A nice selection to get through this week, with three games receiving the illustrious Hidden Gem status - so let's not hang about.
Quick recap: To facilitate this exercise I played every game made available on the DSiWare service and, once I weeded out the shovelware, I have divided the remainder into four categories:
Hidden Gems: Games you've probably never heard of that are utterly brilliant
Well Known & Wonderful: Still gems, still potentially brilliant, but perhaps not quite so 'hidden'
Honourable Mentions: Those games that are good, but lack the real spark required to fit into one of the top two categories
Also Rans: Not bad enough to be completely ignored, but probably not quite good enough to warrant higher status
Two caveats: Firstly, I don't enjoy RPGs. Like, at all. So you won't see any of those at any point. And secondly it's very hard to define 'Hidden Gem' on DSiWare, as the service itself was never hugely popular, so please excuse a potential few miss-categorisations along the way!
Hidden Gems
The idiom that tells us not to judge a book by it's cover has been around in one form or another since the mid 19th century. Taken literally, it could not appear more anachronistic than when applied to digital video games - and yet I'm not sure there is any other form of media to which it is more relevant.
The digital gaming era emerged contemporaneously with Youtube; a time when visual media has grown exponentially and snap-judgements became the norm.
Go! Go! Island Rescue! may not actually have a cover, but I would imagine a large number of people read the title, saw the icon, maybe even saw a Youtube trailer - and quickly moved on from what they believed was a child's game.
The opposite, we shouldn't forget, is then probably also true: Youngsters or parents would have made a judgement on the same criteria and are likely to have been infuriated by what turned out to be a tight, creative, and challenging action-puzzle game - because that is exactly what lies beneath the cheerful cartoony graphics, bright and breezy presentation, and a title with almost as many exclamation-marks as words.
The game takes place from the standard 2D perspective and looks much like any number of similar games from over the years. There are ladders and pits, platforms and traps.
As a firefighter on one of four island locations, it is your job to rescue the locals - or 'Darwins', to give them their proper, slightly over-literal, name by guiding them safely to the exit of each level.
As their name suggests, Darwins will run around in blind panic without your interaction. There may be fire between them and the exit, for example, which will need to be extinguished.
Unlike the NPCs, our heroic first-responder is controlled directly. You move about the level collecting fire extinguishers, catching falling Darwins, throwing them at the exit, and so on. Yes. Throwing them.
Throwing Darwins is a major part of the fun in the game. Quite often they will need to be hurled across gaps, onto higher platforms, or over flames. And it's not just them. I'm not sure what school of fire-safety our hero attended, but Fire extinguishers, too, are thrown directly into the flames. It appears to work though so, I guess, whatever means necessary!?
As you would expect, mechanics gradually get more complicated with the introduction of NPCs that follow set paths, levels with multiple exits, and other new elements that keep the game fresh and challenging.
Which brings me back to books and covers. Marketing works. It's not a billion dollar industry for nothing. Go! Go! Island Rescue! has a difficulty level and complexity that is clearly aimed at an experienced audience. At some point in it's post-development the decision was made to market it otherwise and this can't be seen as anything other than a huge mistake.
On the flipside, there's probably a kid out there in the world who's first experience of a 'real' (for lack of a better word) video game was this excellent little gem of a puzzler. Envy that kid.
Of entirely no relation to the game above, this is nevertheless another action puzzle game with a cartoony design. However, here it's much less geared towards the very young. Kokopolo, our scratch happy feline protagonist (who put me in mind of Professor Genki from the Saints Row series) comes from the Sonic the Hedgehog school of 'edgy' design.
This is a game that feels very much based in the maze games of old; Pac-Man or Clean Sweep, for example. Kokopolo can walk, run, and jump around the levels attacking enemies as he goes. Unfortunately for him, his attacks only serve to annoy these various creatures who will then begin to chase him.
It's here that the main mechanic of the game comes in. The Mazes are filled with various traps and pitfalls that Kokopolo is equipped to avoid but his enemies are not. So, the player must run away, avoiding other enemies, and eventually leading his pursuers into one of these traps.
Despite being a game with quite a steep learning curve, it's also one that, for me, really nails great replayability. It's one thing to offer the player a time trial mode, but it's quite another to make them actually want to play it.
Every level could be cleared by meticulously working through the enemies. But most, maybe even all, can also be cleared in one long smooth run. With the experience bolstered by the quality graphics and visual style, I found the desire to go back and do a run that looked as much like a cartoon as possible almost irresistible.
For me, there isn't much greater praise.
Colour-mixing puzzle games are nothing new. Even before their ubiquity on mobile phone platforms applying the concept that 'yellow and red make orange' has been an ever present in the medium for decades.
Even the simplest games need rules. Think of the most basic childhood game; 'Tag', or 'It', or whatever your regional name for it was. Rule 1: Chase someone with the aim of making any physical contact. Rule 2: If the chaser tags the runner the roles immediately reverse.
Glow Artisan has rules almost as simple, but they work to bring the game such beautiful complexity.
On the DS's top screen is a pattern, formed on a grid, made up of between 2 and 8 colours. You are tasked with matching this pattern on a second grid on the touchscreen, using only the primary colours, in as few 'moves' as possible. In doing this, you are restricted by the following rules...
Rule 1: Colours must be 'pulled' from the top or left side of the grid. This means that if you want to colour the fourth square red, you must draw a line from the edge from square one, then two, three and finally four. Think of like stacking, only sideways, or upside down!
Rule 2: You can mix colours to create sub-colours; Blue+Red = Purple, etc by overlaying or crossing over one colour with another.
Rule 3: You can erase the colour from squares, but only by deleting an entire row or column
And that really is just about it. Using only some fiendish grid designs and applying these rules the game becomes tortuously compelling. There's no time limit or other 'urgency' in the game, so it falls into the sub category of 'Zen Puzzlers', and the mental agility and focus required to unpick the levels later in the game make it very worthy of this title.
It may ostensibly be very simple, but prolonged play will reveal a game of genuine complexity, challenge, and quality.
Honourable Mentions
Game and Watch (All)
There were nine 'Game and Watch' releases on DSiWare spread over two years and, as you would expect, they are of hugely varying quality. There are examples here that are still eminently playable, like Donkey Kong Jr., but there's also games of such moronic simplicity that they would fail to entertain even the most basic brain for more than a minute or two, like Ball.
If you, like me, have zero nostalgia for any of these titles then I would posit that none are really worth going out of your way to play. However, if you do remember some, or all, of them fondly then the presentation and extras offered are actually pretty cool and will doubtless bring a rosy-hued smile to your face.
Galaxy Saver
A neat twist on the fixed position shoot 'em ups of old like Space Invaders or Galaxians, Galaxy Saver attaches your craft to the outside of a circular force field protecting a planet.
Waves of enemies attack from every direction and it's your job, using a combination of the radar on the top screen, a limited arsenal, and a personal force field to fend them off long enough for the planetary defence system to come online.
Things don't get much more complicated than that and, given the genre, that's not much of a surprise. But Galaxy Saver is well made and the circular play field is a nice change of pace so it makes for a fun diversion for genre fans.
Great Whip Adventure (G.G. Series)
There's a kind of sub-series within the G.G. Series of games that are clearly built using the same coding DNA.
They tend to be single screen and built (in the background) on a grid with the goal of navigating platforms to find and use the exit. The mode of traversal is the main change in each of these games, and it does seem to make all the difference as there are good ones (Mighty Hammer) and bad ones (driller). Great Whip Adventure falls somewhere in the middle, perhaps just on the good side.
The method of getting around the platforms this time is the titular Whip. This is both your only weapon against the various enemies and means to latch onto hooks, moving platforms, and various other gaming tropes. Disappointingly, however, you are unable to swing.
'Pretty Decent Whip Adventure', as I'm renaming it, does a good job of gradually ramping up the difficulty and keeping things pretty fresh as the short levels fly by.
Actually. Thinking about it, I'll upgrade it to 'Good Whip Adventure', this seems the best fit to me.
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