GOTW 30/03/09 – ELISS
April 15, 2009
It’s quite common to know within a few minutes of play that a game is going to be Game of the Week. The first few minutes of playing Eliss, I got the overwhelming feeling that Game of the Week exists solely as an opportunity for me to talk to you about Eliss. And to think, if it weren’t for Clare being almost 40 minutes late to meeting me at Waterloo I may never have played it. At £2.39, it’s the most expensive app I’ve bought on my iPhone which gave me pause for thought. If I hadn’t had so long to pause I would not have bothered getting it. I only knew of Eliss as it had been nominated for, but not won, an mobile indie developers award for innovation. The description looked interesting, the graphics dated and the video cryptic. The phrase that had set off the little voice in my head to whisper ‘buy it’ was “True Multi-touch”. I read a few reviews. Everything was glowing – the only criticism came from Pocket Gamer who are normally my first port of call for iPhone reviews.
“There’s just one small problem: getting past the fourth level of Eliss is a feat comparable to making a fleet of forklift trucks levitate with your mind.”
This really put me off and I almost didn’t buy it. However, it was a really long wait. Thank you, Clare.
Eliss is an action puzzle game a la Tetris or Bust-a-Move. It’s much harder than they are. There are coloured planets – like colours can be brought together to combine and become bigger, while different colours must be kept apart on pain of health meter reduction. Planets can also be split in two with two fingers. Planets are constantly spawning after a second or two’s warning and they will happily spawn on top of an opposing colour while you’re in the middle of something if you’re not paying attention. When a planet is the right size it can be dragged to the appropriately coloured hole-thing, where it will harmlessly explode. Get rid of enough planets and you move on to the next sector. Levels consist in different sizes of ‘hole’, different planet sizes and spawn-speeds as well as throwing in hazards – like comets and vortexes. Vortexes will suck all planets towards them; requiring you to hold as many as you can in place until they vanish.
Multitasking is the order of the day. You can probably get through the first couple of levels with one or two fingers but by about the third level, if you’re not at least prepared to be playing with three fingers on screen at once you will fail. Some later levels feel like they’re only possible with an additional hand. But that is hyperbole – I’m currently on Level 15 of 20 and the past 10 levels have all seemed impossible the first two dozen tries. Then, just as you’re on the verge of quitting they start to seem possible. Eventually, you have the unduplicatable run of your life and somehow you manage to do it! On to the next. Some level types are easier than others so you might say the learning curve is all over the place. Get over it – it’s a new way of playing a game and that is enjoyable & intuitive without being easy or shallow. It’s incredibly satisfying to succeed – not just at a level but at a tricky manoeuvre. It’s got replayability.
And here is where I’m going to have to take real issue with Pocket Gamer – Eliss is not too hard. It’s just hard. I’m not exactly the most dexterous person in the world and yet I’ve completed almost five times the number of levels that Pocket Gamer had through persevering with a game that was fun to play. Pixeljunk Eden was not too hard. It was hard but Lee and I, with some perseverance (because the process of play was fun) finished it. Not out of completionistic obsession but because we enjoyed the process of play and the discovery of the new. Making it less hard would deprive me of play time. People bitch and moan all the time that games are too easy these days. When games come out that are proper solid, I don’t ever hear them getting praised for that – I only hear complaints. Granted it’s probably not the same people doing the complaining (although it might be) but still is it any wonder gaming feels like it’s being dumbed down if a professional game reviewer’s only complaint of one of the best games of the year is that he can’t get past the fourth level because it’s too hard.
Eliss, like all great puzzle games has a necessarily economic aesthetic and a beautiful, hypnotic soundtrack. And I can’t put it down, as Jim found out the other week. And Lee found out when I missed his station on the way to his (totally worth it). One of the more exciting things about Eliss as a multi-touch game is that it could easily become an all time classic multi-touch title that is played in some form or other for years to come – because the concept is practically begging to be scaled up. I can’t stop thinking about a Microsoft Surface port, which requires four players using both hands – communicating and passing planets to each other – clearing the way for large ones and generally trying to control the mayhem.
I can’t recommend it enough – It’s a shame that it would only really work on the iphone/ipod touch. If you own either of these devices buy it now. It’s a killer app, baby.
