Tuesday 4 December 2012

And Yet It Bored Me - Neil Gets Mean!


After the embarrassment that was my Amnesia playthrough, it was with great excitement that I bounced onto my next title, the oddly titled 'And Yet It Moves'.

I have no idea where this came from. I honestly don't remember ever buying it, which usually means I got it in some kind of Humble Bundle sale, whilst angling for one of its bundle brothers. So here we go, its not scary, it's a nice little platformer by all accounts and I relish the chance to play something for this blog whilst sparing my shorts, so here we go!

Bllllluuuuuurrrrgghghghghgh.

That's pretty much what describes my first, and last, 3-4 minutes with this paper/sketch style, world rotating platformer. You're initially met with one of the most dull and inspiration sucking menu's I've ever come across. Opting to start a new game does't help proceedings either, as the game starts instantly, with you standing among various shades of browns and paper wrinkles.

What's occurs to you pretty swiftly, is that this is a platformer where you can rotate the world. Had I lasted for longer than 3 minutes before plummeting to my death, I could wax on about other amazing features it weaves in the mix, but, duh spoilers, that didn't happen.

Neither could I find myself less bothered that I didn't get very far. The music, for what it was, was so utterly drab, the graphics almost wilfully sucking in front of my eyes, that although my session was under five minutes, I almost struggled to get through that alone. Games are supposed to make big impressions in the opening chapters, and this came nowhere close.



Another downside was that the key-bindings for rotating the world decided to map themselves to the complete opposite of what my brain assumed would be true, resulting in me rotating, then instantly double-correcting that rotation in a fall. This never went away either, and happened every time I made a complex jump, frustrating me no end. Again, had I lasted longer, maybe I could have switched it but it just seemed so glaringly counter-intuitive.

I'm very aware that I'm bashing a little indie title here. I have no idea what public perception of it is, but I'll probably look it up for a few minutes after I've committed these thoughts. For all I know, after the opening tutorial, you burst from your cardboard box into a world of paper-craft and colour, surrounded by physics puzzles and wondrous imagination. If that does exists  then I'm sorry that the intro sucks so hard as after roughly 3 minutes I made a jump, rotated incorrectly, and this resulted in a boulder landing on my head and squishing me. I had no desire to even play on for my own satisfaction outside of the blog's rules and literally uninstalled it right then and there.

Maybe the central concept of gravity/orientation spinning didn't hook me, or I failed to grasp the paper-craft style graphics as being anything other than just a crack at some kind of style, but alas, I was hoping for something a bit more uplifting than this after the (very good) torment of Amnesia. I'm sorry Indie developer person/personette responsible for this, I'm sure you're lovely, but this was the second game in my list that I've been more than happy to put behind me, sadly for all the wrong reasons.

I'm such a meanie!


STATS!

Date: 04/12/2012
Game time: About 3 minutes, not far past the second tutorial message
C.O.D: Crushed by gravity defiant rock
Thirsty for more?: Pfffft.



4 comments:

  1. This was a little dissapointing. The game, i mean. I am not familiar with the title, but it held a lot of promise of the "indie-goodness" type.

    Also, you seem to want to rush through the list. Which would be sad, because I quite enjoy this little blog :)

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  2. I understand the brevity of the article, but the sad part is I really only had about 3 minutes worth of experience with the game.

    If it had managed to capture my imgination a little more as I played, I would have liked to have written much more about it (Amnesia actually only took about 40 mins of play time, yet generated about 3 posts worth!)

    I do wonder if its just me, but I really struggled to take anything away from my time with And Yet It Moves. But hey, what do I know! :D

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    1. For a brief while, I was confined to an iMac as my sole gaming source. There aren't many games that work on an iMac, let alone one that wasn't running the latest OS. Anyway, this game was one of the ones I could play and I must say.... it's pretty boring and bland. As you mentioned, everything seems to be working against this game, the music, the controls, the environments.

      It had potential, and I stuck with it until about the third level, but in the end it was more of a chore than anything else.

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  3. I wouldn't worry about rushing through the list. There will have been enough Steam sales and bundles to start a whole new list of games by the time they make it through the current list!

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