#finnish games

[victusinveritas]

This is slanderous towards a few Finnish creators I can think of, but also not entirely wrong.

[hohtohopeainen]

Game exhibition at Vapriikki Tampere, Finnish games

[steamgameaday]

Lucius (2012)

Developer: Shiver Games Genre: Adventure Price: £14.99 (Currently £3.74 as part of the Steam Halloween Sale)

Lucius is a game that doesn't merely wear it's inspiration on it's sleeve; it also owns the bootleg t-shirt and is waving a little flag with 'I am basically The Omen' written on it at all times. Were Lucius a higher profile game, lawsuits may have been impending (see also, the original cut of Deadly Premonition and Twin Peaks), but as it stands it gets away with it by dint of obscurity. Lucius, like 'The Omen's Damien, is the son of the devil, specifically Lucifer, who is born to the wife of a US politician. When he reaches the age of 6 his powers and dark nature begin to manifest, and he begins killing various residents of his massive mansion home. Playing as Lucius it is your job to track down your various targets and then murder them one by one in an elaborate and interesting ways without being identified as the culprit.

Unfortunately, as good as this all sounds (and it often is quite good), the game has some serious issues. Firstly, the extremely linear nature of the game means that murders require less creativity and more trying to work out exactly what it is the game wants you to do. Each murder has precisely one solution, rendering what should be an assassination game into a glorified point and click adventure. And it's not even a good adventure; the inventory is cumbersome, there's no way of telling what's going to be useful against what's simply set dressing, and the game has a ridiculous amount of set dressing.

The game also has issues on a narrative level. Despite being filled with characters the game never actually goes as far as to give the player any actual insight into their lives and personalities. Instead the game's various targets wander around spouting the same couple of lines, mere automatons granted archetypical identities that are barely ever expanded upon. In many cases characters you kill of are people who you never actually noticed before they became the target, and whilst when this is one of the Latino maids it could be argued to be commentary on the nature of upper class American culture, when it's the player character's uncle who apparently lives in the house with the rest of the family and yet you have only ever seen in passing, the lack of any kind of buildup or introduction is embarrassing.

But aside from the extreme linearity of the game and it's questionable writing quality, Lucius presents an interesting and quite well-realised world. The house is large and interesting to explore, the deaths are varied and creative and the plot, whilst threadbare, is at least presented in a very stylish Hollywood manner. Whilst Lucius doesn't live up to its promise, it's still an interesting little adventure game to dip into occasionally if only for the gratuitous nods to 'The Omen' and the well-staged payoffs to each of the stages.

How long did I play? - 3.5 hours Did I finish it? - No Would I finish it? - Yes

[steamgameaday]

Lucid (2011)

Genre: Puzzle Developer: YeaBoing Price: £4.99

It is quite possibly ironic that a game called Lucid should send me to sleep. A lot of that is down to the presentation of the thing, of course; Lucid offers the casual gamer a relaxed, untimed experience full of sky imagery, floating and a calm, relaxing soundtrack that I can only describe as being 'sci-fi like', but which strangely enough includes samples of birdsong and flowing water. Unfortunately some of it is down to a familiar sensation, a gradual creeping feeling of boredom underlying the course of events.

Lucid is a game so simple in concept that I find myself unable to believe that nobody has tried it before. Looking much like a match-three puzzle game in the vein of bejeweled, Lucid bills itself as the world's first 'match all' puzzle, instead requiring it's players to select groups of coloured blocks that have already clumped together in order to match them up and remove them from play, at which point the game awards points and dropping further blocks from above to fill the void. There's a trick to this though; unlike other versions of this formula where merely clicking on an area was enough to remove it from play, the player has to be able to draw a line through every single block in a a selection in order to match it. Effectively this means that the player needs to manipulate the blocks into falling into suitable pathways, and that a stray block of the wrong colour can completely ruin a perfectly good set of blocks you were saving until later.

The game is further enhanced by a 'task' system, in which players must match a particular colour, or higher than a certain number of that colour in order to advance in the level, and to keep the multiplyer bar building up. This also allows the game to gradually build up the difficulty over the course of the game's 55 levels, gradually increasing the commonality of numbered tasks and the number associated with them. Sadly the game doesn't actually evolve in any other way, offering players nothing but completely identical gameplay over the entire course of the experience, which is where the gradual seeping boredom comes into it. There's also no real risk factor; whilst you can theoretically lose a level by finding yourself in a situation where no squares can be matched, not only is the minimum number of squares required for a match a mere two, but the game also liberally scatters 'lucid blocks' onto the playfield, blocks which, when matched with others of the same colour, randomises the positions of all the remaining blocks on the board.

And whilst the presentation is impressive, the content is not; with no alternate modes, time-attacks or extra features whatsoever, Lucid provides the only most basic barebones puzzle game experience possible; technically speaking the Gameboy version of Tetris had more features than this does. It's a nice little game, but whilst its design is interesting and certainly a step up from cloning yet another match-three puzzler, the game's single gimmick gets old far before the end of the game can be reached.

How long did I play? - 1.5 hours Did I finish it? - No Would I finish it? - No

[steamgameaday]

Crayon Physics Deluxe (2009)

Genre: Puzzle Developer: Kloonigames Price: £15.99

There is a fine line between a tech demo and a puzzle game. Whilst getting your gimmick set up correctly is incredibly important, the engine should never become the be all and end all of the product; a game has to be both functional and entertaining. Sadly, my time with Crayon Physics Deluxe was not the latter.

Crayon Physics Deluxe is unfortunately one of those games that gets stuck at it's concept. In it, you must solve over a hundred different puzzles in which a crayon circle must be rolled, dropped or thrown at one or more crayon stars. The player achieves this through the ability to draw further objects into the game world, and the way the game's physics react to said objects.

It's a good idea in theory, but not one that functions well in practice. Personally, I am a fan of tight, well designed puzzles, but there are none of those here; the game is, after all, physics puzzle incarnate. When you start the game up, you are greeted with a statement telling you that it's not about merely beating the level, but about beating levels in the most awesome way possible, but this seems like a poor excuse for the fact that many levels can be easily beaten through the same few basic means.

And whilst the idea is impressive, and the whole thing looks right, it doesn't always function quite as it's supposed to. Often you will find that overlapped items flail and judder as they try to force themselves apart, and that sometimes the ball floats in the air above the structure it's rolling down, a collision detection bug that can sometimes result in perfectly adequate solutions being rendered inoperative.

Ultimately, Crayon Physics Deluxe is impressive from an achievement standpoint, but it does very little to draw the player in. I would probably have had more enjoyment playing with an actual pile of paper and wax crayons than with this underwhelming puzzler.

How long did I play? - 1 hour Did I finish it? - No Would I finish it? - No