Game Memorial

Posted on August 1, 2012 by Arantor

OK, so we're going to kick off Game-A-Day with New Beginnings. Starting at the start, with A, and the first of the games this month I've not yet found the time to play, we'll kick off with Ancients of Ooga.

Before we begin...
I like to wander around a game's menu/options before starting to play. Allows me to get a feel for the style of the game and the sorts of things I'm about to encounter - and if there's a How to Play guide, I'll look at it.

From the shortish backstory, I can see that I'm taking the role of a deity of sorts, possessing the local villagers and rescuing them from a tribe that they've got mixed up with.

I've already got some goals to contend with - rescuing people, not dying - but already I'm feeling like there's a lot to remember, since there's several different ways to boost my score (though most of them are pretty straightforward - completing levels, rescuing everyone, not dying) but there's also a list of 8 or 9 things that I can eat for different effects.

It shouldn't be too awkward, but we'll soon see about that. Controls are fairly standard - which is nice - arrow keys, plus a cluster around the ASD/ZX/space area. I'm getting a vague sense that there's too many controls for the keyboard, but we'll see how that turns out - I've got controls for jump, attack, pick up, action and 'switch Ooganis', perhaps some kind of multi-character deal? Hmm.

Getting Started
I always find the first few minutes of a game tell me most about it - and as this is a new game, and a new experience all in all, I'm going to try to share it all, if possible

So, there's a nice little animated sequence explaining the plight of the Ooganis, and the fact they're summoning the Great Spirit - the player! The tone of this is an odd mix of 'help us oh mighty spirit' and downplaying the seriousness of things - "making fun of us until we cry like wee Ooganinis." Yeah. I can see it's going to be that sort of a game. Right, so mean stupid enemies, downtrodden other characters - the basic good vs evil then. I think I would have appreciated voice-casting for the intro though the text wasn't that long. But it makes me wonder about the rest of the game.

OK, so we're into the game proper. And as hoped-for, a quick tutorial. Still no voice-acting, but the text seems shorter here, so that's probably not a huge loss.

So, it's a jump'n'run game, but so far it has one intriguing thing I don't think I've seen. Like a lot of games, it does use 3D objects and 3D rendering (and the graphics are pretty good, all in all, though I'm fairly certain the hardcore gamers won't be that enthusiastic) - but it's not a 3D jump'n'run game. It's also not a 2D game as such - the game is primarily 2D, but the platforms you're running around on have some depth to them, and even as I go through the tutorial I can move 'back' and 'forwards' on the ledges I'm on - just not with masses of depth.

The scope of the tutorial so far isn't much, so I'm not yet clear whether this is a good thing or not, though I did notice one trampoline was set further 'back' and I had to consciously walk back to use it. I guess I'm so used to the conventional jump'n'run mechanics that I wasn't actually expecting it.

And OK, I mentioned the things I could eat, the tutorial does actually begin to cover these, which is certainly no bad thing. And it shows me something I don't remember seeing so far.

You can pick up and eat almost anything... and you can actually puke it back up again.. Mechanically it seems to be a way of giving you two inventory slots without actually being a physical slot, but it doesn't change the way the mental image of that works!

And already the depth mechanic has come back to bite me, I dropped a log on what looked like the right place - a button - but it's not actually on top of it, it's further away in the distance.

Fantastic, I managed to die this early in the tutorial, stupidly trying for the gate I thought I'd locked open, hah! Fortunately, death is not a huge pain at this stage, but respawning could potentially cause problems in the future depending on whether objects also respawn/relocate.

After that, the first puzzle in the game - so, a platformer that's less about making perfect jumps and more about puzzles, interesting. The puzzle here serves to teach you several things - how to throw something, how to kill something, and the nature of the enemy you're dealing with. I gotta say, this seems a pretty thorough tutorial.

Then we come to a brief moment where one of the Ooganis wants me to hit him... to prove his loyalty with his bruises? OK... that's a new one. The game wants me to, and it's clearly meant to demonstrate how to attack safely, but it also shows up something else - the characters do say different things depending on what has happened. This is actually verging on role-play territory now, going back round to talk to everyone. Perhaps there's more to the puzzle depths of this game than I'd expected.

OK, quick round of button mashing combat (the best kind!), then discovering the health item to be consumed, and... what? The last chief - who I've been possessing all this time - promptly dies on me, introducing 'bone fires' which can resurrect chiefs. This is an interesting twist in story and definitely in mechanics, but it still seems a bit jarring, and not quite as enthusing as it could be.

(At this point, it should be stirring my interest, involving me as a player and giving me reason to save the chiefs - killing them this quickly doesn't leave me with much involvement in the character and it doesn't give me 'quick, only YOU can save him!' vibes either.)

Ah, and now the reason for chewing on something without swallowing it makes sense. I suspected it'd be a second inventory slot, but really it's a 'practicality' - you can't climb ladders while you're holding something. I gotta say, that actually seems like quite an odd mechanic. It's just inventory juggling, at that point, something that isn't necessary.

Something else that isn't necessary is the way the tutorial continues. You have three items to collect to resurrect the chief in the bone fire. And sure enough, three Ooganis to control, so now you get pushed from one to the next as you finish the objective. I hope this doesn't set things up for later in the game, because switching characters just because of where they are - and not unique abilities - gets old fast. The Lost Vikings worked really well for that because the three characters each had unique abilities - this isn't shaping up the same way.

OK, so get that done, another nice animated sequence later about the plight of the Ooganis and their seven tribes. Guess the main game is about to begin, with all the key mechanics now in place.

Sure enough, 'you can now possess one of these revolting Ooganis. It doesn't matter which one you choose. They're all willing to do your bidding.' Great. Though given the one-item limit I seem to have seen, I can imagine needing multiple troops - they all have names and unique appearances, so it's not like I can't tell them apart. But for the most part it doesn't seem like a big deal.

Seven tribes, sound the war drums, check. Wait... I'm not in the tutorial now, and you're explaining yet more mechanics to me? How complicated is this going to get?

Quick in-game screenshot:


That's my character, next to a lever, and a couple of Ooganis trapped that I'm expected to rescue. It's a good indication of the style of graphics in the game really, the whole game carries on this general style.

Anyway, first real puzzle, a wall. Half the ingredients are right there, the other item we'd already seen in passing, no big deal to put 2 and 2 together - though it wasn't necessarily clear that you have to do things in a certain order lest you blow yourself up - like I did a couple of times! No big deal, though.

Then a puzzle that actually demonstrates why I was afraid of the multiple-character deal, several doors that require Ooganis on the other side of the door to open it for you. Yay.

Then a strange concept: I have to sacrifice the Ooganis on an altar. That's not the strange part. The strange part is that I can pick up multiple Ooganis, chew on them, and them puke multiple Ooganis up... wait, what? Yes, that's right. It's still not really different to a fetch quest of sorts - and nothing new in platforming games - but it's the apparent 'chewing/puking' combination that is interesting. Perhaps a little off-putting but certainly interesting.

Yay, then I figure I have to bring a bunch of them all through the level. I really didn't want to have to do that, and feared that the multi-character mode could be used in this way. It also sets a tone for the rest of the game that I'm not so sure I'll like, a trend for puzzles that require multi-use of characters to deal with abstract location problems. Though in this case, they were nice enough to allow me to possess the two handily nearby rather than drag the others through the whole level, but I know I'm not going to be that lucky in future. Though it was a nice touch to let me have some control over the drumming.

Wider thoughts

OK, I think I've talked enough about the game at this point, at least of my immediate reaction to playing it, as I play it, so to speak. The 2D-platform-puzzle combination so far seems interesting, so I'm fairly certain I'll play it more, but I'm wary at the direction it seems to be taking - multiple non-unique characters on a level for no readily apparent reason is going to be annoying.

I also get the feeling the controls are a little bit finicky - more than once I thought I was in prime position to do something and found I wasn't, though the controls are otherwise very responsive.

One thing I haven't mentioned much - though as hinted at on the screenshot above, is the way there are keyboard shortcuts shown every time you can press something that isn't a move or jump button. All the options are shown when relevant. Now, ordinarily that'd be a down-mark from me: do you really need to indicate all the controls as they're appropriate? This time, though, I think it might be useful - the controls are context-sensitive and they give you information that isn't indicated graphically (e.g. what is in your mouth presently)

Graphics, as already mentioned, are nice. They're not mind-bogglingly beautiful, they're not hideous, they're perfectly nice. They work, carrying through the slightly unusual style of the game and don't really get in the way too much. It is a nice touch to see the different Ooganis with different visual styles, more than just tweaked textures too, by the looks of things.

The music is much of what you'd expect - jungle themes, drums, and so on. It's pleasant, if nothing overly memorable.

The gameplay is the big deal in the game, and it's mostly solid with a few things that let it down. I think the way it introduces mechanics is one of things that lets it down - it just seems like there's more and more mechanics to contend with, more than I've had chance to uncover so far, but I don't think that's a *big* let-down, it's just not quite what it could have been.

Overall, I'd say this game has been a positive start to the Game-A-Day project - it's a game that I'm sure I'll play more of, with some interesting ideas, if a less than perfect execution of some of those ideas. But it's still pretty well put together, all in all.

It's on Steam for $10 or so, and if puzzle platformers are your thing, you probably should give it a look, there are plenty worse examples of the genre out there.