#rawview

8:Capsule can be summarised as a little puzzle game dressed in pixels. This littleness is about its resolution, number of bytes it consists of and play time. Among those things, the only one that quite upset me was its shortness, to be honest. 8:Capsule offers some nice brain exercise and when you think you are ready for what’s next, all excited, it ends; in the most obscure way possible. Although I deal with independent games, most of which are quite experimental, I have to say I can’t quite stand obscurity done just for the sake of obscurity. However, I will make an exception for 8:Capsule and dare to claim that the ending indeed suits the overall experience.

Ignoring the 320x240 resolution, the graphics are pretty well made. They are not annoyingly glowy or have meaningless post-processing effects on them. 8:Capsule is constructed in Construct -Sometimes I run out of puns, please bear with me.- and you can easily switch to fullscreen by pressing F4 but sadly, say goodbye to the aspect ratio(for non-4:3 monitors) and embrace the interpolation -blur, that is-. 8:Capsule’s audio department will please your ears with retro inspired, but quite modern-electronic sounding tunes.

As I have said, my brain liked 8:Capsule. It made me realize what was missing from the contemporary independent gaming: making the player feel smart/a sense of accomplishment. Certainly there is a good amount of independent games which require player skill and provide lots of enjoyment. However, the number of independent games which dance on the line between being interactive and noninteractive is growing and I have to say, there are not many good examples of this kind of games. Especially the most popular games of this type are unfortunately -and I’m trying to be optimistic- glorified “walking simulators”. 8: Capsule is none of that. It can be defined as a prototype to show you that thinking inside the box is sometimes smarter and more satisfying, rather than “deep” and “meaningful” gameplay that ultimately feels artificial.

CB is explained as: “...a version of an old game called Daleks or Robots. In this version the goal is to take out all enemies with the limited weapons - up to 9 laser blasts and ONE bomb.” which goes quite well with the theme: “You only get one.”. Considering the possible relations of a theme like this with game design, it’s actually natural that many entries had this type of interpretation; such as one upgrade, one life, one chance...etc. CB’s application of this specific theme may not be the brightest one, but it’s a 48 hours compo entry which means you need to complete a game in a quite limited time period and have to go solo. Thus, the theme application is not mind blowing but on the other hand very fitting to the general idea of the game.

Boom! Unfortunately I couldn't get past this level... yet. *suspense*

Speaking of these ideas and concepts, what I have figured out is that the game pushes you to think about your every move. You have very limited ammo and one bomb per level so you can’t get trigger-happy. You also have to get used to the movement mechanics. The only seemingly-reasonable tip I can give you is to think of left & right keys as a wheel’s turning(right=clockwise/ left=anticlockwise) rather than directional keys. After you get used to that, you will be able to advance to the next level -yay!-. I have to say things get quite impossible after the second level. My experience with the third level felt like I was heavily outnumbered and couldn’t manage to line up the enemies so that I could eliminate them efficiently. It’s quite neat that you can use the extra ammo power-ups as bombs though.

In its current state, CB is more like a proof(or maybe disproof?) of a concept. Fortunately, this punishing difficulty can be lowered by simple changes like lowering the number of enemies in starter levels or introducing another win condition like reaching a specific place on a level. The visuals are pretty outstanding(read this in Mortal Kombat voice) for the intended purpose and are one of the reasons why the game got a Saturday Night Arcade Fever Award but the audio needs some help. Considering CB's making you feel helpless at times, the emotion-emitting guitar solo used in the game is surprisingly well suited but chiptune music seems like a better weapon of choice for this mission.

Those illuminated&tempting circular areas grant you spells, but take one of your hearts away. No pain, no gain brotha...

What actually kept me playing Grimgala was the atmosphere to be honest. Although no music is present, the game has a smart&simple environment which blends light, darkness and some digital noise. I have to say; when moving, shooting and flickering lights come together; the result is not very friendly with your eyes so be careful while playing. You start off with a slowish pace but after you gather some upgrades, you will be moving faster and shooting faster. Considering this being the contest version, the amount of content can be regarded as sufficient and the game does not have an unfinished feeling to it.

Grimgala is indeed the oddball of the competition as the game does not look like it was designed around the theme “party” but rather modified to fit in. It is explained as “A surreal, hardcore-mode shooter/roguelike about a gangbanger on his way to a retirement party in a post-mortem dimension, featuring random generation and loots.” and this is actually what the game is all about. I might disagree with the “hardcore-mode” part if the intention was to describe the difficulty as the game has a tendency to become unnecessarily easy towards the end but if we are talking about blood, yes you can lure those surreal souls to an area and paint the floor red with them. Although Charlie Cargo, the developer, accepts that the game is loosely tied to the party theme, I think Grimgala’s elegant visual execution can make up for any kind of plot deficiency.

420 summon those demons and watch them do their thing.

Let’s not forget to talk about the actual gameplay mechanics. Grimgala plays like a twin stick shooter but you have 8 directions to move/shoot, controlled by WASD(direction of movement) and arrow keys(direction of your surreal pixel bullets). The shooting mechanic is not perfect but this might be seen as a form of challenge. There are some spells that you can cast with the spacebar, varying from providing armor, replenishing your health to summoning other entities. You also have access to bullet upgrades like piercing or spreading ones. These bullet upgrades are temporary but other upgrades like movement or reloading speed bonuses are permanent.