Our lives are rollercoasters of happiness and tragedy. It’s our own human condition, to be ever swirling in the cycle of good and bad events throughout our time on this earth. Undoubtedly, we’ve all been in a position at some point in our lives where the bad experiences have weighed down on us, and in some cases it can become so bad that self destruction is the only way to cope.  But what if today was the day that you faced these demons head on? To be presented with a situation so drastic that it alters your attitude entirely, alleviating the pain and freeing you from your burdens.

That is what 4PM intends to explain with its cinematic gameplay experience. And I use the word experience deliberately, as this game is more like an interactive short film where you navigate through the various scenarios to uncover the narrative. Since the story is the main event so to speak, I’ll only add that you play as a woman on the path of self destruction, harbouring bad memories and ultimately ignoring the important aspects of her present life. On this fateful day, you’ll be presented with a realisation, and it’s up to you to take the right path towards coming to terms with what has happened in the past.

The experience is presented in first person, and throughout each scene you’ll be able to interact with the various objects dotted around. It doesn’t take long to piece together protagonist Caroline’s unfortunate past, or her current state for that matter, by simply looking at the various artifacts in the first scene. As the game progresses, you’ll navigate a number of other situations from late night raving in clubs – which comes with some of the most hilarious arm flailing animations I’ve seen to date – to sneaking around the office in an effort to avoid your agitated boss. Eventually, events will come to a head and you’ll be asked to make a couple of choices on what to do. When this came about I could see that the choices were obviously meant to be quite meaningful, but the after going through my options it all felt a little too convenient. It was easy to see what options to pick in order to produce the best ‘ending’, and the concluding scene felt somewhat diminished as a result.

As a whole, the game doesn’t stand up well against tests of visual fidelity. The rich colours and presentation of each scene fit with the cinematic ideals of the game itself but there’s a myriad of issues haunting the game’s presentation from start to finish. After five or ten minutes of play you start to notice an odd blurring effect that slightly obscures your vision, making detailed objects like text difficult to read and generally rendering everything as if a child had smudged the colours all over the family walls. It appears in every scene, and it feels like an attempt to make the game more dramatic. Unfortunately it doesn’t work in every situation, as I quickly found out when having to squint really hard to make out the various notes and stickers on the back of a taxi cab driver’s passenger window. It’s an odd issue to have, but since it’s ever present throughout, it may cause some aggravation amongst those wishing to check out all of the finer details in the game.

Then there’s the odd positioning of the player camera, which is often prone to fits of wobbling and awkward angles. You’d be forgiven in thinking that a game that uses camera bobbing to help immerse the player in the experience couldn’t possibly be that difficult to cope with, but you would be wrong. When Caroline was happily throwing her aforementioned crazy arm dance moves around the nightclub, her head was on its own mission, presumably attempting to detach itself to save any embarrassment of association with its host. Whilst Caroline seems to be able to keep her head mostly upright for the remainder of the game, there’s an awful swaying motion that comes with manoeuvring around the environment that could easily be enough to make you nauseous.

I said at the start that I wouldn’t spoil anything, and I will continue to do so. However, it’s worth noting that the game could very easily be broken into two sections. The first fifteen to twenty minutes culminate into an interesting and progressive narrative. We learn minor details about the main character and her past, with every intention to learn more and progress the story to see how events unfold. After that honeymoon period is over, things take a turn for the worse as the second section takes over. The visual issues become much more noticeable when other characters are presented in full, shoving their jarring stick limbs and flat faces into our field of view whilst we sway and stumble around our office desk like we’re perpetually spinning a hula hoop. The story suffers a similar fate, with the game feeding you obvious choices that aren’t hard to predict and eventually devolving into nothing more than a conclusion that doesn’t shock or surprise anybody.

Overall Rating: ★★☆☆☆ 

What does this score mean?

This game was reviewed using a copy provided by the developer for that purpose.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Castles in the Sky took me by surprise, not because of stunning graphics, hardcore gameplay or amazing physics. No, what took me by surprise was innocence, a sense of whimsy I’d long since forgotten after becoming a ‘proper grown-up’.

Produced by a small indie team of two, Castles in the Sky comes across as a delightful blend of simplistic platforming and heartfelt narrative, presented as a spread of colourful pixel-based art. The game is equal parts story book and platforming, where the goal is to scale upwards towards the sky, bouncing from cloud to cloud as a rhyming narrative unfolds.

Because of the nature of the game, it would be difficult to reveal much else about its features without spoiling the overall experience, so I caught up with Dan Pearce (@gamedesigndan) and Jack de Quidt (@notquitereal) to ask them a few questions regarding Castles in the Sky, and what the future holds for The Tall Trees.

The Indie Mine: What made you choose to do this ‘interactive picture-book’ gameplay?

Dan: I started the project on my own one night. We’d started a few projects (which are still going) that were going to be in production for a while longer, and I felt like playing something like Castles. I was struggling to find anything, so I decided to toy around with a small prototype. This resulted in me staying up until 6AM making this little thing with a kid jumping in clouds, the art for which is what you see in the game. I became pretty attached to it and pitched it to Jack the following day as an introductory piece to showcase what The Tall Trees is.

Jack: Dan pitched it to me as similar in terms of gameplay to Doodle Jump, and while those games are great, I always felt they were lacking something normatively. Ha! I mean, story isn’t really what they’re for, but that sort of gameplay where you’re inexorably moving upwards could lend itself really nicely to discovery and narrative.

I’m not entirely sure where the decision to make it rhyme came from, but as soon as that appeared, it was pretty much set as a picture-book. There was something so playfully naive about writing in that style, and I don’t think another story would have worked. From then on, I tried as best I could to emulate the style and feel of the picture books I had read to me as a kid. I didn’t want to push the story anywhere too radical – just keep it gentle and playful. And as is the way of all these stories, they end with the kid going to bed. So that’s where we had to go.

The Indie Mine: So the style is very innocent and childlike, like you said to emulate those old memories of a children’s bedtime story. Would you say this was aimed at a younger audience? I can see this being very popular as a shared activity between young kids and their parents.

Jack: I think from my perspective I’m always taken with the stance that Pixar take, which is “we just make films. Hopefully, both adults and kids will like it”. It’s true that there aren’t really enough games for parents and children to play together, but I wouldn’t say it was designed in mind for a single demographic. That said, introducing younger generations to indie games in a way in which their parents are an active part of the game is a really admirable goal, and if we can do that even a bit, I’ll be happy.

Dan: Yeah, I had someone ask me this earlier actually and I think the answer I gave was something like “it’s not for kids, so much as adults who wish they were kids”.

The Indie Mine: Since you chose to publish this as your first game under The Tall Trees brand, do you see yourself making more of this style of interactive story book gameplay in the future? Is there a particular style of game you’d really like to explore?

Dan: I think it’s definitely something we’re thinking about when looking at future projects. As I said, we started a couple of our projects before Castles, and those are definitely in a similar vein. I’m not amazing with words (which is why Jack’s so good to work with), so I’d have trouble defining what The Tall Trees is all about. Jack and I have agreed that Castles is a very “Tall Treesy” game, though, so hopefully the game says what that means better than I can.

Jack: We’d like to make games about discovering beautiful things frequently and surprisingly. I don’t know if we’re likely to make more rhyming, jumping games, but the sensibility at the heart of Castles (“you’re going on a journey, here are some lovely things”) is one that I think is central to our designs.

Dan: I think that’s our core really. The main thing that will change around that will be the control schemes and tones of each game.

It’s important to note that Castles in the Sky isn’t your typical game experience. The game will take approximately 10-15 minutes to finish, and in many ways it is more story than platformer, which is reflected in the games very affordable $1.50 price tag. Those wanting to pre-order the game can do so at the official site here. Pre-ordering will net you the game (on PC & Mac), soundtrack and wallpapers when the game launches on the 18th of this month.

© 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.