It could so easily have been a new euphemism… instead it’s an action platformer from French independents Exkee, in which you pilot a drop of water across a series of obstacles. The 121mb (around nine Peggles?) trial download can be found here. I had a quick poke at it and found it to be charming. Use watery things to increase your droplet size, and avoid being mopped up by paper or biscuits. It needs a little better signposting, but I like it both the peculiarly realistic visuals and the simple control system. Go take a look. Trailer after the hop.
Related Stories:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=pW-yrTn6PRo
It looks pretty sweet, like an organic take on marble madness.
What a world we’ve come to, where I see 121mb and think “Oh that’s nothing.” I remember having trouble downloading 1.21mb… *Shakes head*
I don’t think I’ll look at the humble drop of water the same way again.
Added the trailer in, thanks A.
That looks interesting but I don’t know if I’d ever be able to get over the fact that water is not sentient. Maybe if they titled it “I-Fluid: The Abyss” I could have fun.
You never see water looking back at you?
You do know Star Wars isn’t real either, don’t you?
*Sticks Fingers In Ears*
La La La I can’t hear you.
i’m digging the new mobile phone interface. Anyone remember a game for the amiga where you were a boy turned into a blob of water? I need an emulator something rotten.
Bah, it doesn’t work for me at all. For some obscure reason it complains about not finding a dll file that is in fact there. That hasn’t happened for a good 10 years, ahh, nostalgia. Shame though, it looks cool.
@Al3xand3r:
Wow, thanks for the trailer link. That looks beautiful, visually. Downloading now.
Pretty and fun. Also; paperclip avalanches are terrifying.
What’s with the acid jazz.
Nooo not the sushi!
Pricey, nay?
I enjoyed the demo, and I’m not adverse to the odd tenner here and there (got Tank Universal the other week thanks to RPS) but £15.95, for 15 levels. At a quid-and-a-tad a level, that’s pretty hefty going for an indie game, where the levels haven’t lasted me all that long. I can only hope that – for those who buy – the ones not in the demo reach epic proportions.
I blame Aquaria. Before them, £10 was standard. Bloody inflation.
@ Forceflow: It’s French.
That trial is pretty good, and leaves me with a gnawing hunger for fresh succulent Oranges.
Those graphics look frighteningly good…
This looks like a refreshing game.. love the visuals in the trailer! My only minor beef at this point is the water drop, AKA the player avatar, is ridiculously tiny and does things a water drop wouldn’t do (jump).
You sir, are a drip… see what i did!
(j/k)
@heliocentric
It was called morph, although had the title metamorphosis for a considerable part of its development cycle, meaning that was the name used in demos.
http://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/morph
Morph was awesome. I only made it through the last level once, but then I was seven at that time. The SNES port seems nice as it has apparently a lot of new levels. Maybe the AGA version has the same…
/looking for WinUAE
Oh and hurray for (fellow) French developers ! It also reminds me a bit of Soul Bubbles, another recent french game that you HAVE TO get if you own a DS. Truly a refreshing and delightful experience.
I’ts nice and all, especially the faux-Saul Bass stylings, but a drop that size would have to made of pure fluid Uranium to have that much effect on its enviroment.
I’m having unpleasant Bad Mojo flashbacks.
me too! But not so unpleasant?
Has anyone had trouble getting the demo to run?
For me it just crashes at startup with no error, just “i-Fluid has encountered a problem and needs to close”.
There doesn’t seem to be anything in the technical support section of the forums, either.
It’s a shame, as this looks really interesting.
That was just…. well gosh, that was just *awful*.
It blankly refused to run as a limited user account (after installing as admin), so I had to log on as admin before I could even play!
It ran kinda crapilly on my (not amazing, not awful) computer. There was no sound at all? The instructions screen seemed to indicated that jumping was controlled by clicking, but that didn’t work. Mouse was inverted by default!? There was no “little x in the corner” to close the program, so I had to sit through the “buy me now!” stuff whilst frantically clicking and cursing.
Lots of little niggles that all add up to make something truly, truly, unplayably awful.
Lovely little game, and the oranges look absolutely delicious!
Never would I have thought that a drop of water skipping along would look so happy…
In any case, this just in; The game can be played with an Xbox 360 controller on PC. Enjoy :D
Alexander summed it up perfectly. I’m still amazed at how good the game looks. All the stills make me think its actually a real photograph, good stuff.
I was keen to give this a try, but jumping (which very quickly becomes necessary) simply doesn’t work. Not with the left mouse button as indicated, in any case. Sooo… I can’t find out if it’s actually worth the rather sizeable amount (for an indie game) that they are asking.
Very demanding too, system-wise. 800×600 gave me a good frame rate, however.
You get the ability to jump after you start the second mission, up until that point there isn’t any need to jump (although it would be handy).
Thank you for that, Man Raised By Puffins. Having noted that there was a jump key, it just hadn’t occurred to me that I needed to barge the paperclips off the eraser to climb it.
So I played the demo through, and as much as I like some of their ideas, the asking price is a bit too steep for what it is. I’d snap it up if it were a quarter of that, though.
I just discovered this game today, mmm, yummi! All this food really got me hungry ;-)
The initial price is quite high yeah and I wouldn’t have bought it if it wasn’t for the 50% discount I got! A French friend of mine told me that they were having a special offer for the end of the year. Try to enter IFLUID50 as the reduction code when you buy the game and it should work! It did for me at least ;-)
It’s kinda 3D platformer like Mercury series for PSP and Spectraball. If you buy it via Steam you’ll be charged 10 bucks but
$30 from the official site. I don’t understand this. Probably there is a mistake, so anyone willing to buy this must hurry.
@Chaos Theory
The game uses PhysX technology from nVidia. Maybe you don’t have the necessary runtime installed. You can download the software from here
It’s $10 on Steam.
Imma just wait till I can download it through a torrent :P
Still can’t find this game :’(