Recruit a company of up to three mortal heroes and guide them in spirit on a desperate journey from Albion to Jerusalem.
#The talos principle higher ground series#
I’d love to see another iteration that takes the formula even further ( BoxGirl?), and I hope this series continues to thrive on 3DS, which has fostered so many new and great IPs for Nintendo.The Hand of Merlin is a turn-based rogue-lite RPG in which Arthurian legend clashes with cosmic horror. For that reason, it never really dives into new territory in any significant way, but it does everything so well that you won’t really notice it. You can look at one screenshot or watch several seconds of video and understand what it’s trying to convey. That’s basically it.īoxBoxBoy! has a simplistic elegance to it. You can enjoy a small set of comic strips (which are cute, but ultimately not worth going out of your way for), musical tracks, and costumes (if you own the original it allows you to import more outfits). It’s classic HAL Laboratory design.īeyond the end goal and personal satisfaction gained from completing it, there isn’t much to do in BoxBoxBoy!. To cut down on the frustration factor, there’s myriad checkpoints in each puzzle, coupled with an instant quick reset feature (L+R), all with a complete lack of a timer. Platforming is secondary to the puzzle solving, but the frequent lack of smooth movements do eliminate a lot of potential solutions. Qbby can jump, but he isn’t that nimble, and there were many times I couldn’t reach a specific area because of how rigid the game’s physics are. While block creation is intuitive and relaxed (since there’s rarely any incentive or need to rush), movement is not. Imagine a Tetris shape and just about everything you could do with it - that’s what BoxBoxBoy! is going for. There’s also a few returning advanced tactics to take advantage of, like creating “hook” shapes to latch onto platforms to pull yourself up with. Now all sorts of new possibilities open up, like creating a platform to ride on a conveyor belt, then crafting another platform on top of that to leap off of onto higher ground.
And get this, the gimmick of the sequel? Players can create two sets of boxes! Depending on the stage, you can create two or more boxes at a time.
Qbby can manipulate the environment by way of creating boxes, which literally spring up from nothingness out of his own person.
Players assume the role of Qbby (a box with legs), and make their way from start to finish through a series of individual levels, with optional collectibles (Crowns) to pick up. It isn’t difficult to describe what’s going in BoxBoxBoy!. They’re all hallmarks of the studio’s earlier work and I can appreciate the idea of going back to basics here.
With a clean slate after E3 to play the recently-released sequel, however, I made time.Īfter playing BoxBoxBoy! for five minutes I could see HAL Laboratory’s sensibilities all over the place - straightforward, one-to-two button gameplay mechanics, an easy-to-navigate hub world, and simple, yet endearing characters. It’s one of those games that really thrives on word of mouth endorsements, but even hearing anecdotally about how enjoyable it was really wasn’t enough to draw me in. I distinctly remember it coming out, and I even reported on its release, but nothing about it grabbed me. For whatever reason, I missed out on the original BoxBoy! when it was released in last spring.
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