And Yet it Moves - Indie Game Reviews

Axel Cushing takes a look at the indie And Yet it Moves available now for PC and Mac. Axel puts it up there with the likes of Lemmings and Bejeweled. High praise indeed!

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And Yet it Moves

Puzzle games are probably one of the oldest type of game out there, not merely in videogames, but even back into ancient times. Be they made of clay tiles, twisted iron, or Flash animations, they're easy to get into and usually fairly easy to understand, but by no means always easy to beat. In the history of videogames, I would argue that Lemmings from Psygnosis set a gold standard for what a puzzle game should be: a simple premise, easy to understand rules, and a great deal of

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personality. It should, above all other things, make you think on your feet. Tetris had this principle down. So did Bejewled. Into this august company, I believe a place needs to be made for And Yet It Moves.

According to the lore on the developer's website, AYIM started out as a class project in a computer science course at the Vienna University of Technology

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in Austria. The devs were restricted to using a 2D environment. Laboring under this restriction, they got the idea to give the player the ability to rotate the environment. In doing so, they opened up a whole new range of gameplay options. An insurmountable wall becomes a nice safe floor or a ceiling you drop away from. Obstacles and hazards become pathways and assists. It's so ridiculously simple you wonder why it hasn't been done more often.

The visual style of the game falls somewhere between South Park and the doodles you drew in your notebooks when you were in high school. It's whimsical, not too serious, and fits perfectly with the game. You travel across seventeen levels trying to get from point A to point B without getting killed. Thankfully, should your platforming skills be a little less than stellar, there's a variety of checkpoints along the path of each course make sure you don't have to start all the way back at the beginning. Spatial reasoning will definitely serve players well in this game, as well as a basic understanding of physics. Randomly rotating the world so that your avatar is constantly stuck in a deranged spin cycle looks fine and well until you decide to stop and you hit the ground. Yes, you keep your angular momentum, so while it is possible to "curve" around 90 degree angled corners, it is also possible that you might over-rotate and smash yourself into a wall or floor with hilarious results. If you're feeling bold, or if you're a past master at the game, you can try speed runs through the levels and put them up online to see who among your friends can clear a level the fastest or who knows the best shortcuts.

I'm curious to see what new goodies come out of the minds of these devs. They're definitely ones to watch in the future.

- Axel Cushing

(June 11, 2009)