Each year, Gamma entrants are asked to make games under certain constraints. This year, all Gamma4 entries must be controlled with a single button. I’m going to write up my impressions of all six Gamma4 games.
Yeah, that’s what the actual game looks like. At his IGS talk earlier in the week, cactus called Mark Essen his “hero.” cactus’ Gamma4 submission — unceremoniously titled GAMMA IV: The Game — shows how true that statement is.
Hit the jump for my impressions of the game.
Before trying to explain GAMMA IV: the game, it’d probably be best if you watched this trailer:
So, the object of the game is to make the flashing white lines crash headfirst into the flashing white boxes, without hitting any walls, or enemies, or the borders of the screen. You control all the flashing white lines simultaneously, and by pressing the button, the line will make a 90-degree turn to the right. Imagine Snake, but with only one turn command, and also made by someone interested in inducing seizures in his players.
Though the visuals are distinctly Messhof-esque in nature, the majority of Essen’s game visuals (The Thrill of Combat excluded) don’t actually interfere with the player’s ability to understand what’s going on. In reality, GAMMA IV shares more in common with Jeff Minter’s games, albeit with much simpler gameplay. Since the basic act of “get your snake to hit the white boxes” is pretty straightforward, the player generally has to focus harder on deciphering the visual noise and understanding exactly where their lines are on the screen, and where the evil red enemies are firing from, and which part of the line is just a graphical trail and which part is where you currently are.
This is really fun, for a little while. Since all of your lines are basically mirrored versions of one another, victory is usually signified by the simultaneous, explosion of four different boxes in four different areas of the screen. A pattern of destruction suddenly erupts onscreen everytime you do something good, which is enough reward to mitigate the initial “what the shit am I doing” frustration that inevitably confronted me at first.
Unfortunately, after a certain period of time it becomes obvious that, rather than dividing your attention across the game screen as a whole, it’s much easier to progress if you just focus on one particular line, and try to get it to one particular box. The same line-mirroring that makes victory so visually satisfying also makes many of the later stages easier than they initially seem: since all your lines are controlled simultaneously and the entire world is often vertically and horizontally mirrored, it’s impossible to detonate one box without also detonating a bunch of other boxes. This keeps the game from being overwhelming difficulty-wise, but it also severely detracted from the pure, epileptic spectacle I felt upon first starting the game and trying to keep my eye on everything all at once. The best method of playing the game makes it less fun to look at, which is unfortunate for a game so focused on visual noise and spectacle.
Still, there’s a lot to be said for GAMMA IV’s initial experience. I felt a weird power in making sense out of the seizure-inducing graphics, in maneuvering around a nearly indecipherable world before spontaneously lighting up the screen with four, then eight simultaneous explosions.
GAMMA IV: the game isn’t publicly downloadable yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if cactus makes it available after GDC is over.
