Game: Bit.Trip Flux
Ranking: 14/100
Score: 88.35%
NB: This game is actually part of a six game collection on
the Wii title ‘Bit.Trip Complete’. As ‘Bit.Trip Flux’ is the only game listed
on GameRankings as a top 100 Wii title, this is the one I have analysed.
You are a rectangle with a mission; bounce back dots to make
pleasing melodies and keep travelling through the universe of crazy… dots. Is
it startling addictive? I’ll tell you as soon as I regain the ability to focus
on my keyboard.
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| Retro-tastic! |
Intro
The manual is short and to the point, while graphically in
keeping with the game's look and feel. The menus are straightforward and easy
to navigate; you have options which are all accessible by pressing the button
specified on screen. The design is very 8-bit and minimalist, yet you still get
the feeling that there's a story going on, and that there are lives at stake
for your character Commander Video.
To actually choose the world you want to play (there are
three, but only one is available when you start), you have to tilt the Wii
Remote horizontally. This is the main control in the entire game, but it still
means you will have had to at least look at the manual before you can even
start up. Also, when you select a world, you have to leave the Wii Remote in
position; it will only recognise the selection once the square block bounces
off the rectangular paddle (which you use to highlight a world). If you aren't
holding the remote correctly because, well, you're just waiting for the game to
start, then it simply won't.
The simple set-up is good and the design is suitably retro,
but it would be fine to just let the user select the level without having to
bounce blocks around. It could also be useful to have a sound effect play when
you've successfully selected an option - it took me a while to realise my
selection had been registered first time around.
Getting Going
The game is incredibly straight forward - you bounce blocks
off your rectangular body by tilting the Wii Remote. Even so, there is a
notable 'easy' stage which allows you to get the hang of things before they
start throwing anything too difficult at you, such as blocks you need to avoid.
They wait until stage two for that. There's quite a unique way of letting you
know how well you're doing - the more complicated the music and background
graphics, the more skill you are showing. If you're close to being reset,
everything becomes stark and minimalist.
As the game is easy to understand and gives you intuitive
feedback, the only issue I can see is that someone who has never picked up a
videogame before could be a little lost at sea. And let's face it, everyone has
never played a videogame at some point in their life.
I think it would be helpful to have a little 'crib sheet'
available as one of the pause options; just a little single-screen image which
tells you the controls and the objective. You wouldn't want anything more than
this, as I think anyone who has played a computer game before would probably be
able to figure it out on their own.
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| Mega Sensory Overload! |
Fun
This game is incredibly simple and utterly addicting. It
utilises a combination of Pong and Breakout, where you simply tilt the Wii
Remote horizontally to move your character up and down, batting away blocks are
the approach. The gameplay slowly builds up through each stage by introducing
different types of movement, blocks that disappear and reappear, blocks that
must be bounced back numerous times and blocks that must be avoided. There is a
HUD with stats displayed such as your score or you status, but the game employs
far more sensory ways of alerting you to your position in the game. As you
bounce each block, it generates a sound (a 'beat' in the game), so the more
blocks you bounce in sequence, the closer to a tune you get. The more blocks
you are able to hit in a row, the more complicated the music created gets. If
you do very badly and miss several blocks, the game goes into a stark black and
white version with simply the sound of electronic beeps to accompany you; it
feels very much like playing a heart monitor at that stage. Also, the visuals
get more exciting the better your status gets. The Wii Remote even vibrates in
a similar manner to a heartbeat, just to add to the tension as you're trying to
avoid anything that will reduce your status.
The only thing that was a bit of a shame was the lack of
difference between the stages. The music remained the same, as did the
graphics.
It would be nice to see a variation in the visuals and sound
utilised to distinguish each stage or even just each world. This would make you
feel as though you've accomplished something and had gone through to a new
area, rather than just doing the same thing with a harder configuration of
objects.
Visuals
The character and object visuals are simple, but the
background becomes increasingly complex and colourful the higher your status in
the stage. This is a really neat way of letting you know whether you're doing
well or not - as there's no let-up on the fast gameplay, the HUD information
can be difficult to read when you're physically playing the game. Also, they
become stark and a little morbid when you're doing so badly the game is close
to resetting you to the beginning of a stage. There are even minimalist
'cutscenes' of a fashion before each world starts, which manage to be surprisingly
effective. When CommanderVideo - a black rectangle, is in a white space trying
to stop a bunch of other rectangles from disappearing off the screen to no
avail, I actually felt for him a little. Yes, really.
There is a problem with the fabulous trippy graphical
eye-candy you are rewarded with as you progress through the statuses: they
wreck your eyes on a big screen. At one point I looked up from staring at dots
to glance at the pulsing background graphics, only for it to look like my TV was
crawling slowly along the wall. Not a game to play for a long stretch of time,
or if you're photosensitive. I imagine on a small screen - a handheld or a
mobile phone - this problem would be lessened.
The background graphics could be muted a little or made less
dynamic; something that would lessen the optical illusion of sending the whole
screen moving when you're so busy concentrating on the block graphics that make
up the gameplay.
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| Super Migraine! |
Intelligence
Each stage of the game reels you in slowly with simple
combinations to bounce back, then gets progressively more difficult. New
elements are introduced in each stage, such as dots that need to be continually
bounced back, or dots that join up and form shapes with other dots. This means
the game manages to balance a knife edge of being tricky to play but without
being so frustrating that you'll turn it off. There are also a number of
different difficulty settings so you can find one that suits your level of
experience and skill.
A couple of the elements are a little frustrating to play
against; there's a part where objects you've bounced back do not bounce
entirely away and have to be continually bounced. This can be difficult to see
when you're also bouncing back other blocks in very quick succession.
Perhaps when a block enters a new state, such as no longer
needing to be bounced back, it could turn a different colour to distinguish it
from the active blocks? This would make it less confusing but retain the
difficulty of dealing with blocks you have to bounce back multiple times while
bouncing new blocks back as well.
Immersion
The game is so addictive and so simple that you can't help
but keep playing. Each stage is relatively short and autosaves at each
checkpoint, so there is very little for the player to have to think about
except pinging back those dots. The audio and visual cues that develop with an
increase in your skill make you feel as though you're accomplishing something,
which in turn will make you reluctant to switch off. The game gets
progressively trickier and new features are thrown in regularly to stop you getting
bored.
At the end of the day, you are just bouncing dots off a
longer dot. There is only so long you're going to want to do this for, and the
trippy graphics will start hurting your head after a while.
Making the graphics less optical-illusion inducing would
certainly be one way to keep people playing for longer; I definitely wanted to
stop playing once the TV itself seemed to start moving.
This isn't really a
game designed to keep you playing for hours; it's a game where you can happily
while away half an hour while waiting for your dinner to cook when you get back
from work without having to worry that you need to finish that crucial section.
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| Ultra Retina Burn! |
Cameras
There is very little to say about the cameras; it's a single
screen, your character is never obscured and you can see the objects you need
to interact with in exactly the way the game wants you to. The simple camera
angle entirely suits the purpose of the game. There is literally no way this
can, or does, go wrong.
This is more of a visual issue, but when you are in the
stark monochrome world of near-reset, the background effects have a tendency to
merge with the dots you need to ping back, making it difficult to see what you
need to do.
More contrast between the background and the objects would
help in distinguishing features; the camera itself is perfect for this type of
game.
Controls
The controls are very simple; you hold your Wii Remote
horizontally and tilt it away from you to move your character up and tilt it
towards you to move your character down. Even people who find navigating
joypads awkward would be able to play this with no problems.
However, you can easily suffer defeat in this game by letting
your hand slip, or trying to stretch your wrists after they've been locked in a
single position for ages while you try to get through a particularly intense
combination of aggressive dot formations for the thirteenth time in a row.
There didn't appear to be an option to bypass the admittedly
pleasing tilting controls in place of just using the control pad on the Wii
Remote. I think it could be a useful addition for people who find it
uncomfortable holding their wrists at a specific angle for so long; at least
this way they can rest the remote on their laps.
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| Extra Trippiness! |
Ideas
For such a simple game, this is teeming with interesting
features. The increasingly tricky dot formations are nicely varied; from
flickering dots, dots that keep coming back, dots with trails that form shapes,
dots with trails that fill the screen like a snake as they are bounced around,
different shaped dots that hurt you if you don't avoid them. The graphical and
audio rewards you get in-game for being good at the game - and the subsequent sensory
deprivation when you get worse - is a really good way of encouraging the
player; when you fill up your 'nether' gauge and enter the monochrome version,
it's suitably stark and you become more aware of the heart-beat pulse of the
Wii Remote. There's also a boss fight at the end of each world (usually after
eight stages); these all give you different tasks, such as destroying an enemy
wall a la 'Breakout' before your opponent destroys yours or avoiding a tricky
ever-changing path of damaging dots. The boss sections make you feel as though
you've traversed an actual area and give you an entirely new spin on the dot
based puzzling you've been handling for the past eight stages. It also appears
to be mercifully short; the makers haven't tried to drag the game length out
for the sake of it and have kept to a small number of worlds, each with its
eight stages and boss area.
I did find some of the manic sections a little confusing;
there are sections where you have dots you have to bounce back more than once alongside
dots you bounce back once, and it can be a little difficult to distinguish what
you need to aim for and what you don't. Oh, and the graphical representation of
your skill sometimes got in the way of the game. When you're close to reset and
in the monochrome state, it can be tricky identifying the white dots from the
white background effects. When you're in Hyper state the background graphics
can be overwhelming to the point of affecting how you actually see. When the
HUD display starts to warp in Giga state, it really does start to make your
brain melt.
If dots you no longer need to interact with turned a
different colour to active dots, it would make it a little easier to
concentrate on the objects you still need to bounce back. Oh, and tempering the
eye-candy background effects so that they don't overwhelm you to the point that
you're distracted from the game would make this a more playable experience. I
know I've mentioned this a lot, but it's the biggest thing that stopped me
finding this game completely addictive.
Memory
This is an interesting take on the simple 'Breakout' and
'Pong' style games, where the idea of bouncing back a single dot is ramped up
to eleven with increasing levels of complexity, but builds up at just the right
pace that you won't be completely overwhelmed. Coupled with the very intuitive
way of using audio and visual build-up you know just how well you are doing
(and audio visual deprivation to show you how badly you're doing) means you
really do feel the joy of improving your game status and the pain of it
slipping away.
The trippy visuals have a habit of making the game screen
difficult to concentrate on; not because they're distracting, but because they
start to play tricks on you. Maybe the 'trip' in the name has a dual meaning?
This felt like it would be an amazing handheld or mobile
game, despite the fact you wouldn't be able to use the tilt controls so easily.
I think the mind-bending graphic effects would give you all of the incentive to
keep playing but without the weird optical illusions you get when staring at a
reasonably large screen concentrating on fast moving dots while everything your
brain is trying to filter out is also vying for attention.
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| Giga Aneurysm! |
Overall, this is a simple yet incredibly addictive little
game that you will keep going, ‘I’ll get to this next stage, then I’ll stop’
until you come close to finishing the entire game. However, the trippy graphics
may blow your retina before you get the chance. There have been a number of
scientific investigations into how people focus on electronic images,
especially now that 3D cinema has come into play; the discovery that the human
eye darts between the two overlaid images at a startling rate has shown that in
some cases, the way you focus on the separate images can induce motion sickness.
I would be really interested to see how people’s eyes moved when they played
this game.
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