Quadrilateral Cowboy has that Blendo charm
Quadrilateral Cowboy, developed by Blendo Games, seems like it would have a huge barrier to entry considering that it uses legitimate computer programming to solve its puzzles. This is far from true. My biggest concern for the game was quickly alleviated as the game has a wonderful help system in place.
Let it be known that regardless of your computer programming experience, Quadrilateral Cowboy will welcome you with open arms. Also know that this is a bizarre game. Pressing F1 activates noclip mode, allowing the user to go straight through walls whenever they want. I asked if that was just for this PAX build, but it is actually part of the game. Because why not?
I haven’t touched programming since high school, so I was a bit nervous heading into Quadrilateral Cowboy, especially with creator Brendon Chung standing next to me. I was then really happy to learn that typing “help” will bring up some common commands, and typing any object will bring up all of the functions associated with it. Any time I felt lost, I wasn’t far away from getting help.
The very first obstacle is to open a locked door. The solution wasn’t to find a keycard or to pick the lock, but instead to open up my in-game laptop and type door3.open(10) which opened the door in front of me, labeled door3, for 10 seconds. As simple as it was, hot damn did I feel accomplished afterwards.
It wasn’t long before alarms were thrown into the equation, triggering if a door was open for more than three seconds. Not long after that I was disabling a camera, having the program wait two seconds, and then disabling a second camera as I scooted by. Opening a door? Child’s play.
Oh, and the tutorial level took me just as long to play as Thirty Flights of Loving in its entirety. This may have the Blendo Games aesthetic, but it is a drastic departure from Gravity Bone or Thirty Flights. With unlimited potential, Quadrilateral Cowboy definitely has a bright future. It should come out this year, but nothing is set in stone just yet.
