Oh lookie, another IGF game.
Hot damn this game was good. You may remember two days ago, when my partner in crime reviewed a game that advertised itself as a "poetic experience." If any game is deserving of that title, it's Dreamside Maroon (although it never advertises itself as such. Go figure).
I actually have a lot to say about this game, much of which I'm not going to be able to. For now, know this: I didn't play 100% of this game. Not even close. I played just enough to sample the mechanics and write a review.
The main premise of this game is that you are trying to travel to the moon by growing a vine toward it. While in reality this idea is about as ingenious as a cheese grater made of soap, things go surprisingly well for Aster, the game's protagonist.
Now, the word of the day is "exploration," and I have to say, I'm so glad I have this game to hold up as an example of the right way to go about exploration, the antithesis of Skyrim's succession of pre-paved paths under the false pretense of "exploration game." You are given all you need to have the best possible exploration experience: a primary objective (reach the moon), incentive to get off the beaten path (the poetry lamps that I'll explain later), and genuinely interesting environments to explore (every floating island, especially the shifting ones). Granted, the game lacks a bit in the third category, but I'll get to that in a bit.
First, let me talk about these poetry lamps. Along the way, you can light up lamps that do two things: give you fireflies and give you lines of verse. These lines of verse are combined into a poem that you can access at any time throughout the game. This appeals to two of the gaming aficionado's most prominent senses (at least in my opinion): achievement within the confines of game mechanics and exploration of the game's subtext. The fireflies appeal to the sense of achievement, because you need fireflies in order to save yourself if you fall into the depths of space. The poetry allows for a deeper examination of the game's themes and ideas as a whole, which makes people like me go nuts. I'm going to shove this game into the face of everyone I know so that I can have conversations about such things.
EDIT: I replayed the game, and it turns out the fireflies are completely unnecessary. They're just trinkets to be found. Thus, consider the last paragraph as a reflection on what I would have liked to write about the game if it had implemented design choices more to my liking.
Let me talk a bit about the technical side of things before going into what I didn't like about the game.
The controls are nice and fluid and do exactly what you'd expect them to (once you go into the settings and set "inverse y on camera" from "off" to "on"). The only mechanical issue I had a problem with was the fact that if you press "S" to dismount your vine, walking on it is very difficult and unruly, which is likely to send you flying into the depths of space. Granted, you can't die in this game, so it's not a huge problem.
That being said, there's no consequence for dying. I find this to be a mark of flawed design in general, but what really gets me is that it takes any sense of danger or challenge out of the game. The feeling of danger...the emotion that you could fail at any time...these are the kinds of moods that made Life of Pi such an amazing movie. If you knew for a fact that the kid and the tiger would stumble upon an island village of zoophiles and that Pi and Richard Parker would start a family and live happily ever after, the movie would be reduced to nothing but a visual rollercoaster (by the way, nothing of the sort happens in Life of Pi. Don't worry, I'd put 'spoiler alert' in front of a paragraph with legitimate spoilers).
Other than that, the worst thing I can say about this game is that it severely needs a skip feature. This is the kind of game that would encourage you to replay it multiple times because every play experience is different. You'll likely get a completely different poem every time, etc. Let me get right into the good stuff! Don't make me watch the same artsy slideshow that I've watched every time I boot up the damn game. And for cryin out loud, let me skip the credits! Or at least put my stats before the credits so that I can make a mental note of them before alt+f4ing past the credits myself. It's not that I'm not interested in who made the game, it's just that I already knew that by reading DigiPen's webpage, and I certainly don't need to see it more than once.
Despite this game's flaws (which were plentiful and pronounced), I had a lot of fun with it. I really thing this game is artistic rather than artsy, which is an important difference. Dreamside Maroon proudly joins my list of artistic masterpieces, right alongside Braid and Bastion. Sure Dreamside Maroon might be the little nerdy pipsqueak that the other artistic games pick on, but he's still in the club and real proud of it. It's miles above pretentious, artsy games like Douse in my opinion.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay poetic. I leave you with one particular line from Dreamside Maroon that stuck with me: "But as long as I am young and the world is not as it should be, I am forced to define it. An Idea. To share it with the world."
Links
Fly me to the moon: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=8715
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