This one was added to the indie Humble Bundle I bought several months ago, several weeks after I purchased it- I swear, once you sign up for Steam it's like they just start throwing more games at you than you can handle. I had never heard anything about English Country Tune, which is a shame because it might be my favorite of all the games in that bundle that I've played. It's really just a no-bullshit series of logic puzzles where you control a flat square that move around on big 3-D platforms by flipping itself over repeatedly. The first set of puzzles may seem familiar at first, in which you attempt to push a marble into a designated hole, but the twist comes up fast- gravity is completely different in this world and depends entirely on the orientation of your little square. For instance, pushing the marble around from the 'ground' may do just that- move the marble where you expect it to, but pushing it in the exact same direction except while attached to the wall, and it'll go flying. This may be tough to visualize, so take a look at this clip to get a better idea of what a mindfuck this is:
This wouldn't be so tough if you could set the camera exactly how you want it (it's much easier when you can just constantly re-orient gravity as simply "down") but the game insists on snapping back to its designated view before you can move your square, forcing you to think critically about every move you make. It's difficult, and I couldn't even make it past the second set of levels (out of like 15 sets) without a walkthrough, but it's fun just messing around with gravity and seeing what works and what doesn't. New puzzle types show up the further you go, such as "whales" or "gardens". Whales are blocks that you can't touch directly, but have beams of light shooting out in all directions which you can push to move the whale. "Gardens" were easily my favorite kind of logic puzzle, where a new unmovable cube sprouts up on every tile your square lands on, and the level won't finish until you've sprouted every possible cube. My explanation might be shitty here too so check out these gameplay clips:
So yeah, if you're looking for some straight physics puzzles with no extra trappings to distract from the puzzle at hand, English Country Tune certainly fills that need. My only real complaint is the pacing- early on I ran into a puzzle that felt impossible, and wasn't sure if I wanted a whole game to be ball-bustingly hard. But the level of difficulty is seemingly random; sometimes I would waste a half hour on a puzzle, give up and resort to a walkthrough, and then breeze through the next puzzle on my first try. Other than that and the game's non-sensical name (I have no idea what it's supposed to mean), I enjoyed my time with English Country Tune.
No comments:
Post a Comment