Core Mechanic
The core mechanic of the game is centered around shooting special blocks to make them opaque or transparent. The player can move through transparent blocks and opaque blocks are solid so the player can stand on them.
A secondary mechanic that is important to mention is that fact that special blocks have no mass until they are transparent.
Finally there is a rainbow block that will teleport you to a specific location when you collide with it.
The mechanics of this game are simple to understand and can make for some very interesting puzzles in terms of level design.
Triggers/Enemy Placement
There are no enemies in the game, however there are spikes throughout the level. Spikes kill you when you touch them and will return you to the nearest checkpoint.
The placement of all special blocks is very precise, and everything is exactly where it needs to be for you to complete the level. It is up to you as a player to determine which blocks to shoot and in what order you do so. The placement and level design does a good job of teaching you the various challenges you may encounter in the future. There are also checkpoints located at the beginning of each challenge area, which are good because I don't even know how frustrating it might have been if I had to restart the whole level right before I got to the end.
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| A simple puzzle section from the game |
Challenge
The pace of the game is relatively slow, but for this game it's a good thing. The level begins and it is not possible to fail or die. After being introduced to the main mechanics, the challenge goes up slightly with the introduction of spikes, however it is still relatively easy to navigate. As the game progresses, it gets slightly more difficult. Overall the progression is very smooth and the difficulty scales at a very nice pace.
I only died a few times due to some silly mistakes I made like jumping and missing a shot at a block at the same time then falling to my death. The challenge in this game is mixed between overcoming your own impatience by thinking before you act, and some areas involve a little bit of twitch gameplay.
I think these two types of challenge make for a nicely balanced level and caters to people who enjoy puzzle games, and traditional twitch sidescrollers.
Aesthetics
The aesthetics in this game are purely there to represent different objects. There isn't really any juiciness to it, but the game definitely doesn't need it. I do have to mention that the main character is wearing a fez though. Fez's are cool.
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| Fez reference? Doctor Who reference? |
Kinaesthetics
The controls are easy to use and I did not experience any frustration whatsoever in relation to them. You use the arrow keys to move and the 'C' and 'V' keys to shoot transparent and solid bullets respectively. You can shoot downwards by holding down the spacebar then shooting.
The downward shooting took some getting used to as I would press the keys in the wrong order, but it only took a couple tries to realize what I was doing wrong.
Overall Design
I think the overall design is quite good. At the end of the level I definitely wanted to play more and I wanted to experience more challenging levels.
The core mechanic is simple but interesting and I can see a lot of potential for some very intricate puzzles. The only problem I found was that after a couple of play throughs I realized I could just shoot both types of bullets at once in certain areas of the level and get through them very quickly. I think that the addition of new block types such as perhaps timed blocks that only stay transparent or solid for a certain period of time would solve this problem later on as well as introduce new challenges for the player, although for the sake of this demo, it may have been too much to throw at the player all at once.
My favourite part was the last sequence where you are falling down into a void and you have to shoot the blocks to drop into the void. I found this part exciting mostly because of the fact that I was curious as to what was below. There was a certain sense of suspense as well because of the death traps that were placed within the void, and it made for some pretty exciting gameplay.
