Glitch Lab – Insanity in a Platformer

Hey guys, welcome back to Withinthegame.com!

 

Today is my first day back at the day job so I decided to find an in-browser game to play and review to kill a few hours in the office. I was flicking through pages of content online when I stumbled across  a very intriguing indie game developed by Nazywam under the name of Glitch Lab, surrounded by gloomy pixel art. It’s a 2D platformer with a twist; the game is designed to be bugged. That’s right. It’s very rare that you will find a game where the developer has broken the game ON PURPOSE. However, as strange as it sounds, this is what makes the game an unlikely masterpiece.

Artistically grey and monotonous, it’s a very simple run and jump game on the surface, but just as we never judge a book by it’s cover, it’s unwise to judge a game by it’s front face. Each level is completely different and has an intentional bug or error integrated that the player must overcome to progress. This ranges from invisible blocks to moving in the opposite direction of the key being pressed. Sometimes the puzzles don’t make much logical sense but that’s the true beauty of the game. The fun factor comes in figuring out what to do and you can’t help but laugh when you randomly press something and it actually works by catapulting you into the air.

I couldn’t decide whether the game was trippy or disturbing, but it certainly has a glitchy ‘matrix’ feel to it…it kind of feels like you’re slipping in and out of existence as you speed through the stages and the game stretches the planes of reality in front of your eyes. In one level (pictured below) you find yourself surrounded by multi-coloured copies of your avatar, frantically running around in a flurry of rainbow confusion. Oh boy, I can’t imagine this game on Oculus Rift. This setting of chaos and disorder makes for an extremely enjoyable, yet short lived gaming experience.

Either I got stuck on one of the levels or the game just isn’t very long…I couldn’t quite tell, but regardless I really loved what I did manage to play through. The statement ‘less is more’ definitely applies here as the basic pixel art style and twisted mechanics is all that’s needed to create a unique play style, and personally I’d love to see a sequel produced with harder levels and maybe a little bit of a story line included to give some depth and allow us to familiarize with the game.

If you want to give the game a go you can find it playable in browser HERE

As ever, thanks for reading, let us know what you think of the game if you try it out!

If you enjoyed our review, subscribe to our site at the top of this page, and follow us at our social media sites below 🙂

George

 

Phantasmal – The horror game that makes you say ‘nope’

Hey guys, hope you’re all having a good Friday!

Last night me and WTG’s George played through a horror game called Phantasmal, developed by Eyemobi (because we’re a pair of wusses who won’t play it on our own in the dark like a real man would).

A brief description of this game; you start off in an abandoned mansion and a quick perusal of a nearby notebook gives the explanation that there are strange lights and high pitched noises, and being a sensible, rational human being, your character decides to explore this in the middle of the night during a thunderstorm armed with a pistol with only 20 bullets and a broom for company. Okay then.

Game play mechanics on this game are interesting. Your character slowly goes insane from looking at the enemy for too long which can result in you instantly dying to a giant flying whatever it was which materialised through a wall with so much noise I instantly quit the game in terror when I tried to play on my own previously. You can negate this by looking away from things for a while, but when you turn around they’re usually right behind you. Also, each playthrough is procedurally generated, so it’s different each time, leading to this being a completely new terror every time you venture into the mansion.

The first enemies you encounter hunt only by sound so you have to sneak everywhere, but you encounter others later which run around (hopefully you’ll enjoy the invisible laughing teleporting demon as much as I did – which is to say I jumped a foot off my chair and quit the game). This sneaking and tense manoeuvring whilst trying to balance keeping an eye on the enemy with not going giant-monster-summoning-insane adds to the tension and jump scares, and makes the atmosphere of this game an incredibly absorbing horror nightmare.

If you’re into horror, you should definitely give this one a try. I recommend it for fans of Slenderman and Amnesia.

You can find Phantasmal here.

We originally found it featured on Alpha Beta Gamer

As ever, thanks for reading, let us know what you think of the game when you’ve plucked up the courage to venture in!

If you enjoyed our review, subscribe to our site at the top left of this page, and follow us at our social media sites below. 🙂

Tom

  

The Hunter – a dark and disturbing puzzler

Hey guys, I’m Tom and I’m a new writer for this site,

 

For my first review here at Within the Game I’m going to tell you about this little game I found over at AlphaBetaGamer. Called simply ‘The Hunter’ developed by Mr_Tedders, this game caught my eye for its unique graphical style being a blank black screen. This is the majority of what you can see, and as much information as you’ll get about the setting and what you’ll be facing in the game. However, things get more interesting when you start to move your character.

The pulse shown above represents the sound your footsteps make. This pulse disappears behind walls, allowing you to navigate by a visual representation of echolocation. Along the way you’ll encounter footsteps of other creatures in the darkness, who react rather violently towards your presence if your pulse touches them, which lends an aspect of careful planning and timing to the gameplay. There’s little to no explanation of what is going on in this world, so it lends a perplexing attitude of curiosity to this situation – why are you being asked to kill this person? The little snippets of information you see with your echolocation as you play through this peculiar puzzle game do little more than add to this atmosphere of mystery, making it one of those games which can linger in your mind even whilst not playing, as you ponder the meaning of the various hints and commands.

The gameplay itself is enjoyable, navigating through a series of levels without being able to see the level is something I found very interesting and tense, especially when I learned that not all of the creatures move around and leave footprints… some remain still yet deadly, and only move when your sound pulse reaches them. Overall this is a decidedly different experience to the other adventure/puzzle games I’ve played before, and I would definitely recommend checking this one out!

The game is currently playable in a Unity supporting browser <here.

As ever, thanks for reading, let us know what you think of the game if you try it out!

If you enjoyed our review, subscribe to our site at the top of this page, and follow us at our social media sites below 🙂

Tom