Dabbling with… Octahedron

The final episode of a short series on games I discovered at EGX Rezzed 2017.

I spotted the platformer Octahedron (Demimonde Studios) in the Indie Room and, like other countless victims, was drawn to its discotheque visuals. But because so many other victims were snared in its glistening web, I had to go away and come back later. I kept coming back later. I kept finding the seats occupied.

Eventually my final minutes at Rezzed had arrived and I wanted to go home. I wandered over to the Octahedron stand once again and chatted to the developer, Marco Guardia, about how I had kept coming over and kept finding the seats occupied. He was also surprised at how busy his stand had been, but encouraged me to wait for one of the current players to give up their seat.

Now I get suspicious when I see a game with the visual flair of Octahedron, unsure whether it is an aesthetic-first design or a mechanics-first design. There's no real right or wrong of this, really, because sometimes aesthetic births wonderful ideas that a simple brainstorming of mechanics would not deliver. However, while aesthetic-first games can hook you with sensual presentation they can sometimes fail to build on that and feel hollow; Tengami (Nyamyam, 2014) has a beautiful Japanese pop-up book look, but it is padded with sections of tedious, slow walking.

Guardia showed me a picture of the Octahedron prototype (the following picture is taken from Twitter) proving it was mechanics-first:

All the sparkly colour and visual pizazz was added gradually over time, so that it eventually became this:

My turn arrived. Octahedron's central gimmick is that Mr. Octahedron can spawn little temporary platforms. Initially you use these to gain height but they can also be used as a kind of surfboard to swish across the screen. But you can only make two platforms at any one time which limits how far you can go... and also creates a lot of timing-based tension. New ideas emerge on later levels which make it a bit puzzley instead of just testing your reflexes and muscle memory.

Now even though Guardia has done a lot of work to make Octahedron more forgiving, I still felt it was a beast in the challenge department. Aside from the button-pressing anxiety of platform/jump or platform/swish at the right times, there were incidents where one mistake falling down the screen undid a chunk of progress. I can see some finding this frustrating and it's clear Octahedron is currently pitched as a more hardcore title.

Still, I have no problem summing up Octahedron with this one word: compelling. If you're into platformers, this is definitely one to look out for.

Octahedron is still in development although planned for release this year for PC and Mac.

Interested in other games I've dabbled with? Check out the series index!

Dabbling with… State Machine

The penultimate episode of a short series on games I discovered at EGX Rezzed 2017.

State Machine, I'm sure I've heard of this. But the memory lingers just out of reach. The game looks a little lonely and the hotseat is empty. The slightly washed-out pixel graphics just don't have a big draw, I guess. Maybe we're now post-pixel. Hang on, this is more like post-post-pixel we've been post-pixel since, what, the late 90s? I'm getting distracted.

Looks like a JRPGlike to me. I'm on a tiny boat, can talk to a robot, there's a small conversational tree.

We land on an island, I begin to wander around, yeah it's definitely looking like some sort of JRPGish thing. It's not serious, some jokes. I encounter a robot who has been built for cutting down trees and surprised to laugh out loud at the conversation.

I board the robot, start cutting down trees. I see I am aquiring wood. Agh! This isn't a JRPG, is it? This is some sort of Minecrafty thing in 2D! A Stardewvalleylike. But, Jesus H. Christmasburgers, it's really painful getting the robot to do someting, so indirect and slow. I wish the game had a better way of---

Ah.

It's a Zachlike! I can program the robots to do things so I don't have to micromanage their behaviour. Well, okay.

I eventually get stuck as to what I'm supposed to do next. Start up three turbines to get access to the other part of the island, it says, and I get one done but can't quite figure it out how to do the others. It's a pressured situation in this hot seat. The alpha build already broke once and I had to start again. Maybe it's broken again. That's it. I'm not at fault. It must've broken.

I take my leave. Only after leaving Rezzed I remember why I should've remembered State Machine - it's a game from Terry Cavanagh and Ruari O'Sullivan.

So that's State Machine, a JRPG-Stardewvalley-Zachlike.

State Machine is still in development although planned for release in 2017.

Interested in other games I've dabbled with? Check out the series index!