Playing Every Game in the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality
PEGBRJE: ‘Don’t Move’ and ‘Abomination Tower’
2D is back
Don’t Move is a strange ‘arcade’ game created by Steve Richey, or stvr on itch.io. Players are a little ninja fellow who is seemingly stuck in a long corridor, with escape constantly leading to explosive death.
Bear with me on this one, but essentially the entire game revolves around completing simple objectives through sheer trial and error. All the ninja can do is move to the left and right, and each movement increases their likelihood of exploding until they reach a threshold and do just that. The ninja respawns in the centre, and the game continues again. And again. And again, and again…
The point is that the game is all about massive repetition that slowly reveals new objectives to complete. First it is just dying, then distance and time are metrics to keep track of, and then trophies and objectives. It’s a game about opening up what it wants by giving the player nothing to really latch on to in terms of regular progression, relying on player’s sheer determination (and a bit of confusion).
There are many places in Don’t Move that you may just stop at due to a lack of understanding; trust me, I know the feeling. Yet curiosity kept me going until my ninja started shifting colours and the world started to fall apart, and that is what this game is all about; the confusing ideas, the sunk cost fallacy of expecting more to occur while nothing implies otherwise.
The game sets you up for exactly what you should’ve done in the first place; don’t move. Yet here we are, holding down left and watching a ninja explode. If you want to see the end you’ll be in for at least 30 minutes to an hour of questionable content, but that is up to you.
If you like strange games that make you wonder why you booted it in the first place, then this is right up your alley.
Abomination Tower is a hardcore ‘roguelike’ platformer created by Adrian Sugden, a solo indie dev based in Australia. Players will follow the undead life and times of Headless, a creation discarded by their mad scientist creator to wander a tower of rejected creations. Headless however will not stand for this, and plans on making a daring escape through the art of climbing.
Headless starts every level the same way, emerging from a door in front of a dozen wall mounts before running up a wall to begin their adventure. For those familiar with Super Meat Boy and other ‘hardcore’ platformers, the general idea will be instantly recognizable; get out the gate, slide down some walls, and avoid everything because Headless is squishy.
Unlike the aforementioned game however, Abomination Tower takes a life-limited approach to its design. Every death players experience will lower the heart counter, sending Headless back to the beginning and reloading the level. Unfortunately, as the ‘roguelike’ description may infer, the levels are generated at spawn, meaning that the level will not look the same as when Headless started. This makes dying much scarier, as the fear of having to learn a new level looms overhead.
Thankfully, Headless is able to alter themselves to assist; they don’t have a head, after all. Instead, Headless can collect eyeballs within each level; once so many have been collected, a head appears on the wall mount. Each head has its own abilities, and all are equipped at the beginning of a level to give that small edge in the hopes of getting to the end as fast as possible. Of course, getting to the end at light speed means missing out on getting more eyeballs, which means fewer heads available to go that fast. What choice will be made?
If you’ve followed my bundle overviews, you already know my opinion of hardcore platformers; I’m bad at them, and I don’t necessarily find them fun even after playing untold hours of them by now. Abomination Tower does shake things up a bit for you who do though, thanks to the ability to choose a head and alter the gameplay while knowing that death means relearning the entire level.
If this style of game is your jam, then give this one a try and see if the alterations are to your liking.
