Aphotic Ascent

Well, I suppose can thank this game's title for making me think for a fleeting moment that 9th Grade Ecology actually wasn't pointless.

Unfortunately, that's about all I can thank this game for.  It's not a fundamentally broken game like A Series of Tubes or AEther, but rather it's a functional string of design flaws, one after another.

The most obvious of which is that this game literally requires a mouse to play.  See, I play all my games on a laptop, so if I didn't happen to have a mouse on me, I'd be SOL.  Wouldn't one of the primary purposes of having a free Game Library be to make your projects accessible to all who wish to experience them?

The controls are floaty as root beer on the Fourth of July.  Sometimes the jump carries the character no higher than a few feet and other times he rockets into orbit at the slightest touch of the "space" key.  The inertia is way too high, making you feel like this dark, ostensibly rocky terrain is actually an ice rink that's been covered in oil.

The graphical style is fine.  In fact it looks like something you'd by in the indie section of Steam or the XBLA (which might not sound like a compliment but when its competition is Animalien it's like a gold medal).

The music is very atmospheric and immersive but quickly becomes annoying, probably because it's accompanied by what I'm about to mention next.

And of course, we get to the biggest design flaw of all.  I wonder if I'm boring people at this point (if I had an audience to bore, that is...har har).  Yes, it's that old game design favorite of mine...everyone sing along...

There's no.  Damn.  Save.  Feature.

You know what?  I can accept that in a game like Animalien because that game is more about the challenge and mastery of the controls, so you can use the argument that it's supposed to be a gauntlet to be conquered in one go...kinda like Contra or any of those other old arcadey titles.  Aphotic Ascent on the other hand seems to build itself around the story with it's Limbo-esque graphical style and "slow revelation" narrative format.  It is simply impossible to be immersed in a story if you have to start from the beginning every time you put it down.  Anyone remember that one scene in The Catcher in the Rye where Holden has to keep reading the same sentence over and over because his douchenugget friend keeps distracting him?  Well, the lack of a save feature is basically the equivalent of that friend.

Maybe this game is short enough to justify the whole "one go" mentality but the length of a game has to take back seat to the overall feel.  Even if the game is only 15 minutes long, the irresponsible level design makes it frustrating; and nobody wants to put up with a frustrating game.  When I fall down 500 stories, watching helplessly as my progress unfolds around me, I want the security of knowing I can ragequit and return to it later.

Alright, I think I'm all out of rage for now.  Tune in next time and keep your hands off my cookies.

Links
not Limbo: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25899