Written By: Tyler Selig
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| Visit http://globalgamejam.org/ |
It is that time of year again,
when indie developers from all over the world submit their quickly made games
to the Global Game Jam. This year the theme was, “we don’t see things as they
are, we see them as we are.” Trippy shit, let’s make a foreign movie about it.
I forgot that it was going on
this weekend, or else I probably would have played a few each day and made a
post about them, but I do want to give it some recognition so I sat down today
and played a few games. Luckily for you – or maybe not so luckily – I’m going
to tell you what I think about them with short reviews!
One final note: if you happened
to stumble upon this blog and wonder why short, unpolished (not saying they all
are, but some may be) games can get some of these ratings, it’s because I’m
reviewing them in context. They have a short period of time to develop these,
and so I judge them as so. I judge what they’ve accomplished, and I can get an
idea of how talented these people are by that. Besides, these are like the
short films of gaming… just because they aren’t long doesn’t mean they aren’t
awesome.
Growing World
http://globalgamejam.org/2014/games/growing-world
Rating: 6/10
First of all, the developer is really cheap because he/she knows that you just got to throw the
Moon Theme from Duck Tales into a game and any credible critic will knock the
score up a point or two. Damn you for playing on human weakness!
Aside from that, I enjoy the game but don’t overly love it. The typical
problems that exist for quickly made games fairly often are here, namely
collision detection, but I do like the premise of viewing the world through
three different ages, so I can definitely get behind the ideology behind this
one. The gameplay just has you collecting what’s important, such as money for
one of the ages, while music from other games blares in the background, which
isn’t a criticism because there’s something oddly endearing about hearing the
Moon Theme while you get dat money.
Shifted
Rating: 8/10
Definitely enjoyed this. You
wake up in a room and everything seems fine but it becomes clear that you need
to get out. The door is locked, and there’s a penguin (?) in there with you, so
what do you do? You press C to change perspective and all of a sudden
everything is darker and bloodier.
It’s very short, but it’s
effective and perfectly fits the theme of this Jam. You basically just walk
around in first-person and find a key, and I wish there was a little bit of
music, but Shifted does a fine job.
Nightdriving
Rating: 2/10
Damn, I really wanted to like
this one. Surreal night driving? Sign me up. I love surrealism, but this made
me want to smash my computer. The driving is terrible -- the camera moves too
fast when you move your mouse so driving is just a pain in the ass. It’s a
surreal game so I’m sure there’s something going on with the visuals that I’m missing,
but it’s just too dark and the first time I played I got off the road and was
just driving into the void, basically. There are a bunch of songs that you can
switch between though, and they are pretty representative of night driving (I
think), so there’s that. I would still avoid this one though.
Invaders Inside Me
Rating: 3.5/10
It’s better than Nightdriving
because at least there was a certain charm in this, meaning at first it was fun
to see how I could kill the tenants. Unfortunately that wears off pretty quick
and I played the web version and actually ended up crashing it. Oops.
I like the idea of the apartment
getting mad that there is invaders inside it, so it gets points for that. I
could have done without the stupid voice acting, because it ended up being more
annoying than anything.
Tintalating
Rating: 7.5/10
In Tintalating you collect other
colours and you have to use those colours to raise platforms so you can get
across to the ending. I enjoyed it even though sometimes the platforming felt
too light and wonky, meaning I’d miss a platform when I really shouldn’t have.
But besides that, it’s a good idea and I really love the music that plays
during it. I would like to see a longer version that can fully implement the
idea because I think there are some interesting puzzles you could do with it.
Gaggle
Rating: 8.5/10
Probably the neatest one I
played today. The idea is that you need to get your, uh, creatures into the box
at the end of the screen, but you have to choose what dying creatures to add to
the genetic pool so you can evolve other creates to become capable of
accomplishing the task at hand. That sounds more confusing than it really is.
Gaggle is a wonderful puzzle-platformer with a novel idea.
Well that’s it for me for this
jam. There are tons of games I won’t get to play and I regret that I can’t play
some games like Regret (oooooh), so what are some of your favourites? Let me
know in the comments below or tweet me @ArtBathednCrime.
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