The first thing that struck me about this game is that it was made by Andrew Nack. The very same Andrew Nack who made Ethereal, a game that I found enjoyable but unfortunately had to compare to bLight, which had a bigger team behind it (meaning more than one person), due to the massive similarities in the playstyles of the two games. I'm not sure what else Mr. Nack did in his sophomore year, but creating two fully functional games all my yourself in the span of one schoolyear is definitely enough to earn my respect. That said, let's see what Fate can do.
This game is about bunnies. You must save the bunnies from drowning by getting rid of the coral obstructing their paths. Be careful, though, as the journey to the surface is a treacherous one. You are ranked by how many bunnies you manage to save, though if you get tired of trying to figure out a level and have already saved enough bunnies to move on, you can murder the rest of the fluffy little guys with the click of a button. Uh, hey...Watership Down called...
From a gameplay perspective, this is a solid puzzle game. It's not too long, has a reasonable difficulty curve, intuitive mechanics, etc etc. It's clear this Nack guy knows what he's doing. It Fate an incredibly engaging experience? no. Does it show potential to revolutionize the gaming medium any time soon? no. I don't think that's what this game was about. This game seems like an opportunity for a lone developer-in-training to show off his skills in programming and art direction, and in that case, it succeeds.
I did a bit of research and it turns out Andrew Nack has a grand total of 6 projects under his belt. You can bet I'm going to review them in sort of their own separate category, because my theory is that they are all attempts to push the skills of the individual rather than attempts to further the medium as a whole. And you know what? I respect that. Something hits close to home about a guy who deliberately chooses to engage himself with difficult and time consuming projects as a test of his own will before he can think about moving into really big projects (did I mention this is a blog?)
Well, if my theory is correct and all 6 of Mr. Nack's games show off this level of mastery in different sectors of game design and art direction, as Fate and Ethereal differed, then I'll be really excited to witness Mr. Nack's work in the future.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay inspired.
Links
Glub: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26416
