Rock, Paper, Shotgun

One of my favorite things (like, in general; definitely more so than pizza or you) is shouting “DON’T GO IN THERE” at really inopportune moments during movies and TV shows. Related: I don’t have many friends. Room of 1000 Snakes, on the other hand, probably warrants that kind of obnoxiously eardrum-walloping bellow, so here’s my advice on the subject: do it anyway. The rather brief, um, interactive experience – which comes from Zineth and Perfect Stride developer Arcane Kids – is a dissertation on the overwhelming might of human curiosity. You really, really shouldn’t go in that room, but come on: we both know you’re gonna do it anyway.

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Remember Zineth? The insanely high-speed neo techno retro future Moon Grind Radio roller skate ultra-thing from Arcane Kids? Well, I should probably start with a long-overdue reminder that it’s super great. Go play it, if you haven’t already. Now then, onto today’s business: Zineth’s creators have extracted another game from their hypertronic abstractodelic megaminds, and it looks positively scrumptious. I want to devour it, except with all of my senses instead of just the one I keep chained up in my mouth. Basically, Perfect Stride is first-person skateboarding, except it has more in common with Tribes and Quake’s physics than Tony Hawk’s. Also, look at all that art and musics and mmmmmmmmmmyes.

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Our eyes popped out of our tiny heads when we saw Zineth‘s trailer back in May, and it’s now out and available to download. I’ve been having a play with this psychedelic, near-abstract skating game, and I can report: INSAAAAAAAAAAAANE. You skate about in a vast landscape, building up huge momentum for crazy jumps, and do missions that arrive by cellphone. It can be a little tricky to get a handle on the movement physics at first, meaning navigating some of the ramps and jumps isn’t entirely straightforward, but that doesn’t take away from its peculiar beauty. You probably aren’t going to get another freeware (on Mac and Windows) mission-based freeform skating game today, so I would say: DOWNLOAAAAAAAAAD.

There’s also a spectacular launch trailer below, to watch if you are trapped on a work machine or something. Go. Go!
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“What is love?” I sometimes ask myself while sipping priceless wine from a priceless chalice made of reasonably priced recyclable goods and chuckling condescendingly at the metaphysical works of Plato and Aristotle. Of course, I already know the answer: Slavish devotion to someone’s most specific desires without any compromise whatsoever. Ergo, by that utterly flawless logic, developer Arcane Kids loves me. Its debut, a two-month student project that goes by the name Zineth, looks like a mix between Jet Set Radio‘s rocket-powered rollerblading, Crackdown‘s Death-provoking acrobatics, and Antichamber‘s off-kilter sense of style. So basically, everything I’ve ever cared about. Obviously, such a short development period means the end result will probably be pretty simple, but I can’t help but like what I’m seeing here. Jet grind past the break to check it out for yourself.

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