudos to Nels and his team!

There you have it: four innovative indie games that can be played in the span of an afternoon. Happy gaming!