Playing Every Game in the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality
PEGBRJE: ‘Cluster Gun’ and ‘12 Labors’
Light Hearted and Heavy Hearted.
Cluster Gun is a hilarious physics puzzle platformer created by Princess HYPE, a solo indie dev and studio member of Triband games. This title has nothing to do with Triband’s signature What The series, and instead has everything to do with the power of GUNZ.
Players will attempt to finish each stage by either having their ‘cluster’ cross a finish line or by destroying all of the targets found in the map. The cluster is set before a level begins, and is half of the fun that is Cluster Gun. Players are given a build phase in which their eyeball cortex sits in the centre of the screen. Here they can add parts to their cluster so that it can maneuver throughout the level. Each part has a cost associated with it, where body parts only cost a single point whereas the multitudes of guns (and a hook!) have varying costs to showcase their power and usability. There is a point limit of 50 to start, meaning that unfortunately players cannot just build the Mechazord of guns. One can dream.
This point limit is what gives the layer of strategy that the puzzle part of the puzzle platformer brings. Since the guns are what propel the cluster around, players will need to figure out how many guns they need on each side so that they can safely maneuver around the level while retaining some semblance of control. The other limiter is the ‘overheat’, seen at the bottom left; while guns are firing, the cluster is building up steam. If the player overheats, all guns lock up and cannot be used until the bar goes back down to zero, meaning that holding down all of the gun buttons will cause issues fast. For example, the Gatling gun is a solid choice at only four points, but it needs to ramp up to get a decent amount of power and generates a steady flow of heat. The rocket launcher on the other hand is fourteen points but gets the most ‘bang for the buck’ so to speak; it rockets the cluster in its direction with no cares in the world.
It’s a simple idea done so well that it can suck you in super quickly, and that’s without even mentioning that you can customize which buttons you need to press for each of the rockets. The default is to set them to ZERT, but they can be rebound for any customizable inputs if necessary making it much more accessible than possibly thought. With the dozens of levels to explore and blast through, Cluster Gun is a great game to just build random nonsense and see what happens.
12 Labors is a narrative adventure created by Brendan McLeod, an indie developer based in the USA. Players will follow the story of Ryn and her adventure of cleaning off the large statues found in her grandfather’s private garden that are suspiciously similar to twelve labors done by Heracles. Like all tasks done alone, however, it is rarely as silent as one might like.
Each statue brings many different kinds of monologues that Ryn will ponder over, thinking internally or externally about her current situation. Some times the monologue will start from a text from her mother at the hospital who is watching over her dying grandfather, while others will just come out of thin air. After a short while, the conversation will die and the statue will remain to be cleaned off, which only requires the player to hold down their mouse and ‘wipe’ away all the different kinds of debris. Finishing this will reveal the statue in its original glory, prompting a possible continuation of dialogue before silence kicks in. Here the player has the option of selecting little diamonds floating in the sky to gain more information about what Ryn may be thinking about, from her thoughts on the statue uncovered to the setting she finds herself in.
And what a setting she is in — and I don’t mean just the gorgeous landscape of her rich grandfather’s garden. The game is not called 12 Labors for nothing, as each labor completed will leave Ryn contemplating her own life. The player is never explicitly given exactly what happened in her past, but it does not matter; hints and clues give enough context to know that Ryn has done some horrible things and is in a terrible place right now because of it.
Each event that occurs, either from cleaning off a statue or a text from her mother, compounds these feelings as she attempts to wrangle her own emotions and the state of her life. She knows that she has made mistakes, but at the beginning does not fully understand what she is able to do about it, or how the world is able to continue onwards when others commit similar mistakes.
There’s a lot of inner turmoil to sort through, fighting against how she perceived her errors versus how those around her perceive them. Couple that with her grandfather’s imminent death and her initial inability to move forward and there is a lot to process for even the strongest of wills.
It’s intentionally vague on purpose, as while Ryn is her own person nearly everyone reading can relate. There are times in our lives, usually back during our teenaged years, where many things went horribly wrong for us either due to our own actions, the actions of others, or a combination of both. How we’ve dealt with these issues is square on our shoulders, and that is what Ryn mulls over; we cannot alter what other people do to us, only how we respond in kind. It’s easy to say from the outside to another, but it is easy to empathize when we can see ourselves in her shoes — just wanting to be loved while also wanting to be released from the pressure her life (and actions) now weighs.
Ryn battles through her own monologues, starting off bitter as one can be, but hopefully by the end Ryn (and possibly yourselves) can grow as people and recognize that change requires the self to want it.
If you like short narrative games that hit you right in the heart, then here you go.
