#peroggi

Puzzle/Indie, PC, March 1 2012

I usually don't play indie games. There are a lot of them, and few of them are actually worth playing. So I only ever end up playing indie games that are recommended to me by friends or that there is a buzz about. Vessel is a puzzle indie game and I'm happy to say it's one of those few indie games worth playing. You take the role of Arkwright, a steampunk inventor. Arkwright's crowning invention (and the main mechanic of the game) is the fluro. These are little water robots composed of a seed, which acts as its programming, and a liquid, which makes up it's body. All the puzzles in the game then revolve around combining various liquids and seeds in new and interesting ways. There are a lot of things that Vessel does very well, but one big thing that kinda makes it fall apart and makes it a good game instead of a great game.

When you buy an indie game most people expect a small game. This was something that I really liked about Vessel. It has around 10 hours of gameplay and enough game mechanics to keep it fresh for all 10 of those hours. The flip side is that after you get through the game, there isn't really any replay value. That's a huge turnoff for people these days but I've never been big on replay. It's apparent that a lot of work went into this game, especially given the relatively small development team. I say with confidence that if Strange Loop Games had just a few more people working on this game, it could easily have been a full game in its own right. Even where it is now, it's really on the borderline. Vessel is just as long and detailed as most DS puzzle games, the difference being that most of the full puzzle games have replay value. So if you do decide to buy Vessel, you will definetly be getting your monies worth.

You start Vessel with nothing and slowly build up an arsenal of puzzle solving tools. Every world introduces at least one new liquid and seed and there is a good amount of synergy between all the tools you get. By that I mean (for the most part) none of your tools ever become useless. The games main charm comes from how liquid: how it flows, behaves, and how to solve puzzles with it. There are lots of great puzzle solving moments with elegant solutions. I'm kind of avoiding talking about a lot of the game mechanics specifically and there's a good reason for that. Vessel does something that I absolutely love in video games, it doesn't tell you how to play. What it does is slowly give you a bunch of tools and lets you explore and experiment with them. All the liquids do interesting things and interact with each other and it's up to you to figure it all out. There is no tutorial or instructions, the game never informs you "this is all the things this liquid does, this is how you use it". All that is left for you to learn by poking around the game. This is why I'm kind of avoiding talking about specifics, I don't want to ruin that 'aha' moment when you discover a new mechanic that helps you solve a troublesome puzzle. While I do love how Vessel makes you explore the game mechanics for yourself, it also leads to its major drawback.

When you don't tell players how to play the game, you open it up for them to experiment. This is a good thing, if the game is very well put together. Unfortunately, Vessel is far too open in its gameplay and it really suffers because of this. I'm really good at breaking games, and I started to do it in Vessel without even realizing it. In fact, the first puzzle in the game I solved wrong. You are supposed to direct fluros by using lights to activate these three switches in a row that get turned on and off by walking through them. Since the game didn't explicitly tell me that the fluros behave this way, I approached this puzzle with no knowledge of how the game works. So instead of using the lights, I ended up figuring out a way where if you flick the switch halfway, run back a little, then very quickly run past it, you can get past the switches without turning them. I didn't realize until later that I had actually cheated that puzzle. This isn't the only case either, I'd say I cheated at least 1/3 of the puzzles in the game. There were even a few puzzles I bypassed completely with some platforming and the games very easy to abuse jetpack-like nozzle. And this is the biggest problem with Vessel. By not explicitly explaining the game to you, they open up the game's world for you to poke about around in. And when I poked, I found a lot of bugs and cheating ways to solve puzzles. While there are lots of pleasing moments where you find an elegant solution to a puzzle, there are (for me at least) even more moments where you solve a puzzle and feel dirty about it because you know you cheated. You know you cheated because you only used half of the puzzle elements on the screen, or none at all. It just feels wrong and that's the absolute last thing a puzzle game should do. 

Another way the puzzles start to fall apart in Vessel is how finicky they are. Since the entire game revolves around fluids, it can get very irritating. There is nothing more frustrating than knowing how to solve a puzzle and not being able to do it. Soemtimes a puzzle requires you to very accurately position a nozzle or seed, or spray fluid (hah) in a very specific spot or way. Which is hard because the physics of the fluids are well programmed, which makes them hard to control to the level some of the puzzles demand. I mean some puzzles I'd come to and know how to solve it, but the solution was so annoyingly finicky I would just look for a way to cheat it, and almost always find one. 

Now that I've bitched about it, I have to concede that the game does a lot more right than it does wrong. Bitching about a game first is always more fun, constructive and what-not. Anyway most of the puzzles are really good and fun, and like I said discovering the game mechanics on your own is a complete joy. I remember when I was fucking around and combined these two fluids to see what would happen and they exploded. It was awesome. Seriously, other than the many ways to cheat and some finicky puzzles, the game is great. Shit some people might even see the cheating thing as positive. It can be pretty fun messing around and finding all the different ways to break a game, I guess in that respect Vessel can even have some replay value. 

All in all Vessel is a gem among indie games. It has a good amount of gameplay, complimented by many different elements and mechanics to keep the game fresh right up until the end. The story is charming and interesting, with a great ending. The only drawbacks are the many ways to cheat the puzzles, little to no replayability, and some finicky, frustrating puzzles. All in all it's a well rounded and polished indie game, something you don't see very often. Most indie games just start with a gimmick and stick with it. They end up being more like a demo than a full game. Vessel manages to to be a real indie game the likes of which could have easily made it as a full DS puzzle game if it had just a little bigger development team. 

Score: 8/10