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9 months ago
Feature: It's well chilled
Waking Mars is possibly the most chilled out 2D jetpack game in existence. I came across it during that lazy, turkey-stuffed interim between Christmas and New Year's Eve back in 2013, and I've never felt such inner peace while playing a video game. It's a story of quiet wonder, where the aim isn't to destroy, evade or do battle with hostile, alien creatures, but to…
4 years ago
Feature: Puzzley archanid sim from former Ion Storm dev
No-one's done Spider Simulator yet, although there's almost certainly someone somewhere waiting to press publish on a perfunctory Greenlight page, but in its absence this genteel puzzle game about web-spinning and fly-paralysing might fit the bill. Spider: Rite Of The Shrouded Moon [official site], from a team lead by Ion Storm alumnus Randy Smith, does much more than that, even weaving a careful and subtle…
Way back in 2009, several chums of mine were gushing about Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor, a puzzle-platformer about a spider leaping around laying webs and eating insects. It's also heavy on environmental storytelling, so folks who care can uncover the eponymous secret as the world's first spider detective. Alas, it was only for pocket telephones, and I couldn't play it. Delightfully its sequel…
6 years ago
Tiger Style's track record of stupendous, totally-not-what-you're-expecting brilliance is well-documented. Waking Mars took Metroid's extraterrestrial exploratory stylings and fused them with... gardening, and Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor had you playing as the eight-legged embodiment of nightmares that most games (and, er, existence) have taught us to revile. And now, despite the first Spider's imprisonment under the impregnable water glass that is mobile, Tiger…
7 years ago
Like somewhat rusty clockwork, the not entirely predictable Steam Greenlight machine has whirred to life again - granting the wishes of hopeful developers who dared perform the dark rituals needed to invoke its promotional might. This time around, 13 games made the cut, and - as is becoming a happy trend - it's a fairly diverse selection. Well-ish known standouts include Waking Mars, Primordia, and…
Feature: Out Of This World
Waking Mars is pretty special game. Part-Metroidvania, part-Mars-gardening-simulator, it's certainly not Just Another iOS Port. As Rab pointed out, it's got enough ambition to make countless triple-A sequels blush, resulting in complexity that punishes impatience, but never without reason. But where did it come from? How on Earth does one dream up Mars gardening? According to Tiger Style's Randy Smith, it all started with National…
Feature: Seed-Rich
Waking Mars is not a normal game.
Everything NASA's been saying about Mars is a lie. Curiosity isn't real. Neither are mohawks. I know this because I've been to Mars. I've shed blood and tears there. I've gardened there. Or at least, that's the reality Waking Mars presented me with when I played it on iPad, and I refuse to believe that the real deal could be any less magical. In essence, you…
With Lovecraftian tactics having recently ported from iOS to PC, it'd be great to see more games following the same path. There are plenty of interesting developments in the touchy world of portable gamesquares and one of the most interesting is Waking Mars, an exploration game in which the puzzles are based around manipulating and understanding the interactions between alien flora and fauna. It's quite…
