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!