It starts as a vine. You sit back and watch it, chasing the black, diamond-studded sun, and a fluttery golden angel taunts its path. Then you realize that this is the game, and you follow that path with your cursor. The vine curls. As it curls up toward the angel, a leaf sprouts in its wake, catching it, or maybe the angel eats it, then it grows dark. A second vine is emerging. This is going to get more interesting.
Phyta, while sounding like a homophone for fighter, is much more graceful than that would suggest. It's an art game that, like the best of them, bothers to actually be a game and offer some depth of play. Your objective is to somehow deal with the series of angels that come on-screen. Most of them you have to feed; later you have to suffocate them beneath the incessant screen scrolling. As you do, your black sun cursor becomes more intricate, then resets, leading to another series of angels with more ornate patterns draping down like frozen gold drops. Gold drops people.
Visually this game is a wonder, combining a relatively simple set of monochromatic shapes with haunting light shaders and the uncanny furling (or is it unfurling?) of the vines. However, the increasing number and complexity of the vines as the game progresses is not merely a visual reward; their tendency to warp and curl, to stop short and speed along with the hold of the mouse, all culminate in a game that fuses it aesthetics with its mechanics into a lava-lamp impressionism. If this direction of game design continues to evolve, nobody will need drugs anymore.
The Music
Ah, I was right about to suggest this beautiful game. I loved playing it, I hope to continue doing so. The music, in particular, is amazing. I recorded and uploaded it for all who wish to listen, and re-listen. You can find it here: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=F6VHVJWO
I hope the developer doesn't mind... It really is beautiful.
Heh, I feel silly. I looked
Heh, I feel silly. I looked at the game for a few minutes, because I figured it was some sort of graphic artwork. Then when nothing was happening, I tried the usual keys on my keyboard, but nothing seemed to do anything. Never occurred to me to try the mouse until I read the review.
Capturing bug one was easy enough, as was bug two. After that, the branches seem to get cut off whenever they approach the vertical middle of the screen. I tried a few different approaches of navigating them, but they get nowhere near the third bug.
That, combined with the monotonous music, I dunno. Not my thing, I guess.
P.S. On a sidenote, it might be nice if you include a link to the official page of the game, or the page of the developer. As a courtesy, but also because it's useful for the readers.
Evil
I haven't seen anyone else say this -- maybe it's too obvious to point out -- but I got a strong sense that what you're trying to do in this game is evil. Even putting aside the color scheme, your goal is to entangle and engulf graceful flying creatures, bind them and drag them down until they stop moving. Even if not exactly evil, this is an unusually "yin" approach, as opposed to the "yang" of firing off energy beams that make things explode.
Yeah I got that vibe too,
Yeah I got that vibe too, reminded me of some anime that wasn't Eva, can't quite put my finger on it. I actually got a kick of it. I was going to bring it up, but figured it was better left to audience interpretation... or I forgot.
I think the Yin perspective is even more interesting, because it is a break from the conventional interaction model, and because evil is a cliche.
I have to say - I also had
I have to say - I also had the problem getting the thrid Angel. My vines just stopped growing up... they'd grow a little then just sit there branching down the bottom of the screen.
Oh and I so agree with the "doing evil" vibe.
Beyond good and evil.
Why would it be evil to kill graceful creatures ? Does a lion eating an antelope is evil ? Maybe the vine you embody needs to "eat" these creatures to live. Would that be evil ?
You all automatically associate beauty with the good side, why ?
Well, the graphics play on
Well, the graphics play on stereotypes about good and evil. The bugs are golden and remind us of angels; the vines come from beneath, have spines, and are somewhat repulsive.
On degrading control systems
In one way, this reminds me of Kosmosis, in such that you have less and less control over things as the game progresses. However, in Phyta here, the idea seems to go too far, in such that you seem in later levels to have virtually NO control over how the vines grow.
I wish there was a better explanation for how some elements work. Do leaves or the falling 'raindrops' do anything? What influences when a limb will stop growing, and what decides how far back along the vine a new shoot will fork out?
At times, it feels like you might have some direct influence on certain things if conditions are right. For example, I'm pretty sure that at times clicking on a fast moving thin vine would cause it to slow it down a bit and thicken.
In general, succeeding or failing feels too random and arbitrary. There have been times when it seemed that I could easily get all the vines near the top of the screen with hardly any conscious effort. Other times however, it felt almost impossible to even keep the vine from falling off the bottom of the screen. On top of all that, once you -do- manage to wrap a couple tendrils around the angel, it seems high near impossible to prevent it from eating its way back out again, no matter how thick the walls of vines around it you had build.
Again, the only real issue I has was how the controls seemed to become almost completely ineffectual in later levels. I think this could be fixed by making the effects of the sun cursor clearer to players. A possibly elegant way would be with some kind of subtle in-game indications showing what the sun is changing and where. Since that's likely not going to happen, it would be nice at least to be able to read a more detailed description of what effects the position of the sun has on the growth of the vine.
Control issues aside, I really did quite enjoy this little game. The stark graphics, the dreary background music, the elegantly simple controls, and the 'gloomy' theme of the game in general - all together make this a marvelously macabre mini-game, well worth spending a few of your own idle dark moments on.
On degrading control systems
In one way, this reminds me of Kosmosis, in such that you have less and less control over things as the game progresses. However, in Phyta here, the idea seems to go too far, in such that you seem in later levels to have virtually NO control over how the vines grow.
I wish there was a better explanation for how some elements work. Do leaves or the falling 'raindrops' do anything? What influences when a limb will stop growing, and what decides how far back along the vine a new shoot will fork out?
At times, it feels like you might have some direct influence on certain things if conditions are right. For example, I'm pretty sure that at times clicking on a fast moving thin vine would cause it to slow it down a bit and thicken.
In general, succeeding or failing feels too random and arbitrary. There have been times when it seemed that I could easily get all the vines near the top of the screen with hardly any conscious effort. Other times however, it felt almost impossible to even keep the vine from falling off the bottom of the screen. On top of all that, once you -do- manage to wrap a couple tendrils around the angel, it seems high near impossible to prevent it from eating its way back out again, no matter how thick the walls of vines around it you had build.
Again, the only real issue I has was how the controls seemed to become almost completely ineffectual in later levels. I think this could be fixed by making the effects of the sun cursor clearer to players. A possibly elegant way would be with some kind of subtle in-game indications showing what the sun is changing and where. Since that's likely not going to happen, it would be nice at least to be able to read a more detailed description of what effects the position of the sun has on the growth of the vine.
Control issues aside, I really did quite enjoy this little game. The stark graphics, the dreary background music, the elegantly simple controls, and the 'gloomy' theme of the game in general - all together make this a marvelously macabre mini-game, well worth spending a few of your own idle dark moments on.