Game Report: Arranger
Sep. 4th, 2024 09:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indi_timberpathArranger is a delightful puzzle game that I played on my iPad, which was a perfect way to play such a tactile where the main controls is moving up down left and right, which I could do on the touch-screen with swipes. The basic mechanic is very puzzle-game-y, you play a character on a tile grid who moves by shifting the ground under herself, meaning most other things in the same row or column with her will move when she does. Adding in some things like wrapping around the edge of the map, certain objects that don't move with you, and lots of other clever elements for different puzzles made it a really fun and inventive game whose core mechanic never wore out its welcome. But that's not what's really special about the game.
What really makes the game notable is the presentation and story. Puzzle games don't usually have much of those, but this one has a really fun one that fits in with many other indie games of the sort. The main character is Gemma, and her odd way of moving around the map is unique in the world, causing some tension with those she lives with as well as being her driving force to go out and explore beyond the small town she starts off in. The game has a lot of fun character interactions between Gemma and other folks in the world; shifting the ground as you walk certainly makes for a character who makes a literal difference in the world, and people react to that in all sorts of ways, from annoyed to impressed to exploitative. Of course, Gemma finds her place in the world by the end, and earns the respect and love of all the folks who really matter, while striking a blow against the forces of stasis that kept her whole world so fixed for so long. Like I said, it's a similar plot to lots of other games, but it's presented in a quirky, fun, playful way that really kept me feeling involved.
The game was also just fun to look at and explore. It's very colorful, with a sort of watercolor look to most of the characters and scenery, accented here and there by bright glowing colors. Very much my style, I suppose! But there was also some really clever ways that the world felt lush and dynamic even though it's presented basically as top-down tiles. Something the game does that I've never seen before is put different textures and even scenes as part of the 'background', the space around the main puzzle area that might otherwise be black. It uses that to show parts of the environment that move around with parallax, and sometimes even images of the main character, like the detail panels you sometimes see in comics. A particularly memorable example of this was early in the game where Gemma is walking through a spooky forest, and it shows pictures of her wide-eyed moving through brush in the 'background' as I swiped across the screen.
Another way the world is unique, especially for this sort of puzzle game, is that it's essentially an open world. There are puzzles, but no specific levels or zones that might be re-set on entering them. In fact there are places where you have to move something pretty far across multiple maps and rooms in order to solve a puzzle. There were times I was worried I might need a reset that didn't exist, but I never ran into that. The puzzles seemed to be carefully designed to always be recoverable. They were carefully designed in other ways too. There was really no place that I felt particularly stuck, and only one or two places where I had to search around to get an external hint at a mechanic I didn't understand. A lot of the puzzles responded really well to just messing around, getting closer and closer until I finally figured them out. In this way, the game felt sort of collaborative, like we were figuring things out together rather than it waiting for me to be as smart as it is. I enjoyed it so much that I even sought out all the bonus puzzles on my own, as I was playing, I was enjoying the mechanics so much.
I really enjoyed this game, I was happy I played it and I hope more puzzle games can have this level of attention to atmosphere and craft.
What really makes the game notable is the presentation and story. Puzzle games don't usually have much of those, but this one has a really fun one that fits in with many other indie games of the sort. The main character is Gemma, and her odd way of moving around the map is unique in the world, causing some tension with those she lives with as well as being her driving force to go out and explore beyond the small town she starts off in. The game has a lot of fun character interactions between Gemma and other folks in the world; shifting the ground as you walk certainly makes for a character who makes a literal difference in the world, and people react to that in all sorts of ways, from annoyed to impressed to exploitative. Of course, Gemma finds her place in the world by the end, and earns the respect and love of all the folks who really matter, while striking a blow against the forces of stasis that kept her whole world so fixed for so long. Like I said, it's a similar plot to lots of other games, but it's presented in a quirky, fun, playful way that really kept me feeling involved.
The game was also just fun to look at and explore. It's very colorful, with a sort of watercolor look to most of the characters and scenery, accented here and there by bright glowing colors. Very much my style, I suppose! But there was also some really clever ways that the world felt lush and dynamic even though it's presented basically as top-down tiles. Something the game does that I've never seen before is put different textures and even scenes as part of the 'background', the space around the main puzzle area that might otherwise be black. It uses that to show parts of the environment that move around with parallax, and sometimes even images of the main character, like the detail panels you sometimes see in comics. A particularly memorable example of this was early in the game where Gemma is walking through a spooky forest, and it shows pictures of her wide-eyed moving through brush in the 'background' as I swiped across the screen.
Another way the world is unique, especially for this sort of puzzle game, is that it's essentially an open world. There are puzzles, but no specific levels or zones that might be re-set on entering them. In fact there are places where you have to move something pretty far across multiple maps and rooms in order to solve a puzzle. There were times I was worried I might need a reset that didn't exist, but I never ran into that. The puzzles seemed to be carefully designed to always be recoverable. They were carefully designed in other ways too. There was really no place that I felt particularly stuck, and only one or two places where I had to search around to get an external hint at a mechanic I didn't understand. A lot of the puzzles responded really well to just messing around, getting closer and closer until I finally figured them out. In this way, the game felt sort of collaborative, like we were figuring things out together rather than it waiting for me to be as smart as it is. I enjoyed it so much that I even sought out all the bonus puzzles on my own, as I was playing, I was enjoying the mechanics so much.
I really enjoyed this game, I was happy I played it and I hope more puzzle games can have this level of attention to atmosphere and craft.
