My ongoing efforts to play one title from my 545 game backlog for every day that the UK is in lockdown...
Nimbus for the PC
You wait 90 days for a game with an instant reset button, and then two come along back-to-back.
Nimbus is a game where you control a little space ship though increasingly complex puzzle levels. The USP here is that although you can turn the craft, it has no thrust of its own so you have to use cannons and bounce pads and other items dotted around the levels for propulsion - and then use gravity, momentum, and inertia in creative ways to make your way from the start point to the exit.
It’s a very simple concept, and early levels are designed to compliment this, but it doesn’t take long for Nimbus to get devilishly hard and the levels to get very complex.
Fortunately, the developers, Noumenon Games, have proven here (and with their more famous Snakebird IP) that they are masters of introducing new puzzle elements, giving the player time to master them, and then building the game further with more elements introduced in this same fashion.
If the comments I see following every news story that mentions mobile gaming are anything to go by, my biggest issue with Nimbus is one that many will take umbrage with: I really wish I could play it on my phone.
And again, I need to be clear that I mean it as a good thing when I say it’s a perfect game for that platform in so many ways.
The bold, stylish, visuals would look lovely on a 6” screen, and the bite sized levels are perfect for a quick game between bus-stops, during ad-breaks, or while waiting for the kettle to boil.
But most of all, the control scheme is absolutely ideal. Mobile games always work best when they have two, or at most three, inputs - and Nimbus has exactly that: Rotate left, rotate right, and airbrakes.
I can see this working immaculately on my Pixel 4; with rotate mapped to each half of the screen and the air brake operated by pressing both at the same time… but alas it doesn’t look like that's going to happen. Nimbus released in 2010 and if we haven’t seen a port at this time I doubt there’ll be one forthcoming.
You start each level of Nimbus by simply falling out of the sky. From here you use your directional controls to guide the boy spaceship on his mission to rescue a girl spaceship over sixty or so ingeniously designed levels (of which I’ve played about half at time of writing).
It begins by teaching you to use rebound pads, then to avoid spikes, soon coloured switches are introduced, and then other objects (that are also subject to the game’s physics) are added to the mix. Before long a level might have you bounce from a pad, into a tractor beam, to toggle a switch, to launch a ball, that you bump into a cannon, that fires at a switch, that opens a door, that leads to the exit… and as I’ve said, each of these gameplay concepts is introduced perfectly so that you are never confused and failure always feels like you’re own fault - and at least there’s that glorious instant reset button to facilitate that ‘just one more try’ feeling.
This very simple central concept evolves into a game of deceptive depth and endless fun. It may be a missed opportunity to not be on mobile, but that doesn’t make it less of a game on the PC - and there’s even a free demo on Steam if you want to take a look for yourself.
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