There’s a reason why one area at Rezzed is called the Leftfield Collection each year, with a small section of the show devoted to the weird and wonderful that come straight out of left field, as it were. I didn’t manage to find the time to make my way through the entire collection, but sat down and played a handful of the games on offer.
Reigns | PC, Mac, iOS | Nerial | Summer 2016
This was easily the best and most interesting game of the lot, with plenty of positive things said by anyone that played it. It’s essentially a kingdom management game, in which you respond to your advisors and make decisions as you would try to court a date on Tindr or Grindr.
The real aim of the game is to keep the church, population, military and money in a happy balance between 0 and 100. Each card lets you choose between two possible options, with how this affects these four pillars revealed as you drag the card to each side. Bankrupt your country and the oligarchs will have you out on your ear, let the military get too influential and you’ll see yourself subject to a military coup.
However, not every decision’s outcome can be fully seen, so as to avoid letting you simply play the statistics, and there are a number of other twists in the tale. You have certain missions during a reign, to try and find a wife, hire a doctor or spy, and certain things that affect can affect the lands across multiple reigns, such as embarking on a crusade against the Queen of the West.
Reigns is smart, simple and compelling, and definitely one to keep an eye on.
Burly Men at Sea | PC, Mac, iOS | Brain&Brain | 2016
Easily the best named game at Rezzed, Burly Men at Sea does not lie with its title. It’s a gorgeously stylish and minimalist point and click adventure that features, you guessed it, three burly and bearded men hopping into a boat together and heading off to sea.
The real standout here is with the graphical style and presentation. The trio of sailors all feature grandly rotund beards that protrude from their relatively stocky frames, and exploring sees you dragging the edge of a circular viewpoint into the world, extending the screen in the direction you want to go. Interacting with the people you meet sees these characters shift to the foreground and their dialogue appear at the top.
Of course, Sturdy Beard, Brave Beard and Hasty Beard don’t just spend their time cutting through the waves of the open waters. That wouldn’t make for a particularly memorable adventure, so they visit small coastal towns and talk to the townsfolk or, as I ended my time with the game, found themselves gathered around a fire with some nymphs, having just been swallowed whole by a whale.
RK3000 | TBA | René Rother | TBA
The best way to describe RK3000 is as an isometric kaiju game. Admittedly, you control a towering robot and not a gigantic and fantastical mutant creature, but the essential set up is the same.
You smash and stomp your way across the vividly pink cityscape, trying to reach and destroy a handful of buildings. Of course, the city’s not really going to give up without a fight, and so small vehicles nip at your heels, tanks unleash cannon fire at you from afar, and fighter jets make sweeping passes to try and stop you.
Vignettes | TBA | Pol Clarissou, Armel Gibson & Pat Ashe | TBA
Games in the Leftfield Collection can often take more of a prototype and experimental form, and so it was with Vignettes. It had me turning 3D objects around on the screen, to explore their form, starting with the word ‘vignettes’ itself. Spinning it around, it resolved into a flat yellow plane that could be used to disguise a transformation. Suddenly it’s a telephone, find the right way to spin it and it’s a pile of books, a TV…
As I’m turning these objects around, searching for the flat face and the direction I need to spin it in, I’m subtly reminded of adverts that centre around sleight of hand and transforming one object into another in the blink of an eye. It’s a nice visual effect, but I’m curious to see how it can be fleshed out into more than just a demo.
Oases | PC, Mac | Armel Gibson | Out Now
Oases is less of a game and more of an experience. A single prop plane is flying along as you sit down to play, which quickly loses control as you begin. However, instead of flying into the ground, you end up flying down what can only be described as a psychedelic wormhole, ending up in a bizarre desert scene, which is just as trippy as the wormhole you’ve just flown down.
There is, of course, a story behind all of this, and it’s an incredibly personal one. A brief text screen in the game informs you that the grandfather of Armel Gibson, the game’s developer, was involved in the Algerian Independence War, with his plane declared missing just days before the birth of his first child. Oases is a vision of what Armel likes to believe happened to his grandfather and his missing plane.
It’s a touching story that has been crafted into a simply gorgeous experience. As you fly through a desert oasis with water cascading down from hands that seem embedded in the sand dunes or a world that seems to consist entirely of giant lilies you can’t help but be impressed by the beautiful world you’re blindly exploring in your little plane.
Nineties Cockpit Freakout | PC | Giraffe Cat | Out Now
When I was younger I got weirdly into playing with Microsoft Flight Simulator. Not doing anything spectacular, just flying 747’s and their like from point A to point B with my friend randomly causing engines to stop. It was a nice challenge to see if you could remember the right sequence of switches to get everything back on track as you plummeted in a less than ideal direction.
Nineties Cockpit Freakout is in the same vein, although taken in a very different direction. You’re sat inside a simplistic cockpit looking out at wireframe world, with diamond targets that you have to target. The only small catch is that the cockpit has no instructions at all, leaving you to work out how it operates on your own; a remarkably tricky task.
For one, there’s a self-destruct button. Fortunately there’s also a disarm button, which helps matters somewhat, but you’ll have to work out which one it is on your own. You can even set the windscreen wipers going if you want.
However, it’s the three sliders in the cockpit that seem to be the most useful in terms of getting your craft to move. Sliders to the left and the right of you control the thrust of your engines, while one in the middle steers. However, you can only use the mouse pointer to control them, meaning you can only fiddle with one slider at a time. It’s a tricky balancing act that I utterly failed at, causing my craft to spin wildly. Even so, it’s certainly an enjoyable experience, and a very silly one at that.
