By Craig Pearson on February 10th, 2012 at 5:51 pm.
This is swish. Platform game Backworlds has just released a demo, and I’ll urge you to play it because, yes, it’s been released as a prelude to asking you for money to help the game to be finished (also known as Crowdschafering). But it’s also a pretty, painterly puzzle game with bags of potential. It’s just a few licks of a brush away from greatness.
The world exists as two parallel, and you can move between the two by selectively wiping the paint with M1 to reveal the background, and reapplying it with M2. Doing so lets you pass through walls in one dimension by wiping to another where the wall wouldn’t exist. Brushing reveals hidden bridges and switches that would otherwise be hidden. The demo has charmed me on this cold, darkening Friday evening, and I leave for the weekend a happier man. Have a look. Isn’t it pretty?
This is, by the way, from the makers of canny mash-up platformer Assemblee, which the ridiculous handsome, sexy, refined and charismatic Alec Meer, who is most definitely not adding this update to the bottom of Craig’s post himself, posted about here.
10/02/2012 at 18:17 RagingLion says:
That. Is a really cool concept. Flicking between multiple dimensions has been somewhat explored I think, but to decide exactly which bits of which dimension you want ‘visible’ on such a granular level seems to open up a lot more possibilities. Plus painting in and out of dimensions should make it feel really natural and naturalistic.
10/02/2012 at 18:39 StranaMente says:
Has anyone some experience with IndieGoGo?
They look frightneningly similar to kickstarter…
10/02/2012 at 23:41 2PartReturn says:
They do look similar, although they’ve gone to the trouble of hiring a Chief Furriness Officer.. and I just can’t say no to that sort of thing
10/02/2012 at 18:42 equatorian says:
Oh my.
I came in here expecting to be all ‘meh’, because I very, very very rarely like platformers. I am bad at platformers. As a rule, I don’t play them. This, however, is looking rather lovely. A painterly mechanic…surely we can use more of those, yes?
Will grab the demo and drop in a few dollars, if it turns out to be wonderful.
10/02/2012 at 20:05 mcwizardry says:
Finished the demo just now, it’s definitely a very unique and interesting concept.
10/02/2012 at 20:42 Wounder says:
I’m not suggesting this is an actual problem, but does anyone know why the install executable for Windows is being flagged as “malicious” by ESET? Or has anyone else had this issue?
EDIT: Actually, it looks like Chrome thinks it’s malicious, not ESET. I’m not seeing why that would be, nor what Chrome uses to make that estimation.
10/02/2012 at 20:48 Wounder says:
Okay, the following link provides an explanation for why it got flagged… apparently the site the demo is hosted on has fallen into the clutches of the Safe Browsing API: http://blog.chromium.org/2011/04/protecting-users-from-malicious.html
11/02/2012 at 09:16 Juha Kangas says:
@Wounder I’m one of the devs (and a RPS lurker) and I’m curious about which one of the download mirrors you used? We would like to do something about that “malicious” flagging.
11/02/2012 at 10:38 Wounder says:
The first one on the list, dl.dropbox.com. Neither gamefront.com nor mediafire.com caused any hissy fits from Chrome.
I’m sorry for any hesitation/grief my initial post may have caused y’all… first time I’ve ever seen Chrome flag something and figured I’d ask before proceeding. I’d like to tell you I enjoyed it, but I’m currently wrangling three small, sick children and so… no. Or not yet!
11/02/2012 at 10:54 Juha Kangas says:
Thanks! I will look into it, maybe just move it down the list of mirrors. Not sure yet.
Leave a comment on the campaign once you’ve had a chance to try it and let us know what you think!
11/02/2012 at 01:15 Frank says:
Looks like Warren Spector’s last game, but on PC and with another couple mechanics! I look forward to trying it out
11/02/2012 at 12:49 deke913 says:
I may give this one a try.
11/02/2012 at 15:56 Phasma Felis says:
Someone should tell the allegedly sexy Alec Meer that the game he’s talking about is Backworld. Assemblee is the name of the competition that spawned it.
11/02/2012 at 20:59 Initialised says:
Nice but I was playing on a trackpad with an overly sensitive side scroll wheel thing so the ‘brush’ kept changing size. Will discard this computer shaped object and play it on a real PC with a proper mouse with flashing lights and a frickin’ laser instead.