Company of Myself - a review

With complete disregard for the aforementioned Plan, I will now review a little Flash game I was directed to via twitter.

Company of Myself is a really simple little puzzle platformer created by Eli Piilonen with artwork from Lika Marcetic and music by David Carney. A melancholy hermit muses on his loneliness and self-imposed exile while his psychological journey is reflected in his journeys between entering a series of rooms and getting through them to their green door exits.

The mechanics are nice, simple obstacles can be overcome by running your character through certain movements with the arrow keys then resetting the level with space bar and watching a shadow form of yourself run your previous movements alongside you.

I didn’t discover any glaring bugs, though the game won’t thank you for creating too many shadow selves in a level (where you get the opportunity).

The atmosphere of the game is thoughtful; minimalist but well crafted and the running commentary through each level has a nice, understated sense of humour to it. For the most part it coheres very nicely. However; as much as, for the most part, I loved the atmosphere and the writing, the final ‘twist’ in the afterword did somewhat leave a bad taste in my mouth; at best it needs a rewrite, but to my mind it’s unnecessary all together.

Only twenty short levels Company of Myself took me a very short time to complete (hence no 1 hour review) but on the positive side has no time to get repetitive and most levels have a different way of using the mechanic to get through the level – some require a lot of forward planning, some require a strict sense of timing and still others just require you to throw yourself at it. However, it would have been nice to see extended levels revisiting the different kinds of puzzle that this kind of mechanic is capable of producing and improving their complexity.

All together, even though the game works well, it is perhaps too minimal and self-contained; I can’t help but feel that with more or longer puzzles I would have left me feeling more satisfied – or maybe taking out some of the elements which are only used in one or two levels and making a separate game with them. There is a level with a ‘checkpoint flower’ that resets the level from a different point – but it is one flower in one level – it is far too short a game to be learning new tools so far in – it also makes for a somewhat uneven difficulty curve.

Still, I would recommend this game: its shortcomings only really grate because I see so much potential in it; and there are far worse ways to spend some idle time in front of your PC.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village - a review

I’m still enjoying a few remaining puzzles in this game, however; I’ve finished the story and feel like if I don’t remember to update this blog, it will become forgotten entirely (again).

Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a puzzle/adventure game by the Japanese developer Level-5 for the Nintendo DS.

The story begins as the Professor, an apparently world-renowned puzzle-solver, and his assistant Luke are called to the village of St Mystere by Lady Dahlia Reinhold to solve a mystery written into the will of her husband, the late Baron Reinhold; it challenges any would-be heirs to find ‘The Golden Apple’, promising that any who do will inherit his fortune. The aim is to navigate the story and solve this mystery among others; though it would probably be a very short game indeed if every resident of St Mystere didn’t insist on giving a puzzle to be solved before they will speak to Layton or Luke.

The first thing that hit me about this game is the art; charming and beautiful in a way that’s both as distinctly Japanese as Studio Ghibli but with a wonderful European flavour . The game is presented in the style of a point and click adventure with still pictures to be clicked on in order to find hidden puzzles and ‘hint coins’ (a currency to be bartered for clues - when it’s just not your kind of puzzle) with beautifully animated cut-scenes throughout.

The story is simple, but sweet and is interesting enough of itself that I wasn’t skipping past it to get to the next puzzle – helpfully also, there is a short recap every time you start the game, so you never forget where you are.

Of course, your appreciation of the game will still be somewhat limited if you’re not a puzzle fan. If you are a puzzle fan then you’re in luck. There are, according to Wikipedia, a total of 135 brain teasers throughout the game. These are of so many assorted kinds; from numbers, to shape recognition, to chess, that there is a puzzle for every sort of problem-solving brain. You will need certain puzzles to be solved before you can progress through the story, but far from all of them – they’re just there for your enjoyment and to collect items for further puzzles (or to assemble a handy coin-finding robot-dog) – and thanks to the aforementioned hint coins, there’s no need to resort to frustrated internet searches for the solution if you really don’t get it.

The criticisms I have of this game are really very small in comparison to its obvious virtues; Luke’s ‘English’ accent for example sounds a little too much like Dick Van Dyke on helium for my taste, and towards the end of the game, wandering around the village and pointing at everything you see in hope of finding those one or two missed puzzles does become tiring.

However, for any puzzle fan in need of a game to fill a few spare hours, I cannot recommend this highly enough.