Tag Archives: Indie Game

An Impression of 140

Melding music and game play is an interesting area of game development which games such as Crypt of the NecroDancer, Beat Buddy, and Guitar Hero, have explored. Whilst exploring my own shamefully large collection of untouched games on Humble Bundle I happened upon the game 140 which makes its own contribution to this area.

140_game_logo

With lead designer Jeppe Carlson, (co-designer of the well know title Limbo) 140 was created by Carlson Games. Paraphrasing Jeppe, he describes 140 as an old school platformer, where the challenge is in syncing up your moves, and jumps to the music controlled elements.

After a short time with 140 I thought to briefly note my impressions of the game.

Disclaimer – This is not a  thorough review, but notes of an impression based on approximately 20 minutes of game play. Everyone is fallible.

Impression Notes

  • On launching 140, the first thing that hit me was its minimalist art style. Its distinctive color scheme made it easy to identify puzzle patterns, and game elements.
  • In 140, music is at the heart of its game-play with appropriately pulsating background, and game elements used with rhythm based mechanics to make interesting puzzles.
  • 140 relies on players exploration of controls as I noticed no traditional tutorial which can be fine. Although some helpful information based on monitoring of the game state is good e.g explain to jump or move if a player hasn’t moved for a long time.
  • Like other titles in this area 140 suffers slightly from issues of repetitive music. This issue I believe essentially stems from player progression which is something hard to control. I felt this game handled this issue well by splitting music into short levels.

140_game_elements

  • The difficulty of the game quickly ramps up, likely making it less accessible to the casual gamer. On the other hand though, this meant 140 presented more challenging puzzles, which is delight for some. It’s good that the creators of 140 realized the game difficulty, and employed frequent checkpoints through out the game.
  • 140 bravely deviates off a more traditional pattern of game mastery by transitioning to a hail shooter from a rhythm based platformer at the first boss fight. I found the hail shooter boss encounter to be a disproportionately high increase in difficulty from the challenges before. The encounter left me frustrated (maybe I just sucked bad). Perhaps an easier encounter, or a series of checkpoints through the boss encounter would have been preferable.
  • Raph Koster said ‘noise is patterns we don’t understand’, and so it felt appropriate that the ‘death blocks’ were static noise. 140s creators took this concept even further during the first boss fight as static noise breaks down into music.
First Boss Fight
First Boss Fight
  • Like other titles in this area of game development, 140 suffers from issues of repetitive music. This issue I believe essentially stems from player progression which is something hard to control. 140 tackled this issue well by shortening levels, and splitting up music into those levels.
  • I liked how the levels key (item objective) was innately tied to the next level through music. When hearing the keys music was excited thinking about how it would later manifest itself as a mechanic.

Conclusion

All in all I enjoyed 140, being a nicely designed little gem it was a happy little surprise. Budding game designers should definitely give it a play as its a game well focused on how to meld music, and game-play.

Thrillseeker – Game Jam Project

Thrillseeker is a game jam submission on the theme “You Are Your Own Worst Enemy” designed and created by my friend Sangseo Lee and I. The core mechanic of the game is that whilst flying close to passing asteroids gives you a higher score, doing so greatly increases your chance of crashing. It’s like Burnout in that the player is rewarded for high risk game play.

thrillseeker
In-Game Screenshot

To play it, download this zip file and run the executable inside (it’s a GameMaker exe file)!

Immunity – Game Jam Project

immunity

White blood cells play a vital role for our health, without them we’d be easy pickings to the likes of even the common cold. Play a moment in the life of a white blood cell and battle against an ever growing hordes of viruses and protect the red blood cells to keep your heart beating. Even better, do it with a friend! Happy hunting!

Immunity is a coop game that I worked on with Sangseo Lee, for the Global Game Jam 2013 at Edinburgh. It took second place in the local competition and was noted by the judges for best design. At the moment it’s written in Java using the Slick framework and can run on Windows, Linux, Mac and Solaris. Check it out at the Global Game Jam website here!

No One Has To Die

No One Has to Die’s comments on Newgrounds read “4 people are trapped in a building fire and need your help to escape”, now I’ve finished playing it, looking back it’s the tip of the iceberg… an awesome iceburg.

no-one-has-to-die-logo

An hour or so in length, this indie game manages to pack quite the punch. It isn’t particularly difficult and it’s not designed to be. The simplicity of its gameplay and mechanics, peel back to reveal the complexity one feels in considering the consequences of those simple choices, which in turn furthers the narrative in a ‘player-driven’ manner.

no-one-has-to-die

It’s art style is simple, functional, colorful and doesn’t detract from the game. The music is top notch, working well to build up an atmosphere in tune with what’s happening in-game. The writing of characters is good and given the length of game it’s enough to start to get a ‘feel’ for them.

No-One-Has-To-Die

All in all No One Has to Die is a thought provoking puzzle over life and death. Its great moments and emotional highs and lows leaves one with a joyously sweet aftertaste. This is one indie gem, is well worth your time.

So what are you waiting for! Play it!