Playlist (July 2018) (Patreon)

I’ve got three games this month that are all really interesting, cool, and worth checking out: but all have issues that hold them back from true greatness. Take a look.

Bomb Chicken

First up is Bomb Chicken, which is the latest game from Nitrome. That’s a UK indie studio that has previously done Flash and mobile games, and all their stuff is pretty inventive and well designed. They have an almost Nintendo-like quality in that they come up with one smart, playful idea and then base the entire game around it.

Same thing happened in Bomb Chicken, the studio’s first Switch game, where the game revolves around the ability to drop a bomb out of your butt. 

So you can obviously drop a bomb, Bomberman style, then run away before it explodes. And use that to break through barriers or blow up enemies. But its also your jump, as it lifts your little chicken up. And it can be used as a shield to protect you from incoming arrows. And as a puzzle solving tool, as bombs can weigh down buttons. And so on.

And the cool thing about it being a bomb, rather than an egg or a block or something, is that the bomb will obviously explode. So the thing that really helps you, can also hurt you, leading to this interesting risk reward dynamic. You could make a whole tower of bombs to lift you right up to the ceiling, but now you’re stood on top of a wobbling pillar of death. That’s scary!

And Nitrome comes up with loads of clever puzzles, enemy types, and mechanics that work with the bomb. 

Unfortunately, though, a couple things hold Bomb Chicken back. One is that it can be a bit fiddly and fussy at times. There’s a lot going on with bombs exploding left and right, and the the fact that the bombs are always about to explode can make you panic, rush, and die. 

And this wouldn’t be so much of a problem if Bomb Chicken didn’t have the most pointlessly punishing death system. For some reason the game has lives. Lose a life and you’ll restart the current room. Fine. Lose all your lives and it’s back to the beginning of the entire level for you. Hold on. 

That’s a perfectly fine system for a tricky platformer, or a roguelike, or what have you: but a puzzle game? That makes no sense. You just find yourself almost exactly repeating the thing you did before. It’s completely weird. You can’t heal, either, so if you screw up early its best to just manually restart the whole level. 

And I just feel that when you’re dealing with a type of gameplay that’s very messy and kinda unpredictable and dangerous, like pooping bombs out of your butt, you want a permissive health system that lets you experiment, mess around, take chances. Not one that promotes slow, deliberate, thoughtful play.

So: a good idea, but let down by some weird design decisions. I’m not 100% sure if I can recommend it, to be honest, but it is nifty.

Semblance

Semblance is… a lot like Bomb Chicken actually. A solid central idea, with loads of twists on that premise. This time, it’s about altering the shape of the terrain. You play as some blobby little bloke whose air dash move doesn’t just let you sail across big gaps, but also dash into the walls and move them out of position.

This means you can create a big lump in a wall, and use it as a ledge to stand on. You could move an entire platform to the left, to get it in the right place for a jump. You could make a huge dent in the floor, so you can hide from a moving enemy. You could kink the end of a platform, to make a ramp to leap off. And so on.

I was talking about this on the stream, about how puzzle mechanics can end up being very digital or analogue. So a digital mechanic would be Lara Croft GO: it’s grid-based, it’s turn-based, you either move an entire space or you don’t. It’s very clear and digital. Semblance is much more of an analogue mechanic: you can make really small, specific, messy modifications to the world, giving you much more fine-grained control over things.

Both are good, and games typically fall along a spectrum rather than tip into one of two camps. But I find that analogue puzzle games are less about specific clever strategies that the developer intended, and more about finding some scrappy, just-about-works solution to the problem. And so you don’t quite get that “a-ha” moment, as much, but you do get to feel some ownership over your solution.

I feel like I’m talking absolute nonsense at this point, so I’ll stop.

Anyway. Like Bomb Chicken, Semblance’s developers also found lots of clever ways to build on the idea. So there are lasers that you can redirect by moving the platform they’re stuck to. And beams that reset platforms back to basics. Stuff like that.

If I had to make a complaint, I’d say that sometimes it’s not completely clear why you can’t deform a platform or wall or whatever. You’ll hit into something and it won’t move: it’ll just sorta shrug. And I’m not sure why. Clarity and consistency is so important in a puzzle game, and Semblance fails at times. Also the physics are weird and you get stuck in the wall a bunch.

Anyway. Pretty good game. Thumbs up.

The Spectrum Retreat

So The Spectrum Retreat is very much part of this first-person puzzling genre, started by Portal but then you’ve got games like Antichamber and QUBE and Talos Principle and The Turing Test. And it’s a pretty good one! It’s about taking colours from blocks and shooting them into other blocks, to turn on and off coloured gates.

It’s nothing revolutionary, but the puzzle design is pretty smart. Puzzles would stump me for a bit, and I’d have to really consider all my options, come up with a plan, and see it to fruition. There are loads of twists on that idea - new levels don’t just add extra colours, but also new mechanics. 

Also, everything is communicated clearly, and the rules are consistent and easy to pick up.

Though, there are some weird bits where the level architecture is actually impossible. Like, an MS Escher painting or something. Which leads to some cool moments where your brain gets very confused about what’s going on. But I’m not sure if that’s conducive to good puzzle design. Logical consistency is quite important, after all.

Anyway. That’s only half of this game. It’s also got sections where you’re in a creepy hotel filled with robots. Now it’s more like a walking simulator, with a story and a character - called Cooper - chatting in your ear, and small enviornmental puzzles.

And I guess the biggest ding against this game is that the two halves just don’t match up at all. You do some story, and then the game shifts gears entirely to play some puzzles. They’re almost completely unrelated. But where games like Talos Principle and Turing Test let you decide how much story you wanted with your puzzles - it’s possible to completely ignore the computers in Talos after all - Spectrum forces you to meander through the story bits, even if you just want to get on with the puzzling.

So, ultimately, that’s the game’s biggest flaw. Because the story isn’t the best. And the puzzles aren’t the best. And that’s maybe the result of trying to make two completely different games. If the focus was more squarely put on one side of the equation, it might have been a more memorable experience.

That’ll do for July. I’ve just started digging into Dead Cells so more on that, plus lots of other cool games, next month. See you then!