under the microscope with flow and art style: rotozoa

flow	art style: rotozoa

thatgamecompany has gotten loads of acclaim for their 2012 PSN game journey, so i thought i’d see what they hype was all about and start with their first game, flow, originally released online as a USC grad student project in flash. the game is stylish to be sure, and the gameplay is easy to understand: direct a snake-like microscopic organism and eat other creatures to expand your body. the gameplay is simple and a runthrough of the main experience can be completed in less than an hour. i got bored in a fraction of that time, though, and i agree with gamespot’s review of the PSN version which said it lacked “a lasting gameplay experience” and that “the aesthetics clearly take precedence over all else” and that “not everyone is going to have interest in spending money on a game that’s equivalent to an attractive screen saver you can steer”. although i’m all for “artsy” video games, i wasn’t particularly taken with this one, although i liked the concept of ascending and descending layers (like floors of a building) in order to reach the goal. i’m pretty surprised that they stretched the original flash game to a PSN title that pretty much just seems to add tilt controls and new creatures to play as (and of course, a slew of achievements of varying degrees of pointlessness), but even more surprising is that that version has 4.5 stars (user rated) on the PSN page and a price tag of $6. the reviews on metacritic give perhaps a better sense of the range of reactions, but for my part i find myself wishing there was more substance as opposed to just pure style.

i actually played the game several months ago, but thought it was too short to devote a whole post to. for completely different reasons i played through the bulk of art style: rotozoa (aka art style: penta tentacles). i’ve been documenting my gradual survey of the series, although up to now i’ve been playing mostly puzzle games on my DSi XL. rotozoa is a wiiware release, and unlike the other games in the series i’ve played is an action/arcade game rather than a puzzle game.

from far away the game looks somewhat similar to flow (and i’m def. just one of many who has noted it) in that you’re a little microscopic organism feeding on smaller creatures and growing in size. in the main mode of rotozoa it’s your tentacles that are growing, though, and the game starts with you having to grow two different-colored tentacles to a certain length, with the ability to both move your little organism and rotate clockwise or counter-clockwise. the higher levels increase your tentacles to three, four, and finally five (each a different color), and the behaviors of the creatures you’re feeding on (“goobugs”) get increasingly difficult to manage so that at the highest levels the goobugs intentionally try to hit you from the side opposite to their matching color tentacle.

as can be expected from being a part of art style series, the game glows with its clean, cool aesthetic. the visuals are eye-catching although a little on the simple side (although understandable given that it’s a wiiware release), and the music is suitably hypnotic. the game is more like the classic video game snake (which according to wikipedia has roots that go even further back) than flow in that the longer your tentacles get the harder it is to match the right tentacle with the right colored goobug. although the gameplay itself is fairly worthwhile, i didn’t find it to be nearly as addictive as the puzzle games in the series. i was never that big on snake type games anyway, although this game probably beats out the other snake-like game i played recently, the “square” mode of maboshi’s arcade, another wiiware title. the game is easy to get into, but at higher levels starts to fall into the “more frustrating than fun” category, and getting the “all complete” achievement for each level (no damage and no special moves) looks like by all accounts to be a lesson in self-masochism. still, there’s a decent variety of modes, and the gameplay is pretty solid for people looking to tackle a challenge that requires precision and patience. overall this is an example of a game that combines style with substance and doesn’t sacrifice gameplay for aesthetics.

get under the microscope with these art style: rotozoa links:
– glowing review at nintendolife.com
– entry at wikipedia
– some info on unlocking the second and third sets of credits

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minimalistic art style: base 10

another short game. i’m a big fan of puzzle games, esp. tetris-like games, and even with my high standards i’ve been consistently impressed with nintendo’s art style series, a collection of often retro-inspired puzzle games that appeared on the DSi eshop and wiiware (and were preceded by the closely related bit generations series on GBA) with a small file size but intensely creative and addictive gameplay, and true to the series’ name, a stylish presentation. the next one i had lined up was art style: base 10, which is the third release on the DSi that i’ve played.

the gameplay of base 10 is easy to describe, but a bit hard to appreciate unless you’ve experienced it (i’m surprised nintendo didn’t put out a trailer for this game since it doesn’t look like much from static images, but check out this video for a sample of the gameplay). basically you’re presented with a set of numbers like on a calculator and you have to select groups connected horizontally or vertically that add up to 10. it starts off with just the numbers 1 and 2, but you can flip the 2 in any direction with an adjacent number to form a 5, although 1s aren’t horizontally flippable (if you look at a 1 on a calculator you’ll see that the 1 part would move to the left side of the LCD box, and the game regards this as being an invalid number). so already you have multiple ways of clearing pieces (e.g. 5 + 5, 5 + 2 + 2 + 1, 5 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1, etc.) and moves that will render numbers (in this case just 1s) invalid. the game has a nice progression, where every level in the standard mode includes the next number (so level 2 features numbers 1, 2, and 3). 3s are like 1s and are vertically but not horizontally flippable, but 4s can only ever be oriented one way. 5s are as versatile as 2s, as are 6s and 9s, whereas 8s and 0s are usable wherever you might move them to.

clearing the main (“target”) mode isn’t that hard once you’ve gotten used to the mechanics. every level is standalone and the game records your high scores for each, but what makes the game more worthwhile in this mode and the endless mode is trying to create combos (by linking sums of 10, domino style), and clearing an entire row at once, both of which presumably provide bonus points. i’m not that big on chasing high scores, and once you’ve mastered the mechanics it’s not very hard to get pretty high up in endless mode. the vs. mode would be more worthwhile, but i haven’t had a chance to try that out yet.

the real time sink to the game, though, is the puzzle mode. this is like other games’ puzzle modes where you have a limited number of moves to clear the board, and here the freedom of options in the main modes works against you since there are so many options of how to move the pieces around. because of this blind shuffling won’t get you very far and you’ll have to sit down and actually use logic to figure out the solution. because of the depth of these puzzles, this is actually the centerpiece of the game instead of the main mode, unlike most other games of this type. although i do like logic puzzles now and then they’re not my favorite type of game, so i didn’t put in too much time into them.

although i appreciate the elegance and ingenuity of the core gameplay, which seemingly effortlessly presents an interesting, unique, and addictive mechanic, the main mode is just a bit too easy once you’ve mastered the mechanics. it would have been nice to have had an option to select the speed in the endless mode, or have harder levels that consisted of harder combinations of numbers or placed more emphasis on combos (e.g. you have to make combos to eliminate numbers). the presentation is clean and works fine, but it’s a bit too minimalistic and could have been a little more engaging. overall a stylish and enjoyable puzzle game, but should be appreciated more by casual players or people who love logic puzzles.

minimal set of art style: base 10 links:
– page at nintendo.com
– review at nintendolife
– entry at metacritic

more art and style with art style: aquia

i thoroughly enjoyed my first of the art style series, art style: pictobits, and i “finished” playing through another entry recently, art style: aquia. although pictobits made great use of classic 8-bit NES sprites and music, aquia follows the more lumines aesthetic that more of the rest of the series has used. although lumines has influenced a whole generation of puzzle games with its hypnotic techno aesthetic, many of them are forgettable and, frankly, not much fun to play. neither of those could be said about aquia, though. its aesthetic is clean, attractive, and, well, stylish, as is its soundtrack (much of which is generated from the user’s actions). but an equal draw is the gameplay itself, which offers a unique spin on typical match-3 puzzle mechanics to create something thoroughly fresh. for a run-down of the game mechanics, check out the review at nintendolife.

i’ve played many a puzzle game by now, and if you’ve read my blog you’ll see that i consider the only real challenger to tetris for the title of greatest puzzle game to be the games in the panel de pon, aka tetris attack, aka puzzle league series, thanks to its deep combo/chain system. aquia proves to be, if not quite a contender, certainly a worthy runner up, because although it does have a combo system, the game is so fast paced that you’ll end up simply focusing on finding matches as quickly as possible. i really haven’t had much interest in puzzle games that don’t require a more cerebral element, but this game is incredibly well designed and its presentation is supremely polished, and its progression of difficulties (horizontal shape to vertical shape to square) and progression of levels using the same shape (a new color gets added every other stage) is so mathematically elegant that the game as a whole is supremely satisfying to play, not to mention wicked addictive. and make no mistake: the game’s mechanics do take some time to master, and randomly moving pieces around will never get you very far. (although i wasted a lot of time making the game harder for myself b/c i didn’t realize for a while that you can rotate the colors in the blocks with a press of a button.) also, in a not atypical nintendo fashion the first of the three shapes, while the easiest to understand, is the hardest to play through.

with all this gushing it should come as no surprise that the game has earned a place on my list of greatest games of all time, the first DSiware title to do so and the first game of this year. once i mastered the game’s mechanics i didn’t really feel like playing more would make me a better player (unlike the puzzle league games, which always make me feel like there’s more to master), but the game is so enjoyable to play that i could easily spend more hours just being hypnotized by the gameplay and the soundtrack. in any case, time to download my next art style game and see if anything else in the series comes close to surpassing this one.

more art and style with these art style: aquia links:
– page on nintendo’s official site
– trailer on youtube which will also give you a taste of the game’s killer music
– entry at metacritic
– entry at wikipedia

stylish art style: pictobits

although i haven’t gotten fully into it, it’s pretty clear that the DSi shop is an absolute treasure trove of addictive puzzle games. not too long ago i zipped through number battle in just a few marathon sessions, and this week i had a similar experience with art style: pictobits.

this was the first art style game i’d spent a significant amount of time with, and as most people know by now a trademark of the series is the top-notch presentation. with its NES trappings, including pixel art and classic remixed 8-bit tunes, the game is an easy sell for retro junkies like myself, but it was also fascinating to see how the core concept of the fairly forgettable early game boy title quarth has become completely reworked into an essential experience. you can read about the mechanics more in other reviews, such as this one at nintendolife.com, but suffice it to say that the combo system is quite nearly as satisfying as the puzzle league games.

i had a somewhat unusual trajectory with this game, where i really enjoyed the first half and mastering the mechanics, but playing through the hard mode actually made me less enamored with the overall experience (perhaps not coincidentally, i had a similar experience with the punishingly difficult pokemon puzzle league). in typical nintendo fashion the game isn’t artificially stuffed with levels, and although the game mechanics stay the same throughout, many of the levels, especially late in the game’s hard mode, provide wholly unique experiences. the problem was that the game’s “difficulty” started to become a distraction. it seems that other reviewers have also noted the game’s difficulty, and although it can’t help but sound a bit whiny to complain about it, in the final levels the speed at which you have to perform starts to erode at the game’s fun. the mental act of making chains (and getting higher scores) is already satisfying enough, so an option to choose a playing speed would have been welcome. if this had been a full retail title the inclusion of a vs. mode might have allowed for the single player mode to be a bit less obnoxious, so maybe we’ll see a better balance if there’s ever a sequel. in any case, although the game just barely missed a spot on my “greatest games of all time” list, i’m definitely hoping that this isn’t the last we’ve seen of this gem of a puzzle game.

check out these stylish art style: pictobits links:
– page at nintendo.com
– craig harris’s review for IGN. i absolutely agree with his comment that it’s “an extremely unique action puzzle game that could only work on a system with precise, pinpoint controls like the Nintendo DS and its stylus driven touch screen”.
– entry at mariowiki.com
– video of all of the completed pixel art
– entry at wikipedia