Original UI

We don't often cover "casual" games, but Out of Your Mind is from Gamelab, one of the most creative and interesting independent game developers -- and its gameplay is original enough to make us pay attention.

From a gameplay perspective, Out of Your Mind is basically an elaboration and extention of Loop (also by Gamelab); in each level, your job is to draw loops around on-screen items, following certain rules about what's allowed inside the loop and what isn't.

SonoroTV is basically a puzzle platformer in which you have a small number of little critters (called "notes") which the evil DJ is trying to steal. You have to get them from the starting point of each level to its exit, losing as few as possible (or better, none) in the process. The characters move autonomously, so you don't control them directly. So far, familiar and probably dull, yes?

What's interesting about SonoroTV is the actual gameplay, which is highly original. The way you guide your critters to the exit is by painting. At the lower right-hand corner of the screens are your paint pots, and you have a limited amount of each color. The colors have different effects: orange allows you to paint platforms for your critters to walk along, red creates barriers they bounce off of, blue creates a bouncing platform that tosses them in the air. The DJ has a gun he can use to destroy orange platforms, but yellow platforms can't be shot.

Lock & Key is a tower defense game. With only one attacker wave. And it's in text.

The premise is that you're a dungeon designer, the one who lays out the arrangement of traps to keep in the extra-specially-dangerous prisoners. You've got a grid of rooms in which you can place these traps, and a limited budget to spend. When you're done, you're taken aside to a guard room with the King to watch as Boldo -- a kind of Tarzan figure gleaming with oiled muscles -- does his best to break out. If he fails, you win. If not, you get to watch Boldo defeating all the traps you so carefully laid out -- and the consequences for you are disastrous. Time to play again.

You look at Loop and you think: Wow, this is creative; I've never seen gameplay like this before. And also: Who in his right mind thought this was going to be popular?

The look of Loop comes out of Leo Lionni, the children's book creator, and the surrounding media--the girlish laughter when you complete a loop, the cheerful music--reinforces the sense that you've wandered into an alternate universe where people create digital applications for tots without trying to cram branded properties into their brains for future profit selling them licensed crapola--but purely for the joy of creating applications tots will enjoy.