I had contacted Anders Gustafsson, creator of Gateway II, and he gave me a preview of the first chapter of his latest game — The Dream Machine by Cockroach Inc.

I had played the demo before and while it was presented well, I didn’t know what to think of it. It was so short that it felt like it was over before it ever began. But after playing through the first chapter, I can now rest my worries. I can’t wait to play the rest!

First off the game is well written. While Gateway had some dialogue, its story was mostly told visually through the animation of the characters. In The Dream Machine, the characters have some great dialogue, which I find believable. The game start with your character, Victor, just moving into an apartment with his girlfriend. You get a good feel for their relationship through their talking. The game has dialogue branches which allow you to respond in a more serious or joking manner if you wish. It helped me to believe in the characters — okay, Game Creator, you’ve got my attention.

A Turnaround from their ‘Character Generation’ blog post

The game’s unique art style kept me guessing. Is this clay? Or 3d? Or photographs? The visuals in the game are great. From their blog posts, it seems they are a mixture of figure, 3d, and composite images. So I guess I was right with all guesses, haha. I dig that the art has a handmade feel to it, a good change from most things being super clean, super digital.

It hit me maybe about an hour in. The sound is friggin incredible. And I think that’s when you know when it’s good. When it creeps in on you, and before you know it, you’re under its grasp. You really just don’t get sound at this quality very often with web games. The sound adds to the eeriness of the experience, reminds me of a Resident Evil game. How you always have that feeling that something’s… not… quite… right…

Oh yeah, I forgot about the gameplay! The game seems to be along the lines of your standard adventure game. Chapter 1 is mostly finding items and finding where they go, scavenger hunt style, with a logic puzzle or two to break things up. It didn’t really have those environmental “move here then move there” puzzles of the Gateway games. I felt that Chapter 1 was mostly an introduction to the characters and their world.

I don’t think the gameplay is innovative, and that’s probably a good thing. I think there’s a lot of pressure to be innovative and break rules and conventions but often the result is something broken and not enjoyable. Or something that’s claiming to be innovative while just replicating features some game made 10 or 20 years ago. If innovation is something that drives you to play a game, I’d say innovation is something that comes from the heart. In games like these where you can feel the love put into it.

I’ve been inspired by what I’ve seen of the game. And look forward to seeing more of it. The guys at Cockroach Inc. are still hard at work at it so the results may vary, haha.

Links:

• Play The Dream Machine
• The Dream Machine development blog
• The Dream Machine Facebook group

I recently finished Kavalmaja by Tonypa. It’s an puzzle-adventure game that I first played about a year and a half ago. I had probably spent 30 minutes with the game, getting deeply involved with it. Something interrupted me and got sidetracked and never went back to it. It was bugging me that I never finished it — so I did. And it was worth it.

The game of Kavalmaja is a well thought out dungeon. The goal is to collect all of the “gold pieces” in the dungeon, acquiring abilities along the way to progress further along in your journey. The game is presented in an abstract fashion, requiring you to move around and touch stuff to see how it reacts. As you interact with the world you learn what its symbols and colors mean. So an area you passed through earlier will have a different meaning later on. It ends up playing similar to a Zelda game but there’s something special about its abstract nature. In a Zelda game it’s clear that if there’s a cracked wall you need a bomb to get through it, the world of Kavalmaja the connections aren’t that obvious.

It requires trial and error. I liked that about it, but felt it can be a problem sometimes. There’s a couple parts that require you to “die” to collect your gold pieces. I think that’s just one of the laws of game design, to never require the player to die. This kind of bugs me but it’s not as bad as preventing you from progressing through the game — you can’t get stuck. And given all the situations where you could possibly get stuck, it’s an amazing feat that Tonypa managed to make it work out as smoothly as it is. He said it took a long time to test all the possible positions and conditions. And I believe it.

I’m iffy about Flash game adertisement and the ads in this game really got to me. You see an ad every time you die, and that can be frequently when you get stuck somewhere. As frustrated as I got, seeing that Mucinex commercial over and over again, I was compelled to keep playing the game. I needed to solve the puzzle. So if a lame commercial can help support developers like this in making well-made games, maybe they aren’t so bad.

I had to resort to searching the jayisgames, walk-through thread for a solution to one of the puzzles in the game — the one with the teleporting rooms. I felt dumb that I didn’t figure out, but I also believed that he could’ve made a clue to make it a bit more obvious. I missed the one detail that would’ve help me figure it out. It might not be too bad to have a puzzle this difficult in the game given how easily one can find solutions on the net. It’s good to be stumped every now and then.

I’m just writing this because I think it’s a great and solid game. Even though it’s a Flash game from last year, it’s definitely one of the best games I’ve played this year. It’s inspired me to do an action-adventure puzzle game. And to think outside the box, maybe even a bit abstract.

• Play Kavalmaja
• Kavalmaja walkthrough (spoilers, duh!)
• Kavalmaja map (spoilers)

Dino Run: I found this beauty c/o the blog over at indiegames.com and I was very impressed with PixelJam‘s work. I’d label it under the Sonic the Hedgehog genre of games, one I’d like to play more of. It’s a full game with a lot to play with. The look and feel is nice, some of the physics are a tad weak, but they do the job and beat the norm. I love the tension, the atmosphere of fleeing. It would be excellent setting for a simple story because the nature of a chase is that it is linear. Not to say that stories must be linear, but game-stories tend to be (due to laziness). Unfortunately, the game is lacking in the story department, but it’s alright because it does well everywhere else. GO PLAY IT.

Warlords: I was linked to this piece from Ben Olding after playing Dino Run and was really surprised by such a simple design adds up to strategy on multiple levels. It’s not only about unit selection, but timing, and tactics as well. Again, the game has tons built into it: multiple races and unit types, unlockable races and unit types, leveling-up, a filled out campaign mode and the unit purchasing/upgrading system really gives players a place to craft a style of play. It’s all very simple, but the game is much more than the sum of its parts. PLAY THIS ONE TOO.

As a bonus, each of these games has a form of multiplayer. Dino Run is actual online play and Warlords allows 2 people to play on the same keyboard. Both options are pretty cool if you ask me.

Man, it’s nice to find good games.

-Christopher J. Rock

At first I was attracted to the awesome art style. All pretty pixel work. The description said something about it being a platformer with a Yin Yang twist so I wanted to see if it went beyond a gimmick. I was impressed before I even finished the first stage.

In this game you switch between controlling a white and black character. The goal is to get both to the finish flag. The catch is that the white character can only move in the black background and vice versa. So to reach goals you have to switch back and forth while manipulating the environment and avoiding enemies. They even take it a step farther by allowing the gravity to be flipped in each characters “world”. Only played the first 4 stages so far and I can already tell it’s brilliant work.

I’ve come across Nitrome’s work often, maybe a member of the team frequents the Flashkit games forum or maybe hanging out at Pixel art forums. It’s interesting to see that they have games sponsored by MTV Arcade, which I never knew existed.

Check them out at http://www.nitrome.com/. Independent Flash game studio with some awesome work.

Gateway II by Anders Gustafsson.

This is one of first Flash games I’ve truly enjoyed in such a long time. I discovered this adventure game on the Newgrounds frontpage and gave it a legitimate chance. It reminded me of Leo’s Great Day, one of the first amazingly well done Flash games I’d played, so I had optimistic expectations. From the title screen I could tell that it at least had great production quality.

The presentation is spectacular. Simple and clean – just how I like it. As you start a new game, you’re given an option for a tutorial. Which explains to you how the game is easily controlled with only mouse clicks.

I was hooked after the first puzzle. I don’t want to spoil things of course, but the story revolves around solving puzzles and collecting these video cassettes. You begin the game as this blank generic boxy character but as you progress through the tapes you begin to understand what the story is about. Through the story and dialogue you discover what these people are all about and maybe even care about them. So I was not only motivated to “beat the game” by solving the puzzles but I was also driven to know what happened.

The puzzles are fresh as well. They make good use of interacting with objects you collect with other objects and using them with the environment in practical ways. The difficulty is good, I sailed through the game smoothly for the most part. I got stumped in a few places but it was never frustrating to the point where I had to quit or jump on GameFaqs. I’m happy that there’s a good variety with the puzzle design.

The game has great audio design. Each room in the game has an appropriate ambient sound as you travel through this unknown realm. It makes me feel like I’m drifting in a space station or passing through the twillight zone. There are appropriate sounds for every action — footsteps, button presses, tape ejects, and so on. It may seem like a little thing but when sound design is executed properly it makes a huge difference in setting the mood.

As you should be able to tell, I love so much about this game. The biggest problem I have with it is character designs. The creator did so much with plot and character development but I feel that it could have been so much better if he would have designed characters that actually showed emotions. You know, maybe a face?

Anyway, I still stand by the game as a great landmark for polish and presentation. Just check out the options menus (closed captioning is available), a save menu and everything. Very nice.

You can play Gateway 2 at cockroach.se or at Newgrounds.com , where I first found it.

I know Chris just wrote something about the game but we’re often redundant like that.

The game is Reunion by Mike Bithell, I found it on GameSetWatch a few days ago. This is an amazing game. I believe the execution is phenomenal. I need more big sounding words to show how much I like it! Immediately the game reminded me of something I’d see coming out of Cal Arts, such incredibly good design going into it.

When the game starts the first thing I noticed was simply how pretty it was. Here comes the music man with the flickering firefly moving around him. Suddenly my cursor is in control of the firefly. I move it around to play with the lighting on the character, which is dynamically lit through clever use of Flash’s bevel function. I think to myself “I gotta ‘borrow’ that technique.” Now I’m guiding a musical note through the air and smashing lanterns, rewarded with tones. What a mellow intro. A great way to introduce a story.

While the presentation is great, the game is hindered by the poor framerates I’m getting on these G5′s at work. I know the Mac Flash Player is slower, but it leaves the game almost unplayable. And these computers are fast as hell! It made the gameplay a chore because a lot of the time my clicks weren’t registering and when I’d let go the character would still keep walking. I wanted to close the browser every time I fell and had to redo a section but I kept playing.

Every so often there is a new gameplay element added that livens up the idea a bit. But this is ruined by the fact that there is no variation in the background artwork for the entire game. It’s beautiful at first, but you’re never given an award for your hard (and frustrating) work. Just glimpses of the cat that you’re chasing after. The money is at the very end when the scenery changes. It’s beautiful, but the game needs more of that.

I realize that we live in something I like to refer to as “the real world”, which involves a lot of factors besides spending an entire lifetime on a project. I think this is a game that’s going to leave an impact on people, despite the problems with game design. I know it’s left an impact on me by reminding me to “try a little harder” when it comes to visuals and presentation. Excellent job, Mike!

Check it out at http://www.mikebithell.com/reunion/.

-Bryson